The light of mental science; being an essay on moral training

Preface

All nature's laws are infallible. The regularity of their results is nature's oath of allegiance to him who will take the trouble of studying her laws and their practical apprer ciations.

This is the knowledge which is power; for this is the knowledge which places the inherent forces of the universe, physical and intellectual, at the disposal of its possessor.

The following small volume is the result of ten years' anxious and conscientious devotion to this interesting subject.

The system of mental culture it contains, and the practical rules for the application of that system which it gives in detail, are deduced from the natural laws of mind.

As all the natural laws are infallible, if we choose to adapt those of mind to their legitimate purposes, they cannot fail us. This faith, and the clear* light which these laws throw on every subject to which they are applied, have rendered the task delightful.

VI PREFACE.

In the course of this series of essays, and a second now preparing for the press, the light of the mental laws, which in the first essay assisted us at the cradle, in directing the associations of the infant mind, is successively applied to all the subjects most important to the mutual relations of the whole family of man, till in the last essay of the second series, International Parliaments, and International Laws framed in the Unlit, are suggested for the pacification and civilization of the whole world. For whether we would educate, or whether we would legislate, a knowledge of how the minds we desire to influence are constructed, is equally necessary.

Marge acta Loudon.

Sept. 1, 1845.

A SUMMARY

Of the Subjects to luhich the Light afforded by the Mental Laws, is applied in the course of the following Essays.

FIRST SERIES.

IN THE FIRST ESSAY,

THE LIGHT OF THE MENTAL LAW IS APPLIED

To arguments in favour of moral training in infants — in children, and in institutions for instructing parents, teachers, servants, and all persons who are to be about children in mental training — To practical rules for awaking the sympathies — For developing the affections — For fendering Benev dence habitually active — For preventing the formation of selfish habits — For exciting veneration, and directing it to the love of goodness — For elevating desire of approbation into desire of assimilation with, goodness — For inclining the will to prefer virtue — For training the judgment — For- educating the conscience — For governing the temper, and for ennobling the character — To showing that the power of conceiving and admiring perfection, the instinct which delights in admiring the great and good, and the instinct which urges assimilation with what we admire, are the characteristics which distinguish man from the lower animals, and which, when cultivated, pall raise him to his destined rank in the scale of being.

IN THE SECOND ESSAY

To arguments showing the necessity for a national system of public instruction, based on the moral training described in the first essay — To arguments showing why this step should not be delayed — To the removal of difficulties arising cut of anti-christian pride and bigotry, calling itself religion.

A SUMMARY.

IN THE THIRD ESSAY

To natural responsibility as attached to the possession of human faculties — To rules for self-culture by adults — To arguments in favour of the study, for this purpose, of the mental laws by the aid of consciousness, as peculiarly adapted to the exigencies of those who possess neither learning nor books, and who cannot even read — To hints calculated to assist such persons in observing the movements of their own minds, and assuring themselves that they do possess certain faculties.

IN THE SECOND PART OF THE THIRD ESSAY

To tracing the natural origin of conventional laws and distinctions — To showing the necessity of laws to enforce moral order, as indispensable to the practice of industry — To showing that moral culture is necessary to domestic happiness, and to worldly success — To showing that the natural instinct which desires to respect self, is the sustaining and elevating power of the mind — To showing the grounds on which the honest man, however poor and unlearned, is entitled to his own respect, and to that of others — To showing the grandem of virtue in difficult positions — To showing that ignorance is no longer innocent, when leisure and opportunity have brought knowledge within the reach of man — To pointing out the new responsibility consequent on such privileges.

END OF FIRST SERIES.

AN ESSAY ON MORAL TRAINING.

Chapter I

The light of mental science calculated to facilitate moral training and promote our virtue and happiness, as much as the aid of mechanical science has improved arts and manufactures, and added to our physical comfort.

God teaches by facts. His practical lessons are the laws of nature. That all may benefit by these lessons it becomes the duty of every man who is independent of the labour of his hands for his daily bread to devote the leisure which such a privilege bestows to the study of some of these laws, or their application to some useful purpose, mitil every branch of human knowledge shall have been reduced to broad comprehensive principles, so simply put that the plainest understandings may be able to apply them practically to the business of every-day life.

In many of the physical sciences this is daily being done. An individual perceives some law of nature, or the mode of adapting such to some useful purpose, and the whole civilized world immediately partakes of the advantages of the discovery. Why ? Because it is not allowed to remain a mere speculation ; it is applied to practice, and thousands are instantly and simultaneously employed, bringing within the reach of millions, comforts which, prior to such discovery, hut the few could command.

