Household Education. Harriet Martineau
Читать онлайн книгу.
all through creation for ultimate truth. Out of Fear, too, grows our power of Pity. Without fear of pain, we could not enter into the pain of others. Fear must be lost in reverence and love: but reverence and love could never be so powerful as they ought to be, if they were not first vivified by the power of Fear.
What the power of Love is, in all its forms, there is no need to declare to any one who has an eye and a heart. In the form of Pity, how it led Howard to spend his life in loathsome prisons, crowded with yet more loathsome guilt! In other forms, how it sustains the unwearied mother watching through long nights over her wailing infant! How it makes of a father, rough perhaps to all others, a holy and tender guardian of his pure daughters! and how it makes ministering angels of them to him in turn! How we see it, everywhere in the world, making the feeble and otherwise scantily-endowed strong in self-denial, cheerful to endure, fearless to die! A mighty power surely is that which, breathing from the soul of an individual man, can "conquer Death, and triumph over Time."
Then there is in man a force by which he can win and conquer his way through all opposition of circumstance, and the same force in others. This power of Will is the greatest force on earth—the most important to the individual, and the most influential over the whole race. A strong Will turned to evil lets hell loose upon the world. A strong Will wholly occupied with good might do more than we can tell to bring down Heaven into the midst of us. If among all the homes of our land, there be one infant in whom this force is discerned working strongly, and if that infant be under such guardianship as to have its will brought to bear on things that are pure, holy, and lovely, to that being we may look as to a regenerator of his race. He may be anywhere where there are children. Are there any parents who will not look reverently into the awful nature of their children, search into their endowments, and try of every one of them whether it may not be he? If not he, it is certain that every one of them is a being too mysterious, too richly gifted, and too noble in faculties not to be welcomed and cherished as a heaven-sent stranger. How can we too carefully set in order the home in which it is to dwell?
CHAPTER IV.
HOW TO EXPECT.
Whatever method parents may choose for educating a child, they must have some idea in their minds of what they would have him turn out. Even if they set before them the highest aim of all—exercising and training all his powers—still they must have some thoughts and wishes, some hopes and fears, as to what the issue will prove to be.
In all states of society, the generality of parents have wished that their children should turn out such as the opinion of their own time and country should approve. There is a law of opinion in every society as to what people should be. We have seen something of what this opinion was among the Patriarchs of old, the Spartans, the Jews, and others. In our own day, we find wide differences among neighbouring nations, civilised, and so-called, christianised. The French have a greater value for kindness and cheerfulness of temper and manners than the English, and a less value for truth. The Russians have a greater value for social order and obedience, and less for honesty. The Americans have a greater value for activity of mind and pursuits, and less for peace and comfort. In these and all other countries, parents in general will naturally desire that their children should turn out that which is taken for granted to be most valuable.
An ordinary English parent of our time, who had not given much thought to the subject, would wish that his son should turn out as follows. He would wish that the child should be docile and obedient, clever enough to make teaching him an easy matter, and to afford promise of his being a distinguished man; truthful, affectionate, and spirited; that as a man he should be upright and amiable, sufficiently religious to preserve his tranquillity of mind and integrity of conduct: steady in his business and prudent in his marriage, so far as to be prosperous in his affairs.
Now, this looks all very well to a careless eye: but it will not satisfy a thoughtful mind. In all the ages and societies we have spoken of, there have been a few men wiser than the average, who have seen that the human being might and ought to be something better than the law of Opinion required that he should be. There are certainly Hindoos now living and meditating who do not consider that men are so good as they might be, while they think no harm of lying and stealing, and who are sorry for the superstition which makes it an unpardonable crime to hurt a cow. There are men among the Americans who see virtue in repose of mind, and moderation of desires to which the majority of their countrymen are insensible. And so it is in our country. We are all agreed, from end to end of society, that Truthfulness, Integrity, Courage, Purity, Industry, Benevolence, and a spirit of Reverence for sacred things are inexpressibly desirable and excellent. But when it comes to the question of the degree of these good things which it is desirable to attain, we find the difference between the opinion of the many and that of the higher few. A being who had these qualities in the highest degree could not get on in our existing society without coming into conflict with our law of Opinion at almost every step. If he were perfectly truthful, he must say and do things in the course of his business which would make him wondered at and disliked; he might be unable to take an oath, or enter into any sort of vow, or sell his goods prosperously, or keep on good terms with bad neighbours. If he were perfectly honourable and generous, he might find it impossible to trade or labour on the competitive principle, and might thus find himself helpless and despised among a busy and wealth-gathering society. If he were perfectly courageous, he might find himself spurned for cowardice in declining to go to war or fight a duel. If he were perfectly pure, he might find himself rebuked and pitied for avoiding a mercenary marriage, and entering upon one which brings with it no advantage of connexion or money. If the same purity should lead him to see that though the virtue of chastity cannot be overrated, it has, for low purposes, been made so prominent as to interfere with others quite as important: if he should see how thus a large proportion of the girlhood of England is plunged into sin and shame, and then excluded from all justice and mercy; if, seeing this, he is just and merciful to the fallen, it is probable that his own respectability will be impeached, and that some stain of impurity will be upon his name. If he is perfectly industrious, strenuously employing his various faculties upon important objects, he will be called an idler in comparison with those who work in only one narrow track; as an eminent author of our time was accused by the housemaid, who was for ever dusting the house, of "wasting his time a-writing and reading so much." Just so the majority of men who have one sort of work to do accuse him of idleness who has more directions for his industry than they can comprehend. If he is perfectly benevolent, he cannot hope to be considered a prudent, orderly, quiet member of society. He will be either incessantly spreading himself abroad, and spending himself in the service of all about him, or maturing in retirement some plan of rectification which will be troublesome to existing interests. If he be perfectly reverent in soul, looking up to the loftiest subjects of human contemplation with an awe too deep and true to admit any mixture of either levity or superstition, he will probably be called an infidel; or at least, a dangerous person, for not passively accepting the sayings of men instead of searching out the truth by the faithful use of his own powers.
Thus we see how in our own, as in every other society, the law of Opinion as to what men should be agrees in the large, general points of character with the ideas of the wisest, while there are great differences in the practical management of men's lives. The perplexity to many thoughtful parents is what to wish and aim at.
Now, it must never be forgotten that it is a good thing that there must everywhere be such a law of Opinion on this subject, though it necessarily falls below the estimate of the wisest. Some rule and method in the rearing of human beings there must be; and if some are dwarfed under it, many more have a better chance than they would have if it were not a settled matter that truth, courage, benevolence, &c., are good things. Till the constitution and training of the human being are better and more extensively understood than they are, the general rule is something to go by, as the product of a general instinct; and it will work upon nearly all those who are born under it, so as to bring them into something like order. In our country, there is, I suppose, scarcely a den so dark as that its inhabitants really think no harm whatever of lying and stealing, or consider them merits, as is the case in some parts of the