Part 2

The man of control and understanding will most assuredly see that his children are trained to have the same qualities. I do not think it can be repeated too often what great harm can be done to children, and, alas! is done both physically and mentally, by allowing them to play games at all times and in any manner they please. It is quite time it was realised that during the period the brain and body are developing, enormous care ought to be taken in the supervision of all bodily exercises, for that their effect is very great on the brain only the ignorant will deny. A child left to exercise itself at games will as a rule play till it is dead beat, thus undoing any good that might come to it from the exercise of its muscles and mind, as long before it has got to this stage of tiredness it will have been hitting wrong, running wrong, and forcing the heart to overwork. Mentally it will be over-excited, the eye will be strained, and the temper out of control. One of the great advantages of games is the teaching of tolerance and self-control, but when a thing is young and tender it does not do to bear too heavily on it. Whereas judicious exercise strengthens a weak thing, heavy work will merely spoil it, and in all probability ruin it for all time. How often one sees a child burst into tears for no obvious reason, become irritable and bad-tempered, and when bedtime comes lie awake for hours.

The cause nearly always being the ignorance of teachers and parents who in their mistaken kindness allow children to play games until they can hardly walk with fatigue. I have often been asked if I advocate games for children; before the ages of ten or eleven years old I certainly do not, and between those ages and sixteen, I think games ought to be most carefully supervised and chosen, and for these reasons. From infancy up to eleven years is a most critical period, the most critical I personally believe in the whole life. When a young child is playing games it is most difficult, in fact almost impossible, to get it to remember several things at once. What I mean is this. A young child at this period is merely learning everything, how to walk, how to run, and how to balance itself correctly. The meaning of perfect poise ought at this age to be installing itself into a child’s mind; in the excitement of the game a child as a rule tries to do too much, with the result that in a short space of time it will be walking badly and heavily, and running in an ugly, uncertain fashion. Then there are very few games which do not draw the body forward, contracting the chest, in consequence of which the breathing is restricted, which naturally renders the blood impure, this leading to a thousand troubles.

Also I do not believe it is good or natural for any young undeveloped thing to be knocked about in the way that happens in a good many games, as the muscles and bones are soft and apt to be distorted easily. Children in a natural rough-and-tumble amongst themselves are no more likely to hurt themselves or each other than puppies or any other young animal at play, but bring in the competition and the unnatural excitement which creeps into games that after all are an artificial amusement, more harm than good is likely to result to children under sixteen years of age. After that age, regarded in their proper proportion, I think they are excellent. I am a firm believer for the young in individual athletic exercises such as running, jumping, throwing the hammer, the discus, swimming and dancing, &c., but under the eye always of an experienced person, as in these exercises it is possible to control and watch the work of each child, to see and teach that each muscle is developed in proper fashion, and by degrees the girl or boy will understand how to control the whole body in a perfect manner, each and every muscle hardening and enlarging to its full development. If this form of physical education is carried out from infancy, at sixteen years old a girl or boy ought to be fit to take up any game they may have a fancy for, reaping the great good that certainly may be got from games and equally avoiding the great harm. BEAUTY To instil a love of beauty into a child’s mind at the commencement of its life is not necessary, as normal children will always hold out their hands and seek to draw towards them all that is beautiful, instinctively turning away and shrinking from the hideous and grotesque. But what is necessary is to foster, protect, and encourage this natural gift, and it is only too evident that this necessity is not only neglected, but that the love of the hideous and grotesque is actually forced into the minds of the young, and the growth of that love helped on in every possible way. There are many who scoff at the belief that the love and true realisation of all beauty ought to be one of the most serious sides in the education of the young, but I think it would behove them to give a few hours’ serious consideration to the subject, before dismissing it with one of the contemptuous laughs that are so freely given by the people who have never taken the trouble to probe very deeply into any new effort or idea that may come their way.