But, alas ! how lamentably little has as yet been achieved to improve mind by a like adaptation of the equally fixed laws of our inward being to the much more important purposes of moral training ! We have hitherto studied the laws of mind as matters of speculation only, and limited the sphere of such speculations to the closet of the philosopher.

In consequence of this great error, the most important portion of real education is generally completed by accidental, and too often unfavourable, circumstances, before parents think it time to commence what they intend for education.

But the laws of our inward being are quite as regular in their operation as those of outward nature ; they are merely not yet as much attended to, nor as practically applied. We have only to trace them with the same care till we know them as well, and we shall not only be able to apply them with the same certainty, but we shall see clearly that it is this adaptation of the laws of our inward being to the culture of the religious, moral, and intellectual faculties, which should be made the special science of the poor, and of little children of all classes ; that it is this science, above all others, that should be reduced to practical rules so plain that it should need no learning to comprehend them ; that it is those rules and their application which should be taught to every mother, to every young woman who ever hopes to be a mother, to every teacher of youth and trainer of infancy, to every governess, nursery-governess, and nursery-maid — to all, in short, who are to approach children in any way.

If it be objected that ignorant servants cannot apply lilies of science, it is replied that thousands of ignorant manufacturing labourers are constantly employed in adapting all the great laws of nature to mechanical operations by plain rules deduced, for the purpose, from chemical and other sciences ; that every illiterate carpenter's apprentice is taught, in like manner, to apply plain rules, drawn from the difficult science of geometry, to the forming of angles, squares, and circles.

Now, neither the manufacturing labourer nor the carpenter's apprentice could have deduced the rules from the science ; but they have each been taught to apply the rules, when so deduced, to their daily work. Why, then, should not nursery maids be taught to apply plain practical rules, deduced from mental science, to their daily work — that of influencing the associations of the infant mind?

But philosophers take no cognizance of the existence of nursery-maids, and mothers only ask if they can do up small linen. Yet, if philosophers have condescended to assist the manufacturer and the carpenter, may they not aid the nursery-maid and the mother ?

But carpenter's work done by guess could not be tolerated. Which, then, are of most importance to society — upright door-posts, or upright minds? Which will contribute most to domestic happiness — uniform window-frames or kindly tempers, ?

Can, then, moral elevation advance, while (let the struggles of each adult generation towards progress be what they may) the plastic minds of its infants are still handed down again to the lowest and most ignorant classes of the community to form in their own mould ?

We should, then, establish institutions in which all who b 2 are either to teach or to attend upon children should be specially trained for the purpose ; that is, shown, by doing so in their presence, how to influence the associations of the infant mind ; for, let it be remembered, that, though we may neglect to guide, we cannot, by any possibility, delay the formation of these associations. We may be idle, but the great universal teachers — incidental circumstances — are always at work.

Of the portion of early training which belongs to the cradle, the first rule is this : — Infant minds must not, by neglect, be taught to exhibit, and finally to feel, rage, as the natural means of obtaining all they want.

There is a mysterious instinct which prompts infants, long before they can think, to repeat any movement, whether mental or bodily, by which they have once obtained their ends. A close observance of this natural law, and of nature's own proceedings in adapting this law to her purposes, must be our guide ; for, during this first period of existence, nature is herself, by means of this law, teaching the infant how to perform every bodily function which demands the intervention of the will. That she is doing so by means of this mysterious faculty (which feels, though as it were without the cognizance of consciousness, the connection between cause and effect) is evident ; for we can clearly trace this when the movements are outward — such as in the at first ineffectual, but finally successful, efforts of an infant to reach a desired object with the hand. When the child tries to stand, we see the outward manifestations of its instinctive efforts to ascertain how to act by the will on the nerves and muscles, in finding its equilibrium; and when it would walk, how to preserve that equilibrium on one foot till the other is again placed. We can also trace like efforts being

AN ES3AY ON MORAL TRAINING. 5

made inwardly to subject the organs of speech to the will; and be able to articulate certain sounds at pleasure.

If then the first murmur of an infant in the cradle be neglected, it goes on to cry vehemently, and kick and struggle, until such time as the supply of its want arrives. From this moment, prompted by this same mysterious instinct which is teaching it in everything to seek its ends by the means it has once found successful, the kick and the vehement ciy are repeated eveiy time a want is felt ; till, by the sympathy between the body and the mind, the latter leams to give way to rage on the delay for a moment of any gratification. For it is a law of our nature that the inward faculties are reacted upon, and further excited and developed by indidgence in their outward demonstrations ; yet the instinctive faculty thus called into premature activity, and thus changed by an unnatural combination with the helplessness of infancy into impotent anger, is by nature but the source of energy given to enable us to struggle successfully with the difficulties and dangers of after life ; and, under the guidance of the moral and intellectual faculties, to resist all undue encroachment. An infant that appears to be naturally mild is merely wanting in vitality , and not likely to live.

