The essentials of character; a practical study of the aim of moral education

Front matter

Copyright N°

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Preface

Earnest men and women everywhere are deeply concerned in the development of character in the young, and many of them, especially parents and teachers, are actively engaged in moral training. This book has been written in the belief that a clear comprehension of what really makes up human character would be one of the first and best aids to the actual worker. The whole plan and style of the work, including the selection of material, — and the omission of many things, — have been determined by this practical aim. This statement is not meant as an excuse for inaccuracy or fallacies, which I have endeavored scrupulously to avoid.

The ruling idea in my own mind throughout, and I hope in the book, is what may be called the dynamic and organic nature of character: that character springs from native impulses and tendencies in the child, which are full of power, of push and thrust, and make themselves felt ; out of these original tendencies, by organization and coordination, and by enlightenment, character arises, through gradual and often imperceptible processes. Moral education, then, must always strive to make connection with these sources of power by directing the impulses of nature into the service of human ideals.

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On the other hand, I have tried to avoid the error of belittling the intellectual element in character: mere knowledge is doubtless impotent enough for moral ends, but ideas united with emotional warmth and volitional power become ideals that dominate life, and the intellectual content is as essential to the ideal as the emotional warmth, for the ideal must contain the particular knowledge fitted to stir the heart and guide the conduct in the right direction.

Moral education is generally recognized to be the most important of all educational questions, as well as the most complex and difficult. The writer earnestly hopes that this little book may prove a modest help in the practical solution of the problem. It need hardly be added that criticism and suggestion will be received with sincere gratitude.

January, 1910.

Introduction

Good is good and bad is bad, and nowhere is the difference between good and bad so wide and so fateful as in human character. For character makes destiny in the individual and in the race. As a child grows into youth and maturity, all well-disposed persons are interested in how he will ' turn out' ; and the phrase reveals two salient facts about the prevalent thought concerning the genesis of character : first, a certain vagueness as to just what is good and bad in it; and second, the feeling that whether it proves to be good or bad is much a matter of chance. Now a believer in education must needs deny the power of luck, and must pin his faith to the proposition that character develops, like all other growing things, in accordance with inviolable laws : and that if we could know these laws, and act always in accordance with them, we should be able, — not to make what we please out of any child, — but to make of every child the best that he is capable of becoming. Even after we admit that development is governed by law, we still must see that in the case of a human being the laws are infinitely complex and as yet but little understood, and that both the human soul itself and the world that forms its environment are manifold and intricate almost beyond our conception. Even so, we dare not yield to despair, but must resolutely set ourselves to learn all we can in whatsoever way about the child and the laws of its development, and to turn this knowledge to good use in the cultivation of the best elements that spring in his nature.

Human beings differ from each other indefinitely, and the variations run back in many cases to childhood, and probably have their roots largely in original endowment. No training that ignores these individual differences between children will be very successful. But, on the other hand, there are not a few qualities that we expect in every normal human being, and the importance of these things is immense : the very fact that we require them of all shows their peculiar value : and the fact that all must have them, and not merely a few chosen ones, multiplies their significance in our common life. So much has been said in recent years, especially since Rousseau, about the differences between individuals, that there has been danger of our losing sight of the truth that common humanity and the qualities and character that we can all attain are more important than any peculiar gifts that are bestowed only upon the chosen few. Every child has in him the springs and impulses of honor, of truthfulness, of love, and of all needed virtues : it is far more important to recognize and bring to perfection these universals

INTRODUCTION 3

than it is to discover and cultivate the occasional talent for music or art or athletic prowess or oratory, — valuable as these are. Now the most important of these universals of human nature have been summed up in common thought and parlance in the word character ; for character means the total of the qualities that make a real man or woman : a person without character is so much less than man: and a man of character is a man in the fullest sense. A clear and definite knowledge of the most important at least of the qualities that make up character is necessary to the educator, by which we mean the parent first, then the teacher, and last, but not least, every one else who influences the growth and development of any child or youth, — and this last evidently takes in everybody.

Moreover, the educator may always safely insist upon the qualities that belong to character in this sense ; but respecting the peculiar gifts of each individual, he must, as it were, wait upon nature and be guided by the revelation she makes. It is risky for a father to decide that his son shall be a physician or a man of business except as the son's own development gives the signs of fitness for the calling : but the parent must needs resolve that his child shall grow up into honesty, industry, courage, and the other indispensable elements of character.