Not that the idea of instilling the love and understanding of beauty into the young is a new one, as in ancient Greece it was a recognised part of all education, but most certainly for many and many a generation it has never been given a thought to, except in isolated cases. I do not think it would be a waste of time if some of our best brains at the head of things would give some serious consideration from a purely common-sense point of view, as to whether it may not stand within the bounds of reason that a very large part of the decadence, vice, and educational failure is not largely due to the entire lack in that education of any effort being made to teach the difference between the ugly and the beautiful. Sin and vice are strangely like unto ugliness and repulsiveness. Equally, cleanliness and culture of mind, body, and spirit are not mean reflectors of the beautiful. It is not difficult to realise that perhaps the neglect of teaching the one has a good deal to do with the existence of the other. That a most drastic change in this direction would be greatly for the benefit of all children I most firmly believe. The richest and the poorest ought to have the same chance of being allowed to keep that wonderful gift, a love of beauty, which is a heritage to all, and not to have it snatched away only to be replaced by that which will cause them to go mentally blind through life, missing all the joy which comes to those who can see with undimmed eyes the wonders that God has placed in the world for all. A love of the obviously beautiful I do not think is of any great help or value, though naturally better than entire blindness: to only admire what, so to speak, shrieks its beauty at you, takes no great understanding or discrimination.

Neither does it take great powers of observation. Stone-blindness would have to be the portion of the man who was not more or less impressed by the Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls. But to see and rejoice over little pools with the light throwing different shadows, a drop of dew hanging on a blade of grass, or a myriad other miniature miracles, which happen around us day and night, takes a power of observation and realisation that lies only in the human being who has had his eye trained to observe and his mind to feel and rejoice in all beauty, whether it be great or small, the largely obvious or that which requires careful looking for. It cannot be denied that a power of observation is of great value in all walks of life; allied to a powerful memory it is of still greater value. Both of these can be taught to a great extent by encouraging the children in their love of the beautiful, which ought to be commenced in the observation and understanding of God’s work in Nature. The millions of beautiful things by which He has surrounded us are generally entirely unnoticed and ignored by the average child, and the wonderful reading of that book of Nature He has laid before us to instruct and help, is indeed a closed book except to the very few. That Nature-study is taught in many schools I am fully aware, but it is taught as a rule in a purely scientific manner, which at once does away with any chance of establishing high ideals by its help. Flowers are pulled to pieces, their growth and formation explained; a drop of water is taken, placed under a microscope, and the germs in it pointed out.

That this is excellent and ought to be known and understood by all, I do not for a moment deny, but its place is secondary; God’s unspoken lesson of beauty in Nature is surely a far greater one than what man has found out about His work, and if this is the case, it seems to me that the first lesson of all that ought to be taught to the young is to look for and find all the beauties expressed in Nature. The colours and the scent of the flowers, the way they group themselves, the fashion in which they turn and seek the sun; to hear the music in the streams composed of a hundred different notes, to lie and watch the many changing lights and colours on running waters, to love the reflections in the pools and to learn to wander in that children’s second land ‘under the water,’ or to watch in breathless wonder the ripple of the soft summer breezes across that dry land-sea, the bit of rough ground with tall grasses of many kinds in full bloom; some almost pigeon-blood in colour, others pure gold. To hear the voices of the wood-people complaining as the wind-god moving through the trees disturbs them, or in his anger storms along on wintry days and nights, calling out in his wrath to the thunder and lightning to come and join him on his noisy way. All idealistic and fanciful, no doubt. But who will deny that the man or woman who can see and hear clearly the voices of Nature, and who has the power to weave happy, harmless fancies, is not a better and more pure-minded person than one who outside of his own profession can neither see nor hear, and if placed apart from that profession is helpless and miserably bored. If unhappiness comes to him in his chosen work, he knows not where to seek help and distraction in a clean and healthy way. It has often been said that Mother Nature is a great healer: she most certainly is when we are given a chance of finding and knowing her, but to the average human being her existence may be known of, but the way of reaching her healing touch is a road carefully guarded, and hidden away out of sight, except to the adventurous few who have strength of mind to struggle on against all difficulties and seek her for themselves. Surely we have no right not to lay open to the best of our abilities this road of happiness and comfort to all children; to shut them out into a materialistic darkness of mind, to crush that love of beauty that God has thought right to instil into every infant mind.