Now when we have thus, by mismanagement, taught an infant violence of temper, we say of the poor child it was bom naturally passionate. See how it shows its temper in the very cradle ! Then people frown at the poor babe, use towards it threatening attitudes, and by and by, when they think it old enough, beat it perhaps, to correct it, as they

f imagine, of throwing itself into a rage. By all this they only increase the evil a hundred fold, teach the child to

I imitate the frown, the voice, the attitudes, and to add to

O AN ESSAY ON MORAL TEAINING.

hasty violence, lasting resentment, and a thousand other bad feelings it should have never known ; and which, if from a sense of helplessness it be obliged to hide, it will concentrate into hatred of its oppressor, while it will learn, partly by imitation and partly by the bad feelings induced by oppression, to oppress the more helpless in its turn. Every higher faculty, every generous sentiment, will be thus crashed or confounded ; benevolence, pity, sympathy, conscience, will be all silenced : truth will be sacrificed without compunction to escape severity ; self-respect will be utterly lost between the vague consciousness of the unworthy feelings thus called forth, and the sense of being treated without respect. At this crisis the intellectual faculties will arouse themselves instinctively for self-defence, but, alas ! under such circumstances, "will know no higher exercise than to contrive how best to baffle the oppressor, and lie, both in words and actions, with sufficient cunning not to be found out.

If a mother who has thus mismanaged her child in infancy should, as it gets older, attempt to give it lessons in religion and morality, having awakened no faculty to which to address such lessons, they will be so out of harmony with the bad feelings she has raised, that they will seem to the child to be words spoken in a foreign tongue, and all things connected with them to be cold forms without a soul, dull ceremonies to be got over as quickly as possible, and forgotten without being applied to conduct — or rather, their own conduct ; for there is nothing which strikes the straightforward minds of children more forcibly than incongruity between precept and practice in the conduct of others. The child "will probably think — " If it be wrong to get into passions, why does mamma or w 7 hy does papa speak so loud and look so angry at me, and slap me when I don't know my lessons?"

Look at the devastation here produced — is it not melancholy?

All the mistakes ever committed by over-indulgence are as nothing compared with this.

Injudicious yielding may and will make children troublesome, create a thousand surface faults of manner and even of conduct; but nothing utterly poisons the whole moral being at its source, paralyzes the heart, and makes all future return to good next to impossible, but the having been treated with severity, inconsistency, and injustice during infancy and childhood. Yet there are many well-meaning parents who sacrifice their own feelings to do all this mischief at the supposed call of duty.

The most important, then, of all the rules of moral training, is — Be kind to children ! Judiciously so if you know how to be judicious ; but if you do not, at all events be kind ! Natural affection, in all doubtful cases, is our safest guide — a mother's tenderness the best substitute for knowledge.

Had it needed learned rules to keep the heart from perishing, the moral world had long since been a desert ; maternal love has been its preserver, while awaiting further light. Throughout all the rudest ages of the past, however dense the darkness was abroad — however fiercely blew the hurricane of evil passions from without, on that holy altar the sacred flame still burnt ; and thither, when the storm had abated, each gentler virtue came once more to have her lamp rekindled !

But observe, spoiling children by an injudicious indulgence proceeding from fondness, must not be confounded with allowing a child to become your master through negli-

8 AN ESSAY ON MOEAL TBAINING.

gence, indolence, fear of its temper, or even of the effects of its temper on its own health. The child would not comprehend the nice distinction of what you feared : it would merely perceive that it ruled by making people afraid of it, and, consequently, guided by the instinct which teaches children to seek their ends by the same means they have once found successful, grow up a tyrant.

We have left the cradle far behind while discussing what should not be done ; let us return thither, and consider what should be done.

First, the wants of the infants must be supplied at the very earliest symptom of restlessness, that there may not be time for a feeling of impatience to suggest itself. Delay camiot teach patience till the child is old enough to be made to understand that there is a virtue in waiting patiently when delay is necessary.

Next, parents must learn a perfect command of then own tempers : this is indispensable.

