Part 6
Frank's father would have been shocked at Faraday's first introduction to the problems of metaphysical speculation. "I remember," he says, "being a great questioner when young." And one of his first questions was in regard to the seat of the soul. The question was suggested in this way. Being a small boy, and seeing the bars of an iron railing, he felt called upon to try experimentally whether he could squeeze through. The experiment was only a partial success. He got his head through, but he could not get it back. Then the physical difficulty suggested the great metaphysical question, "On which side of the fence am I?"
Frank's father would have said that that was neither the time nor the place for such speculation, and that the proper way to study philosophy was to wait till one could sit down in a chair and read it out of a book. But to Faraday the thoughts he got out of a book never seemed to be so interesting as those which came to him while he was stuck in the fence.
When Frank learned a few lines of poetry, he asked to be allowed to say them to his father.
"'I think,' said his mother, 'your father would like you to repeat them if you understand them all, but not otherwise.'"
Of course that was the end of any nonsense in that direction. If Frank was kept away from any poetry he could not altogether understand, he would soon be grown-up, so that he would not be tempted by any kind of poetry any more than his father was.
I am sure Frank's father would have disapproved of the way my Philosopher takes his poetry. His favorite poem is "A frog he would a-wooing go,"--especially the first quatrain. His analysis is very defective; he takes it as a whole. He likes the mystery of it, the quick action, the hearty, inconsequent refrain:--
A frog he would a-wooing go-- Heigh ho! says Rowley-- Whether his mother would let him or no-- With a rowly-powly, gammon and spinach. Heigh ho! says Anthony Rowley.
This to him is poetry. Everything is lifted above the commonplace. The frog is no cousin to the vulgar hop-toad, whose presence in the garden, in spite of his usefulness, is an affront. He is a creature of romance; he is going a-wooing,--whatever that may be;--he only knows that it is something dangerous. And what a glorious line that is,--
Whether his mother would let him or no.
It thrills him like the sound of a trumpet. And great, glorious Anthony Rowley! It needs no footnote to tell about him. It is enough to know that Rowley is a great, jovial soul, who, when the poetry is going to his liking, cries, "Heigh ho!"--and when Rowley cries, "Heigh ho!" my Philosopher cries, "Heigh ho!" too, just to keep him company. And so the poem goes on "with a rowly-powly, gammon and spinach," and nobody knows what it means. That's the secret.
Now I should not wish my Philosopher always to look upon "A frog he would a-wooing go" as the high-water mark of poetical genius; but I should wish him to bring to better poetry the same hearty relish he brings to this. The rule should be,--
Now good digestion wait on appetite, And health on both.
When I see persons who upon the altar of education have sacrificed digestion, appetite, and health, I cannot but feel that something is wrong. I am reminded of an inscription which I found on a tombstone in a Vermont churchyard:--
Here lies cut down like unripe fruit The only son of Amos Toot.
* * * * *
Behold the amazing alteration Brought about by inoculation: The means employed his life to save Hurled him, untimely, to the grave.
Sometimes the good housewife has chosen carefully every ingredient for her cake, and has obeyed conscientiously the mandates of the cookbook. She has with Pharisaic scrupulosity taken four eggs and no more, and two cups of sugar, and two teaspoonfuls of sifted flour, and a pinch of baking powder, and a small teacupful of hot water. She has beaten the eggs very light and stirred in the flour only a little at a time. She has beaten the dough and added granulated sugar with discretion. She has resisted the temptation to add more flour when she has been assured that it would not be good for the cake. And then she has placed the work of her hands in a moderately hot oven, after which she awaits the consummation of her hopes. In due time she looks into the moderately hot oven, and finds only a sodden mass. Something has happened to the cake.
Such accidents happen in the best of attempts at education. The outcome is disappointing. The ingredients of the educational cake are excellent, and an immense amount of faithful work has been put into it, but sometimes it does not rise. As the old-fashioned housekeeper would say, it looks "sad."
It is easier to find fault with the result than to point out the remedy; but so long as such results frequently happen, the business of the home and the school is full of fascinating and disconcerting uncertainty. One thing is obvious, and that is that it is no more safe for the teacher than for the preacher to "banish Nature from his plan." Of course the reason we tried to banish Nature in the first place was not because we bore her any ill-will, but only because she was all the time interfering with our plans.