Instead, there are a great many parents and teachers banded together with one object, that being to destroy and stamp out any love of beauty that may peep out from a child’s mind, to uproot it and there plant instead a million growths of rank and ugly thoughts all overshadowed by one great primary planted tree whose name is the love of the ugly and grotesque; from it branches another smaller tree called the power of being able only to see the bad; creeping up this is the worm of blindness to all God’s teaching of Nature. A truly terrible garden indeed, and apt to bear fruit plentifully now and afterwards. I went to one of London’s largest toy-shops the other day and there bought some toys which can be seen in the following photograph. I was told that they were very popular, and it is difficult to believe that sane people can give their children toys of this kind, and not realise in any way the irreparable harm they are doing to their minds, particularly as most small infants will turn shuddering from this ugliness presented to them, but are coaxed into thinking they like these hideous things, until they really do come to take a pleasure in them. So the first great lesson of man’s teaching is learnt, taken into your heart and mind the ugly and repulsive thought and thing that God tells you instinctively to turn from and beware of. A few years of this teaching and God’s voice of instinct grows dim and at last ceases. So we wilfully and of our own accord strike out of our children’s lives one great help and safeguard, instead of aiding them to develop and strengthen it, so as to get all the joy and happiness possible from this great gift. [Illustration: GROTESQUE TOYS] It may be agreed that a love of beauty has brought many a man and woman to sin, and it is true that such a love superficial and untrained, may well do so, But that love, trained and instilled into the human mind along with a deep and reverent understanding, can only be of the greatest help and benefit. In this case the beauty and purity of the soul, and that wondrous temple, the human body, would prove too strong a responsibility to allow the mind to smirch them with sin and vice.

In advocating that children should be taught to see Nature’s works with clear eyes, I do not mean that the many wonderful and beautiful works of Man should be ignored: only with God’s works we can roam amongst them, knowing that what they teach can only be good; with Men’s we must walk warily, picking out for the help of the young only those things that speak of fine and pure intention, and that can start no train of impure thought. Of the greatest influence for good, I put the sculpture of the ancient Greeks foremost: it cannot be studied too much by the young; the more it is loved and understood the more lessons it teaches, a deep and wide sense of extreme quietness and nobility, an understanding and reverence in the truest sense of the word for the beauty of the human body, to mar or ill-treat which was a sin against all that was highest in them. A great patience and an almost superhuman effort and striving towards all that was greatest and best, a reaching out of mind and soul to do honour to Him who made them; what matter if their gods were many, the effort and the reverence were the same, and as such will surely be recorded. Will ever a quarter be understood as to what we owe these ancient masters of art, the help they have been to thousands in their gentle and sincere teaching--only thousands, alas! for of the millions of people reared and taught in our country, it is the few who find out by accident or design the beauties and wonders of their works? It is true that bodies of school-children are escorted at intervals to the British Museum, where they are shown round by some one who is supposed to have a knowledge of the contents. Many a time have I watched the groups with a sad heart, realising how much help and joy they were missing. ‘That is a statue by So-and-so, 400 B.C.,’ on and on from one thing to another, merely a jumble of names and dates; no aid given to those muddled young minds towards their seeing and understanding the beauty they are gazing at; no chance given them to take in the message of purity and quietness that those great works send forth everlastingly to those who have learnt to see and hear. What good is there in knowing a list of famous names if the knowledge ceases at that, and the work that made those names famous is unknown and unrealised? The human being who feels a great humility and thankfulness before all beauty, whether God’s work or Man’s, says a truer and more sincere prayer than he who sits in church and parrot-like repeats long prayers to the God whose work he either knows not, or does his best to destroy.