Then none but persons first selected of naturally the sweetest dispositions, and then specially trained for the pm-pose, should be admitted into nurseries or infant schoolrooms. An infant should never see a frown, or any other manifestation of ungentle feeling ; every face that approaches it should wear both a kindly and a cheerful expression ; every tone of voice it hears should bear the like characteristics. Its heart should be awakened as early as possible by fond caresses ; its little sufferings should be soothed and amused away with all the ingenuity of affection. In short, it should be kept as much as possible from having opportunities to foiin habits of fretfulness, opposition, or any other unamiable emotion, while it is yet too young to understand the grave look, the calm but steady demand of obedience,

AN ESSAY ON MORAL TRATNTNG. 9

the kind though irrevocable refusal of improper requests, hereafter to be described more at length

Chapter II

Practical methods for calling forth sympathy and awakening benevolence in youn^ children.

All persons to be placed about children must be taught to awaken their sympathies as early as possible, and from the moment they can be made to understand a movement — much more a word — to give them habits of kindliness by calling their natural faculty of benevolence into exercise as constantly as occasions can be found, both in soothing each others little afflictions, and in showing kindness and obligingness of manner, movement, expression of countenance, and tone of voice to every creature ; for, as already observed, it is a law of our nature that the roots of all the faculties sympathise inwardly with their outward manifestations, which seconds their moral training by assisting mechanically their habitual activity and physical development.

Kindliness of manner, therefore, is not to be considered as merely a grace ; its practice in domestic life is virtue in constant action ; for it contributes largely to the happiness of those around us, while it is further important as a means of culture to the. inward virtue it represents — namely, benevolence. Now its sphere is wider still ; for it excites the gentler sympathies^of all with whom we come in contact,

10 AN ESSAY ON MOKAL TRAINING.

causing the seeds of good feeling to germinate in many a breast in which they had else lain dormant ; for benevolence is the sun of the moral system, and kindly manners are its emanating rays.

It is possible that the imitation of benevolence in manner, which good breeding demands from the higher classes of society, imperfect though it be, has had more to do than precept with the marked difference between them and the lowest classes with respect to crimes of violence and cruelty. For there are few in any class left in such total ignorance as never to have been told, as far as precept goes, that such crimes are wrong. It is, indeed, one of the most precious facts brought to light by the application of mental science to moral training, that, if we effectually cultivate a virtue, we have no need to suppress the opposite vice ; whereas if we follow the contraiy — which is the usual system — and attempt suppression of the vices without cultivation, except by precept, of the virtues, our labour will be in vain, and the heads of the hydra will be called again into being by temptation as fast as our coercive measures can move them. With children the only safe method of checking violent and contentious feelings is to excite benevolence. If you slap or scold a child who has given a blow to another child, you but increase the bad feelings of both. You should seem to forget the offender in your eagerness to succour and comfort the injured party. You should occupy yourself in soothing and caressing the child who has received the blow until the sympathy of the culprit is excited, and it begins to follow your example, which even infants in arms will do — sometimes without, sometimes with, a little prompting. It is quite pretty to see them, when their good feelings are thus awakened, gently stroking down and kissing the very cheek to which they had, a moment before, given a rude blow. Infants at the same age can, in like manner, be induced to put portions of the cake they are eating into the mouths of the children around them, and to lend the toy they are playing with for a moment. In this lesson, however, care must be taken not to stretch the patience of a child too far, lest you teach it the next time to be more unwilling to part with what it has found difficult to recover.

Persons training infants should never forget that the mysterious instinct so often referred to as feeling the connection between cause and effect, and prompting us to seek the same ends by the same means, is always on the alert in children. Nature, as we have seen from the first, employs this instinct as her constant teacher.

We must follow her example, and in all cases like this take care that the pang of privation does not last longer than the glow of benevolence, and leave a balance of experience against generosity.

CHAPTER III. No such principle in human nature as selfishness

Now it is the neglect of this practical training of benevolence which produces the conduct commonly called selfishness ; for, much and long as the philosophers have disputed about the selfish principle, the light of mental science applied to moral training will show that it has no existence in human nature ; or, in other words, that there

12 AN ESSAY ON MOEAL TKAINING.

is no faculty in the human mind the sole function of which is to love self. Selfish conduct is the result of the sympathies that should draw us out of self being left unexcited, and of the moral and intellectual faculties generally being unenlightened, aud every propensity being thus left to rule in turn — often quite as much to the injury of the individual himself as to that of his fellow-beings.