The fact is that Nature is not very considerate of our grown-up prejudices. She does not set such store by our dearly bought acquirements as we do. She is more concerned about "the process of becoming" than about the thing which we have already become. She is quite capable of taking the finished product upon which we had prided ourselves and using it as the raw material out of which to make something else. Of course this tries our temper. We do not like to see our careful finishing touches treated in that way.
Especially does Nature upset our adult notions about the relations between teaching and learning. We exalt the function of teaching, and seem to imagine that it might go on automatically. We sometimes think of the teacher as a lawgiver, and of the learner as one who with docility receives what is graciously given.
But the law to be understood and obeyed is the law of the learner's mind, and not that of the teacher's. The didactic method must be subordinated to the vital. Teaching may be developed into a very neat and orderly system, but learning is apt to be quite disorderly. It is likely to come by fits and starts, and when it does come it is very exciting.
Those who have had the good fortune in mature life to learn something have described the experience as being quite upsetting. They have found out something that they had never known before, and the discovery was so overpowering that they could not pay attention to what other people were telling them.
Kepler describes his sensations when he discovered the law of planetary motion. He could not keep still. He forgot that he was a sober, middle-aged person, and acted as if he were a small boy who had just got the answer to his sum in vulgar fractions. Nobody had helped him; he had found it out for himself; and now he could go out and play. "Let nothing confine me: I will indulge my sacred ecstasy. I will triumph over mankind.... If you forgive me, I rejoice; if you are angry, I cannot help it." In fact, Kepler didn't care whether school kept or not.
Now in the first years of our existence we are in the way of making first-rate discoveries every day. No wonder that we find it so hard to keep still and to listen respectfully to people whose knowledge is merely reminiscent. Above all, it is difficult for us to keep our attention fixed on their mental processes when our minds make forty revolutions to their one.
There, for instance, is the Alphabet. Because the teacher told us about it yesterday she is grieved that we do not remember what she said. But so many surprising things have happened since then that it takes a little time for us to make sure that it's the same old Alphabet this morning that we had the other day. She is the victim of preconceived ideas on the subject, but our minds are open to conviction. Most of the letters still look unfamiliar; but when we really do learn to recognize Big A and Round O, we are disposed to indulge our sacred ecstasy and to "triumph over mankind."
If the teacher be a sour person who has long ago completed her education, she will take this occasion to chide us for not paying attention to a new letter that is just swimming into our ken. If, however, she is fortunate enough to be one who keeps on learning, she will share the triumph of our achievement, for she knows how it feels.
There is coming to be a greater sympathy between teachers and learners, as there is a clearer knowledge of the way the mind grows. But even yet one may detect a certain note of condescension in the treatment of the characteristics of early childhood. The child, we say, has eager curiosity, a myth-making imagination, a sensitiveness to momentary impressions, a desire to make things and to destroy things, a tendency to imitate what he admires. His mind goes out not in one direction, but in many directions. Then we say, in our solemn, grown-up way: "Why, that is just like Primitive Man, and how unlike Us! It has taken a long time to transform Primitive Man into Us, but if we start soon enough we may eradicate the primitive things before they have done much harm."
What we persistently fail to understand is that in these primitive things are the potentialities of all the most lasting satisfactions of later life.
Browning tells us how the boy David felt when he watched his sheep:--
Then fancies grew rife Which had come long ago on the pasture, when round me the sheep Fed in silence--above, the one eagle wheeled slow as in sleep; And I lay in my hollow and mused on the world that might lie 'Neath his ken, though I saw but the strip 'twixt the hill and the sky: And I laughed,--"Since my days are ordained to be passed with my flocks, Let me people at least, with my fancies, the plains and the rocks, Dream the life I am never to mix with, and image the show Of mankind as they live in those fashions I hardly shall know."
All this is natural enough, we say, in a mere boy,--but he will outgrow it. But now and then some one does not outgrow it. He has become a man, and yet in his mind fancies are still rife. They throng upon him and crave expression. The things he sees, the people he meets, are all symbols to him, just as the one eagle which "wheeled slow as in sleep" was to the shepherd lad the symbol of a great unknown world. That which he sees of the actual world seems still to him only a strip "'twixt the hill and the sky,"--all the rest he imagines. He fills it with vivid color and absorbing life. He peoples it with his own thoughts.
We call such a person a poet; and if he is a very good poet, we call him a genius; and, in order to do him honor, we pretend that we cannot understand him, and we employ people to explain him to us. We treat his works as alcohol is treated in the arts. It is, as they say, "denaturized," that is, something is put into it that people don't like, so that they will not drink it "on the sly!"