We are told in the Bible that we are made in the likeness of God. It is wonderful how far we have managed to stray from it, and how determined we are that our children shall have no chance to attain to it. With studious care have we built up year by year a mass of customs and habits that successfully bar us from anything much higher in appearance than the apes some think we are descended from. Sometimes one sees a human face and body that has been strong enough to struggle into maturity unmarked and maimed in spite of Man’s laws, and when we see such a one, it is with a heart full of wrath and pity that we gaze around on the crippled, hideous bodies that might be like unto gods walking, and are merely distorted shapes, breeding further shapes still more distorted, and a vista of horror is opened in the mind, and one seems to hear the cries of millions of unborn children, each generation a little more horrible to look at; with minds a little lower and more sin-filled, and with less and less hope of gaining all that has been lost. More lives to work out their own hell, fewer to live in Heaven. To keep a child’s mind filled with beautiful thoughts, and let their eyes see only beautiful things is, I know well, a difficult matter nowadays, since we have filled the world with hideous things and the minds of those about us with ugly thoughts, but the importance of doing so is, as I have said before, very great. It seems to me as if beautiful ideas and things have a very slight, delicate growth in the brain while it is in its early development, while the ugly and grotesque takes hold with giant roots, and once allow the latter to creep in first, it will oust all after attempts to replace it with the delicate plant of beauty. But keep the mind well stocked with all that is beautiful, and by the time the brain and body are developed, these plants will have attained to such strong and noble proportions that little fear need be felt of the others finding any space to live in and flourish.

There is a great deal of talk nowadays about Eugenics and theories on improving the human race. It might be well worth the experiment to try how the gospel of beauty taught in the deepest and truest sense might succeed where everything else has failed; if we were educated to see ugliness, mental and physical, as sins of the most serious description against our Maker, whether would it not prove a very powerful help towards the uplifting of the human race from the mire in which it at present lies. TEACHERS Having tried to show how important the teaching of the love of beauty is to children, and how important it is during the early development of the brain to keep all that is bad and repulsive away, and only present the good and the beautiful, it may not be out of place to say a little on the subject as to the difficulty of getting teachers who have ever given these ideas a thought, and if asked to carry out one’s wishes on this subject simply regard one as a harmless lunatic. A few are conscientious enough to make efforts, but even these are a hopeless failure, and for this reason, if no thought has been given during the years of training as to the necessity of keeping ugliness, physical and mental, from children, it is almost impossible, unless unusually gifted in self-control, to restrain one’s self a hundred times an hour from doing or saying something ugly before children; also, with the best endeavours in the world, the deplorable fact remains that the great majority do not know what is ugly and what is beautiful. Nine years ago, I started with a light heart and a happy mind to educate my eldest son in the way in which I considered all children ought to be educated: in other words only pure and good thoughts were to be instilled into his mind, and he was never to have the ugly and grotesque forced on his notice. My difficulties began with my first nurse, and they have gone on increasing through a series of nurses and governesses. That they should not understand one’s ideas on the subject was not surprising, as their upbringing made these ideas a closed book to them; but what was so heart-breaking was that after hours of explaining and reasoning, and eventually in despair almost extorting promises that they should endeavour to speak only what was truthful and good, and that they should refrain from ugly tales and dirty ideas, it began to dawn on me that most of these people who take charge of children do not know the difference between what is good and what is bad for children to see and hear, and all the explaining in the world could not teach them: proving that unless the study of these things is undertaken in youth, it is of little use later in life to try and learn it. Some of them really tried, they genuinely wished to please me, but it was hopeless from my point of view; in fact, I was talking a strange tongue to them, and with the best endeavours they could not understand a language they had never learnt.