The question before us then, however difficult it may be to answer, is easily put : What qualities must be found in every human being to fit him for a happy and useful life, as an individual and as a member of society ; in the family, the social circle, the church ; as a citizen and as a worker ; and in the hidden reality of his own inner life ? The answer to this great question will portray the general aim of education ; every one who interests himself in the development of a child should rightly think first of this universal aim, and afterwards of the peculiar gifts and individual possibilities of the child concerned.

Chapter I

The child, like any other organism, grows from within, and thrives only when his natural tendencies are given suitable room and encouragement. Whoever wishes to succeed in influencing the development of the child must first seek to know these natural tendencies, and then find means for modifying them in accordance with his educational aim. The recognition of these natural tendencies as the ultimate basis of all education is the central idea of what we sometimes call the New Education, although the idea was not unknown even as far back as the time of Plato, and of course has always dominated really good educational practice, whether the educator knew it or not. The Old Education, in the bad sense of the word, implies the attempt to thrust or foist upon the growing child experiences and characters that do not fit these natural impulses. Whatever we hope to fix in the character of the educated person, we must find in rudimentary form in the child. Hence the problem of the formation of character must begin here, in a study of what we may call native reactions, or impulses and movements that arise in the child in advance of any training or teaching from without.

A certain by-gone philosophy — which certainly must have quite forgotten all about the real child — used to speak of the child's nature as a tabula rasa, or ' blank page, ' upon which experience and training might write what they pleased. As a matter of fact, the child's nature at birth, like that of a calf or a chick, is pretty well scribbled over by the experience of its ancestors. It is far from being blank, for as soon as the little organism comes into the world, it begins to do certain things and do them with much zeal and determination, as every one knows who knows real children. Only in very recent years has the profound importance of these early actions of the child been recognized, and a new science has arisen of Child Study , to observe and record these phenomena, and seek to discover their meaning and value for education. To the numerous works on this subject we refer those of our readers who desire full and technical information concerning the native tendencies of children ; we must be content here with mentioning out of the great number of these tendencies a few that are of special importance in the formation of the elements of character.

i. First of all in time, at least, comes bodily activity. The healthy child from the beginning moves body and limbs frequently and vigorously. This tendency increases rapidly in the first few months, until soon the child is seldom still except when asleep, and this constant activity is likely to last for a good many years, — at least long enough to keep the primary teacher busy for some time after the child enters school. Now the mother and sometimes the teacher are very apt to lose patience with this motor activity, as the psychologist calls it, and they dub it plain restlessness, and sometimes ask the child querulously if he cannot sit still a minute. In simple truth he cannot ; or at best only on rare occasions, when weary or sated with activity. Indeed, when a child in the first two or three years of life inclines to stillness and quiescence, the chances of its living out the perils of infancy are small, for the restless activity of the little one is the best evidence of its vigor and vitality. Moreover, these restless and often apparently aimless motions are the indispensable basis of several parts of its development : first, its bodily growth and physical control depend upon them; out of the random and confused movements of early life, by a wonderful process of selection and habituation, 1 arise the power to walk and run and jump, as well as the marvelous skill and versatility of the human hand, and all other forms of definite muscular control. Only through the ceaseless and eternally repeated movements of the infant and little child can the helplessness and confusion of early movements grow into the order and definiteness of adult control.

Besides this, the very health and development of the body and its organs depend upon abundant movement and exercise of all its parts, — just what the " restlessness" of the child supplies. The adult keeps in health by the activity of his daily occupation ; the child has no occupation except the activity itself ; and he has far more 1 See Dewey, " Psychology/' Chapter on Physical Control.

need of bodily activity than has the. adult, for he is in the period of most rapid growth and development, which doubles and trebles the need of exercise. These are but the simplest functions of the ceaseless motion of the child ; still another fundamental use is found in the contribution that motion makes to the operation of the senses, of which we shall speak further on. The most important point for us here, however, is the relation of child activity to one of the basic elements of character ; the habit of industry, with all that it means for success and happiness, springs directly from the restless activity of the child, as the plant springs from the seed. The tramp and the lazy man are persons in whom the precious shoot of activity has somehow been marred or broken beyond repair; the early activity has been wasted or repressed, and the vital habit that should have sprung from it is lost. These are the thoughts that may help us as parents and teachers to keep down the natural impatience and irritation that the unceasing and often annoying and even dangerous activity of the child stirs in us. It is nature's way of creating the physical strength and efficiency of manhood and womanhood.