Yet all the time the plain fact is that the poet is simply a person who is still in possession of all his early qualities. Wordsworth gave away the secret. He is a boy who keeps on growing. He is
One whose heart the holy forms Of young imagination have kept pure.
Where others see a finished world, he sees all things as manifestations of a free power.
Even in their fixed and steady lineaments He traced an ebbing and a flowing mind, Expression ever varying.
This ebbing and flowing mind with its ever-changing expression is the charm of early childhood. It is the charm of all genius as well. Turn to Shelley's "Skylark." The student of Child Psychology never found more images chasing one another through the mind. The fancies follow one another as rapidly as if Shelley had been only four years old. Frank's father would have been troubled at the lack of business-like grasp of the subject. What was the skylark like? It was
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.
Then again, it was
Like a star of heaven In the broad daylight.
It was
Like a poet hidden In the light of thought.
It was like a high-born maiden, like a rose, like a glow-worm, like vernal showers. The mind wanders off and sees visions of purple evenings and golden lightnings and white dawns and rain-awakened flowers. These were but hints of the reality of feeling, for
All that ever was Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass.
We know of religion--or at least we have often been told--that it is found in the purest form in the heart of a child, and that it consists in nurture and development of this early grace through all the years that may be allotted. The same thing is true of all that concerns the ideal life. The artist, the reformer, the inventor, the poet, the man of pure science, the really fruitful and original man of affairs,--these are the incorrigibles. They refuse to accept the hard-and-fast rules that are laid down for them. They insist upon finding time and room for activities that are not conceived of as tasks, but as the glorious play of their own faculties. They are full of a great, joyous impulse, and their work is but the expression of this impulse. They somehow have time for the unexpected. They see that which
Gives to seas and sunset skies The unspent beauty of surprise.
The world is in their eyes ever fresh and sparkling. Life is full of possibilities. They see no reason to give up the habit of wonder. They never outgrow the need of asking questions, though the final answers do not come.
When to a person of this temper you repeat the hard maxims of workaday wisdom, he escapes from you with the smiling audacity of a truant boy. He is one who has awakened right early on a wonderful morning. There is a spectacle to be seen by those who have eyes for it. He is not willing out of respect for you to miss it. He hears the music, and he follows it. It is the music of the
Olympian bards who sung Divine ideas below, Which always find us young, And always keep us so.
V
Christmas and the Spirit of Democracy
[Illustration]
"Times have changed," said old Scrooge, as he sat by my fireside on Christmas Eve. "The Christmas Carol" had been read, as our custom was, and the children had gone to bed, so that only Scrooge and I remained to watch the dying embers.
"Times have changed, and I am not appreciated as I was in the middle of the last century. People don't seem to be having so good a time. You remember the Christmas when I was converted? What larks! Up to that time I had been 'a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner.' Those were the very words that described me. Then the Christmas Spirit took possession of me and--presto! change! All at once I became a new creature. I began to hurry about, giving all sorts of things to all sorts of people. You remember how I scattered turkeys over the neighborhood, shouting, 'Here's the turkey! Hello! Whoop! How are you! Merry Christmas!' And then I sat down and chuckled over my generosity till I cried. I was having the time of my life. You see, I hadn't been used to that sort of thing, and it went to my head.
"And how grateful everybody was! They took everything in the spirit in which it was offered, and asked no questions. Everywhere there was an outstretched hand and a fervent God-bless-you for every gift. Nobody twitted me about the past. I was all at once elevated to the position of an earthly Providence.
"Talk of fun! Was there ever such a practical joke as to scare Bob Cratchit within an inch of his life and then raise his salary before he could say Jack Robinson! You should have seen him jump! How the little Cratchits shouted for joy! And when the thing was written up, all Anglo-Saxondom was smiling through its tears and saying: 'That's just like us. God bless us, every one.'
