" Where there's movement, where there's action, For the child's eye there's attraction! Where brightness, melody, and measure, Its little heart will throb with pleasure. Oh ! mothers, strive to keep these young souls fresh and clear, That order, truth, and beauty always may be dear ! " PART I. CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD; OR, THE EAELIEST UNFOLDING OF THE CHILD IN THE CEADLE, NURSERY, AND KINDERGARTEN, BY EMMA MARWEDEL. SUPPLEMENTED BY PART II. EXTRACTS FKOM PKOF. W. THKYKK'S PSYCHO-PHYSIOLOGICAI, INVESTIGATIONS ox ins OWN CHILD, CALLED THE SOUL OF THE CHILD. CHICAGO : THE INTERSTATE PUBLISHING COMPANY. BOSTON: 30 FRANKLIN STREET. COPYRIGHT, 1887, BY EMMA MARWEDEL. Electrotyped and Printed by ALFRED MUDOE & Son, 24 FRANKLIN STREET. MISS ELIZABETH P. PEABODY, Introducer of Froebel's System to America, G. STANLEY HALL, Professor of Educational Science at Johns Hopkins University and Harvard College, AND TO THB MEMORY OF MRS. HORACE MAXK, I DEDICATE THIS REStTLT OF MY LIFE-WORK IN THE CAUSE TO WHICH WE ARE ALL DEVOTED. THE AUTHOR. CONTENTS OF PART I. PAGE PREFACE 11 CHAPTER I. DEVELOPMENT OF CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD INTO rrs IDEAL, "SACKED MOTHERHOOD" 17 CHAPTER II. UNION OF BOTH SEXES IN IDEAL PARENTHOOD 36 CHAPTER III. THE CHILD'S RIGHT TO AN EARLY EDUCATIONAL UNFOLDING, BEGINNING AT THE CRADLE, BASED ON A SCIENTIFIC CONCEP- TION OF THE CHILD'S NATURE 78 CHAPTER IV. DEVELOPMENT OF AND THROUGH THE SENSES 101 CHAPTER V. THE CHILD'S EARLIEST CONCEPTION OF COMFORT AND DISCOMFORT DEVELOPING EMOTIONS 135 CHAPTER VI. EMOTIONS LEADING TO POWER OF WILL AND INDIVIDUAL ACTIV- ITIES . 158 CHAPTER VII. THE CHILD'S INDIVIDUAL ACTIVITY DEVELOPING REASONING FACUL- TIES, WITHOUT THE USE OF LANGUAGE 192 8 CONTENTS. PAGE CHAPTER VIII. THE GRADUAL STEPS OF LEARNING TO SPEAK, AND HOW TO USE SPEECH 210 CHAPTER IX. DEVELOPMENT OF SELFHOOD 219 CHAPTER X. THE IDEAL NURSERY . . . 225 PART I. THE CHILD'S EARLIEST UNFOLDING IN THE CRADLE, NURSERY, AND KINDERGARTEN, PRACTICALLY ILLUSTRATED. PREFACE. IN the year 1876, in sending my kindergarten and normal class work from Washington, D. C., to the government exhibit at Philadelphia, I gave utterance to a long-cherished conviction of my own, v that the ball, as representing the sphere, the type of all life, was not made sufficiently prominent in Froebel's development of the child. Ever since that time now a decade this conviction has been active within me, until I have at length wrought it out, with the Tull force of my reason and experience, to a practical result. I do not wish, however, to create the impression that my theory is an entirely new one ; the fact being rather that it extends and systematizes the idea of the curve contained in Froebel's teachings, and which was so clearly suggested by W. Guillaume at the International Educational Congress at Brussels, 1880.* By 1882, my thoughts were so far crystallized that they were ready to be presented in the tangible form of, "A Circular Drawing System, or Childhood's Poetry and * See Heury Barnard's Child Culture. 12 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. Study in the Life and Forms of Nature." (Supplemented with a botany and seventeen classification charts of four feet square, in relief. ) The North American Froebel Institute, meeting at Detroit in 1882, to which able body I disclosed my plan, gave me its unqualified approval, and urged the speedy publication of my work in a series of resolutions, which had, however, been anticipated by the indorse- ment of such prominent educators as Profs. Eugene W. Hilgard, G. Stanley Hall, and Joseph Le Conte, to whom, on account of their intelligent sympathy and their friendly and active co-operation in my plans, I cah scarcely exaggerate the expression of my gratitude. And I cannot omit acknowledging the practical kind- ness of the Chicago Free Kindergarten Association and the Board of the Pioneer Kindergarten Association. The resolutions referred to were as follows : Resolved, 1st. That while we, as professed disciples of Froebel, deprecate all departures from the great fundamental principles laid down by him for the culture and development of the child's nature, yet we hail with delight all discoveries of new applications of liis philosophy, whereby we can better adjust its force to the educational wants of the age, believing that truth has all-sided growth, and an adaptation suited to the changed condition of its subjects ; therefore we welcome with pleasure the application of the curved lines representing all forms, vegetable and animal, as embodied in the system just brought to our notice by Miss Marwedel, of San Francisco, thereby giving larger scope and greater pleasure to the chief PREFACE. 