This first great impulse of childhood dominates the whole early life of the child in the form of play ; but though activity is the mainspring of play, play itself actuates and educates every other impulse and element of the child's nature, and must be given the place of honor and preference in the early years as the fit and proper employment of the child ; in ideal development the inner consciousness of play would be continued into adult life, and only the external conditions would make the difference between play, the business of the child, and work, the business of the adult. It is a mere commonplace to say that the best worker is the one who retains the spontaneity, vigor, and enthusiastic interest of childhood play.

2. Sense-hunger and Curiosity. Great is the child's impulse to work upon the world about him through his muscular powers; no less does he hunger, as it were, to take in the world through his senses. Touch, taste, sight, hearing, and other deeper-lying senses, and in a less degree, smell, are all awake and eager. Upon them the child tries whatever comes within his compass ; he is not content with sight, but wants to use hand and mouth also upon the object. Few of the native reactions, awkward and annoying as some of them are, are so excessive and so dangerous as the irresistible impulse to thrust everything into the mouth, but there it is, filling the mother's days with anxiety lest pins or poison or choking should imperil the baby's life. This phenomenon of child life, with its incidents of dirt eating and thumb sucking, and lasting beyond liquid diet and teething, is enough to make us cautious about asserting that all the impulses of infancy have a use and justification ; we shall probably do well to conclude that some of them, like the appendix among our organs, are superfluous vestiges of a previous stage of evolution.

The development of the senses under the stimulus of the sense-hunger is one of the most fascinating chapters of

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child-study. Born deaf and almost blind, with little or no manifestation of smell, and probably inferior touch and organic senses, the little one swiftly gains use and control of the organs that are to reveal the world to him. Peculiarly interesting is the indissoluble union between the development of the senses and that muscular activity we have already discussed : the eye is the best example ; the new-born baby has no control over either head or eyeball, and cannot look at anything: hence, while the eye itself is perfect, the child does not properly see anything. Very soon the head begins to turn toward sounds or lights; then the eyes themselves gain the power to move in their sockets and converge, with proper accommodation and focus, upon a definite object; then the child truly sees for the first time. The marvelous delicacy, perfection, and swiftness of the movements of the eye that are essential to complete vision command our astonishment and reverence : these the child acquires in the first year of life; but, like so many other achievements, only by grace of the impulses to activity and to sense perception ; without these the eye would linger forever in the dull fishvision of the new-born babe.

Hardly less dependent upon muscular activity is the sense of touch : "Let me see that," with the child, means, Let me handle it, move my hands over it, rub it, 'heft' it, — and so forth. The educated touch that we hear of in textile experts, physicians, and others, resides probably as much in the muscles as in the sense organs themselves. Hearing is also, though to a much less extent, in partner-

NATIVE TENDENCIES II

ship with movement: posture and movements of the head help to determine direction and distance of sounds.

Out of a union of sense impressions the child gains his ideas of things : the sight of an orange creates the desire to touch and taste and smell it : and these impressions go to make up the orange as the child knows it. So the sense-hunger leads the child mind forward from sensations to perceptions of things, and from things, related to each other, and experienced both actively and sensorially by him, he constructs his world.

Now this sense-hunger of early childhood, while it does not pass away entirely, becomes year by year less conspicuous, and gives place to its natural successor, which we sometimes call curiosity ; this name we adopt with the proviso that it is not to carry any of its usual disapprobation. Just as the little child wants to see, touch, taste, smell, everything that comes within his reach, because it is new to him, and, we may also add, because he needs the acquaintance he gets thereby : so the older child wants to know about all the new things that come his way. But it is not usually a matter of color or form or taste or smell ; it is more likely to be a more advanced inquiry : " What is it for?" "Where does it come from?" "How does it work ? " and a thousand such like, which none but the father or mother of a little lad or lass could begin to enumerate. It is of course very easy to sit in a quiet room with no child in sight or hearing, and expand upon the beauty and power of this child impulse of questioning, and it is pretty hard always to live up to the idea when an actual flesh-and-blood child is pelting one with what's and why's and how's, without end, and often, to our comprehension, without sense. But no matter how hard it is to live up to the truth, yet still it is true, that this harassing inquisitiveness is the only root out of which intelligence and mental power can grow, and the parent and teacher must needs pray for grace to treat it accordingly.