Now every one must know better when he hungers, thirsts, is sleepy, feels too warm or too cold, than when any other person so suffers. And sad would be the confusion, if each individual had not the special care of himself in these particulars. A man ought to perform the duties necessary to self-preservation, or he will not be rble to fulfil his relative duties ; but his finding nothing else to take an interest in but himself is an abuse of the instinct of self-preservation, which is the fault of his early training, not of his nature. Instinct takes charge of the body ; it is the business of education to develop and lead abroad the mind.

Benevolence, then, is the faculty whose office it is to cherish, to comfort, to assist, to oblige, to delight in giving pleasure, to compassionate suffering. But who or what shall be the object of these good offices, — -whether ourselves, a lap-dog, or our fellow-beings, — depends on circumstances quite distinct from the identity of the faculty which performs them.

But benevolence is excited by an intimate knowledge of the circumstances and feelings of its object. Now, as we have seen, we are necessarily more intimately acquainted with our own wants and wishes, pains and pleasures, than with those of any other person; therefore benevolence joined with caution, and thus forming the instinct of self-preservation, is so often legitimately called upon to be occupied about ourselves that this circumstance not only gives an appearance of, and, if not counterbalanced by a timely exciting of the social affections, produces a tendency to self-partiality in conduct ; but make us only one-half as well acquainted with the feelings, wishes, hopes, and fears of any other person. And benevolence begins immediately to occupy herself about that person, and often in preference to self.

The gradations of interest we take in our relatives and Mends are always in proportion to the degrees of intimacy we have with their circumstances and feelings, unless powerfully counteracted by demerit ; and even then how painfully strong will sometimes be the attachment produced by pitying the very infirmities under which we suffer, if we but see that the offender suffers too.

Studies, also, which lead us to look habitually into the minutiae of the circumstances and sufferings of humanity generally, are found to induce in these who pursue them feelings of universal philanthropy. Persons who have never had their attention so directed, and who have been early separated from all near ties of family, or who have been coldly treated hi childhood, and therefore never had their kindly feelings towards others called into action, are, in consequence of this confining of the attention to self, disposed to apparent self-partiality of conduct ; but they, in fact, have had no choice. How could they feel for those to whose feelings they were strangers ?

Young children, also, can know little of any ones feelings but their own ; and therefore, in general, they appear to be selfish, because exclusively occupied about self. But great excitability of sympathy has been given them to correct this,, by enabling them to enter into the feelings of others the moment their sympathies are appealed to ; and the sooner

14 AN ESSAY ON MOEAL TEA1NING.

these sympathies are thus addressed, the sooner children cease to act selfishly. Those who continue to act selfishly through life, do so because their sympathies had not been appealed to till habit had dulled this susceptibility.

From all this it is clear that the careful culture of sympathy, and the direction outward from earliest infancy of benevolence, by drawing the attention to all the circumstances which are calculated to excite the faculty, will effectually prevent the character being in after life what is commonly called selfish.

We all desire by nature to love out of ourselves. A solitary being tries to love a cat, a dog, a bird; nay, like the well-known instance of the poor prisoner, even a spider. In short, anything but self.

The confining then of benevolence within ourselves, the striving to be occupied solely with ourselves, the endeavour to make self-love a substitute for social affection, is evidently a forced and unnatural position of the mind. The persons whom a neglected education and unfavourable circumstances have placed in such a mental position, are notoriously uncomfortable and unhappy ; they find self an importunate and thankless taskmaster; they endeavour in vain to find happiness by collecting around self every convenience, every luxury, eveiy indulgence ; and, still surrounded by comforts, they are confessedly discontented. While, on the contrary, let them but begin to love any other creature but self, and instantly they become comparatively happy. Even in the midst of privation, fatigue, and anxiety, attending the bedside of the sick, — even in circumstances so limited as to be obliged to deprive ourselves of necessaries to procure comforts for those we love, — we are yet less wretched than the being who has no object to interest him hut himself. While

AN ESSAY ON MORAL TRAINING. J 5

it is universally allowed that those whose kindly affections are in exercise under fortunate circumstances, and who feel that they are contributing to the happiness of those they love, enjoy the greatest conceivable degree of earthly felicity.

That this is a true picture of human nature will not be contested; it follows, then, that selfishness is decidedly unnatural to the human being. It is but the desperate resource of those who are either so stupid or so unfortunate as to be unable to find any other ; and it is a resource which, as we have seen, fails those who fly to it.

Now it is a law of our natures that acting in harmony with a natural principle yields delight. Selfishness, then, cannot be a natural principle ; for we have seen that its exercise not only does not yield delight, but that every selfish act is proved to be a mistake, by being attended with great disappointment and dissatisfaction. Benevolence, on the contrary, is a natural principle, for its exercise does yield the most exquisite delight.