"But it's different now. Something has got into the Christmas Spirit. Doing good doesn't seem such a jolly thing as it once was, and you can't carry it off with a whoop and hello. People are getting critical. In these days a charitable shilling doesn't go so far as it used to, and doesn't buy nearly so many God-bless-you's. You complain of the rise in the price of the necessaries of life. It isn't a circumstance to the increase in the cost of luxuries like benevolence. Almost every one looks forward to the time when he can afford to be generous. And when he is generous he likes to feel generous, and to have other people sympathize with him. It's only human nature. A man can't be thinking about himself all the time; he gets that tired feeling that your scientific people in these days call altruism. It is an inability to concentrate his mind on his own concerns. In spite of himself his thoughts wander off to other people's affairs, and he has an impulse to do them good. Now in my day it was the easiest thing in the world to do good. The only thing necessary was to feel good-natured, and there you were! Nowadays, the way of the benefactor is hard. It's so difficult that I understand you actually have Schools of Philanthropy."
Scrooge shrugged his shoulders and seemed to shrivel at the thought of these horrible institutions.
"Just fancy," he continued, "how I should have felt on that blessed Christmas night, if, instead of starting off as an amateur angel, feeling my wings growing every moment, I had been compelled to prepare for an entrance examination. I suppose I should have been put with the backward pupils whose early education had been neglected, and should have had to learn the A B C's of charity. School of Philanthropy! Ugh! And in the holidays, too!
"I have been visiting some elderly gentlemen who have had something of my experience with the Spirit of Christmas. Like me, they were converted somewhat late in life. They never were in as bad a way as I was, for I did business, you may remember, in a narrow street with quite sordid surroundings, while they were financiers in a large way. Yet I suppose that they, too, were 'squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinners,' though nobody had the courage to tell them so. Then they got tired of clutching, and their hearts warmed and their hands relaxed and they began to give. Never was such giving known before. It was a perfect deluge of beneficence. A mere catalogue of the gifts would make a Christmas carol of itself.
"But would you believe it, they never have got the fun out of it that I got when I filled the cab full of turkeys and set out for Camden town. The old Christmas feeling seems to have been chilled. The public has grown critical. Instead of dancing for joy, it looks suspiciously at the gifts and asks: 'Where did they get them?' It has been so impressed by the germ theory of disease that it foolishly fears that even money may be tainted. It's a preposterous situation. Generosity is a drug on the market, and gratitude can't be had at any reasonable price."
"Yes," I said, "you are quite right, public sentiment has changed. Gratitude is not so easily won as it was in your day, and it takes longer to transform a clutching, covetous old sinner into a serviceable philanthropist. But I do not think, Scrooge, that the Christmas Spirit has really vanished. He is only a little chastened and subdued by the Spirit of Democracy."
"I don't see what Democracy has to do with it," said Scrooge. "I'm sure that nobody ever accused me of being an aristocrat. What I am troubled about is the decay of gratitude. If I give a poor fellow a shilling, I ought to be allowed the satisfaction of having him remove his hat and say, 'Thank'ee, sir,' and he ought to say it as if he meant it. The heartiness of his thanksgiving is half the fun. It makes one feel good all over."
"But," I answered, "if the fellow happens to have a good memory he may recall the fact that yesterday you took two shillings from him, and he may think that the proper response to your sudden act of generosity is, 'Where's that other shilling?' That's what the Spirit of Democracy puts him up to. It's not so polite, but you must admit that it goes right to the point."
"I don't like it," said Scrooge.
"I thought you wouldn't. There are a great many people who don't like it. It's a twitting on facts that takes away a good deal of the pleasure of being generous."
"I should say it did," grumbled Scrooge. "It makes you feel mean just when you are most sensitive. Just think how I should have felt if, when I gave Bob Cratchit a dig in the waistcoat and told him that I had raised his salary, he had taken the opportunity to ask for back pay. It would have been most inopportune."
"You owed it to him, didn't you?"
"Yes, I suppose I did, if you choose to put it that way. But Bob wouldn't have put it that way; he wouldn't take such liberties. He took what I gave him; and when I gave him more than he expected, he was all the happier, and so was I. That's what made it all seem so nice and Christmasy. We were not thinking about rights and duties; it was all free grace."
"Now, Scrooge, you are getting at the point. There is no concealing the fact that the Spirit of Democracy makes himself unpleasant sometimes. He breaks up the old pleasant relations existing not only between the Lords and the Commons, but between you and Bob Cratchit. Man is naturally a superstitious creature, and is prone to worship the first thing that comes in his way. When a poor fellow sees a person who is better off than himself, he jumps to the conclusion that he is a better man, and bows down before him, as before a wonder-working Providence. When this Providence smiles upon him, he is glad, and receives the bounty with devout thankfulness. It is what the old theologians used to call 'an uncovenanted mercy.'