The two impulses just discussed, of activity and curiosity, combine in the constructive impulse, and in its close relation, the destructive impulse, both of them being conspicuous in every normal child. The destructive impulse usually, and the constructive often, constitute what the adult terms mischief. This is why the most vigorous and healthy children make the most mischief. The propensity of all children to meddle with what they ought not to touch is perfectly clear : what they ought not to touch is exactly the thing that by that very fact must stimulate their curiosity to the highest degree ; and it is much to be questioned if any of us really grow quite out of this stage. The child must needs be doing, and he must needs get new sense experience and later new knowledge; result, infallibly and irresistibly, — mischief. The exceeding value of the constructive impulse needs no emphasis ; it is the taproot of all the arts and crafts of the human race. It is one of the most difficult tasks of early training to restrain mischief and destruction within reasonable limits without unduly repressing the wholesome activity of the child.

3. Suggestibility. One of the commonest fallacies regarding children is the opinion that they are naturally disobedient ; as a matter of fact, the child has a natural tendency to do what he is told to do, — provided, of course, he is not too much attracted by something else and has not a positive aversion to the thing commanded. Also, provided the command is given by a person who is not obnoxious to him, and not in a way calculated to arouse his antagonism. A good many provisos, you will say ; yes, surely, and I should not like to warrant the list to be complete. But in spite of this, it is still true, that it is natural to a child to do what he is told to do, and, moreover, in actual life, children act in accordance with this, or, in other words, obey, far oftener than they disobey. The trouble is that one disobedience makes more trouble and so more impression upon our minds than a score of obediences. A disobedient child is one who disobeys, as his mother says, often; in strict numerical ratio, his disobediences would usually be few as compared with his obediences. Nothing here said is intended as an excuse for disobedience, nor for the weakness of discipline that tolerates it.

Not only is it natural for a child to do what he is told to do ; strange as it may sound, he has a distinct tendency also to do what he is told not to do. And yet again, he has a distinct tendency to do what he sees done, or hears about, or whatever in any way comes into the range of his perception. All these tendencies, which are really summed up in the last sentence, constitute what is called suggestibility, or the tendency to repeat in one's own person any act the image of which enters the mind. The most clearly recognized form of this great tendency is, of course, imitation.

It will be noted that while it is wrong to say that children are naturally disobedient, it is hardly safe to say that they are naturally obedient : for obedience is much more than an impulse, and it is not native, but acquired. Moreover, as we have seen, and as all wise parents and teachers know, the child is prone to do the very thing he is told not to do. Hence the danger of prohibitions in school and family discipline : telling boys not to make their snowballs hard nor put ice or stones in them may result in the very conduct that is forbidden. For the very idea of the act has a natural tendency to produce the act; in other words, the child is not naturally obedient, nor naturally disobedient, but is naturally suggestible. The practical inference is clear, and although it is not all of discipline, it is the foundation of it, — to present to the child's mind those actions that we wish him to perform ; the very picture of desirable acts and conduct in his mind is a force for good ; whether the picture is produced by words or by example, the result tends to follow ; and, per contra, to avoid as far as practicable presenting undesirable acts, for the very image of evil deeds and bad conduct is in itself a source of danger, whether the image is produced by bad advice or bad example. Few truths are so profoundly important in education as this, and yet most parents and not a few teachers fail to realize its significance ; the general public in their attitude toward children seem to heed it not at all.

The child's eyes and ears then are open and hungry for deeds and conduct that he may copy : "I can do that/' "See me do that/' "Let me try that/' are frequent enough on the lips of children, but they are only a corporal's guard of the army of the imitative impulses that swarm in child-consciousness. Nor could it well be otherwise : the baby has no arts nor accomplishments, and must learn all before it can become grown up. The simplest processes of daily life, eating, dressing, manners, all must be learned, and mainly through this suggestibility. The most complex of all the organic arts, speech, would never be acquired but for the dominating impulse that comes at the proper time and leads the child to prattle and chatter, over and over again, every word and sound he hears. Professor James has called the child a behaving organism : 1 it would be as correct to say that he is an imitating machine, for imitation really precedes behaving, and furnishes the material for it. 2

To say that the child is suggestible, then, means that he is open to contagion in mind as well as in body, that he ' takes' habits and manners and character very much as he takes measles or whooping cough, from any one who has them. Education must provide quarantine against bad moral infections, as departments of health do against

1 See that golden book for teacher and parent, "Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on some of Life's Ideals."

2 For full and expert discussion of this topic see "Suggestion in Education," by M. W. Keatinge.

bodily contagions ; and, what is even more important, it must infect the child, through right example and precept, and noble environment, with good ideals and strong character.

4. Tastes and ^Esthetic Appreciation. What children like and dislike is a very broad field, and overlaps on some or all of the other natural tendencies we are considering : let us note, however, two parts of the field that seem to be of peculiar importance. First, the child has a natural taste for wholesome foods. What, says the mother, are candy, and dirt, and soap, and pins, wholesome food? And we must admit, of course, that these are but a few samples of the endless list of noxious and repugnant things that the little child takes to with avidity. But here, again, as in the case of suggestibility, the child finds no trouble in combining contrary qualities. He does (though fortunately not with equal propensity) both what he is told to do, and what he is told not to do. Likewise, although we must admit that he likes many contraband articles, it is true that he also likes his milk and bread and rice, and plenty of other good nourishing foods in their season. Moreover, the taste for dirt and pin will wear itself out in the course of nature, if happily the little omnivore survives the perils of choking and poison, as he usually does; but the taste for good honest food, however plain, never wears out, at least in the course of nature. It is sometimes driven out, and that brings us to the practical lesson. The old-fashioned mother may be wrong in thinking sweets unwholesome for children's stomachs, but even so, her practice was right, for the taste for sweets is very bad when it usurps the place of authority in fixing the child's diet. There are children who reach school age without knowing the taste of cake and candy, and who consequently devour plain bread with zest ; and there are other children whose feeble appetites must be tempted with coffee and spiced viands. The normal and healthy child has a native tendency that may enable him as a grown man to eat bread and butter with more delight than most people find in a dinner at Delmonico's. With him, good digestion does wait on appetite, and health on both.

And what as to aesthetic appreciation? Comenius held that infancy is the time in which all branches of learning and culture should begin; and the capacity to rejoice in beauty of every form is no exception. Before the child can articulate a single word, he shows delight in bright colors and flowers ; almost, and in some cases quite as soon, he manifests pleasure in musical sound. He stretches out his tiny hand toward moon and stars and bright water, not, as is sometimes inferred, to grasp them, but in natural utterance of the joy he feels. Who has not seen a pair of boys, not yet in their teens, dawdling along the homeward road with their hands full of bright and variegated flowers? They gathered them as naturally and unconsciously as the rain falls; five, or even two years hence, it is safe to predict that the same lads will be indifferent or scornful of flowers and of a host of other forms of beauty that charmed their childish eyes; and l8 THE ESSENTIALS OF CHARACTER

too often, once grown to manhood, the cares of this world have sadly choked the capacity to glow and thrill with the vision of the rainbow and the rose. Boys must be boys, and we must all agree that a boy in his teens had better like flowers too little than too much, for he is in the period of some indispensable natural tendencies that have not much concord with the gentler aesthetic feelings. But the grown man is to renew and embody all the best that springs in every period of immaturity, and the love of beauty is one of these. Education, then, must not neglect the native springs of aesthetic appreciation that abound in the soul of the child. Of the cultivation of these tastes more will be said in a later chapter.

5. Self-assertion. "The baby new to earth and sky" may not know that "this is I" — but he knows how to make all the rest of the world know it ; and his own little intelligence seems early to wake to the idea. Under the head of self-assertion we must include a numerous and varied group of reactions that mingle in complicated relations with all the other classes of tendencies. Not seldom to the young mother or the inexperienced teacher it seems as if the self-impulses of the child have driven out all the rest and founded a complete tyranny over child and all about him.