13 thought, while tracing the handiwork of the Master Builder of the universe. Resolved, 2d. That the committee, feeling that an ex- tended knowledge of Miss Marwedel's application of Froebel's method will be of great use to children in the school as well as in the kindergarten, urge the publication of her book, which will also contain directions and suggestions to use these forms, and, if necessary, that the North American Froebel Union be requested to assist Miss Marwedel in any way in its power. Resolved, 3d. That a committee be appointed to confer, if necessary, with publishers of Miss Marwedel's book. In pursuance of the third resolution, a committee on publication was appointed as follows : Miss Elizabeth P. Peabody, Mrs. Horace Mann, J. W. Dickinson, J. M, B. Sill, and W. N. Hailman. But with all this encouragement, supplemented as it was with the logic of my development of the curve, and by W. T. Harris's argument, I was still unsatisfied. I felt that I had not yet touched the right spot in human exist- ence, whereon to base the fair structure of human educa- tion. Thought upon thought drove me back over the steps the human being traces in his ascent to manhood. I reached the home, the mother, the cradle ! Here, at last, in the mother, to whom Froebel dedicated the first use of the curve, I found the place where the corner-stone of any genuine education must be laid. But where to find that stone which should become " the head of the corner " ? A remarkable book the first of its kind in range and 14 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. profundity fell into ray hands at this period. It was the work entitled "The Soul of the Child," by Prof. Wilhelm Preyer, of Jena ; received by me as a providen- tial answer to my question. And this book, which answers, not my question only, but every query as to the when, and the how, and the wherefore, which mothers and all other educators ask concerning the ear- liest physical, mental, and moral needs of the child, seemed to me a boon which should not be willingly with- held for one single hour from those upon whom are laid grave responsibilities from the first day. It has been a difficult and a necessarily imperfect task to extract from a strictly scientific work such portions as would best serve to enlighten and direct the mother in her double function of nurse and educator; but I felt that, however roughly the stone might be hewn, it was nevertheless the needed corner-stone, with- out which the superstructure could not be erected. Another Kindergarten Congress and Exhibit, at Madi- son, Wisconsin, in the summer of 1884, brought my Circular Drawing System again before the public, and showed such renewed interest as gave promise of general adoption. The Chicago Free Kindergarten Association and the Cook County Normal School (under the prin- cipalship of Col. Francis W. Parker) induced me to give explanatory lectures on my Circular System of Drawing, a task which I performed with delight, as I bad become fully assured of the instructive pleasure PREFACE. 15 and creative impetus imparted by this method to chil- dren, even from the age of four years. This completes the history of this volume of my work. The third and fourth parts are but the natural and logical result of the other two, and will follow as soon as possible. Having found the cradle to be the right spot wherein to begin education, a knowledge of the nature of the inhabitant of the cradle was found to be necessary to that beginning. This presupposed a knowledge of the mother and of motherhood, which make the first and second parts of my work. Thus the book in all its parts leads, like a circle, back to its starting-point from the commencement of life in the child to the creation of life in the mother. But the task, as a whole, is one I should not have ventured to undertake, were not the book, after all, The Child's Book, and its creation due to my living with children. It reflects the many sacred hours spent in watching and directing the unfolding of their budding souls, and in loving study of their educational needs. It reflects also a thousand divine sparks of childhood's purity, poetry, righteousness, and reason ; its devotion to duty, and its hitherto so much unappreciated altruism. My inspi- ration in writing this book has been, sympathy with the mother in her immeasurable responsibility ; the con- dition of childhood's rights to justice and happiness; and finally, an abiding faith in the mental and physical evolu- 16 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. tion of the race. So let me hope that it will lead the mother and the educator, as it did me, inward to the depths of the nature of th'e child, and onward with the child. EMMA MARWEDEL. SAN FRANCISCO, May, 1887. P. S. This seems to be the proper place to express my most deeply felt gratitude to those who crowned my work in its embryo with their sympathetic co-opera- tion and faith, in the spirit of true sisterhood. They are my two most unselfish acting revisers, Mrs. M. G. Camp- bell and Mrs. A. I. Toomey, the late Mrs. Horace Mann, Miss E. P. Peabody, Mrs. Robert Fowler, Mrs. A. P. Kelley, Mrs. E. G. Greene, Miss Kate Atkinson, and many others ; not to undervalue the document of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, promising to favor my aim of awakening "CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD." CHAPTER I. DEVELOPMENT OF CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD INTO ITS IDEAL, " SACRED MOTHERHOOD." I. lutroductory. II. Woman as a Mother and first Educator : (a) Among the Ancients; (6) Among her Contemporaries. III. The Growth of Woman's Social Responsibility. I. INTRODUCTORY. OF all that connects man with life, that is, his inner with his outer world, the child stands nearest to him. It reflects the sacred unity of manhood and womanhood no less than the unity of his own manhood and childhood. National customs and festivals, the tributes, joyous or solemn, dedicated to the child at its birth, are in keeping with the poetry and the ideal of the age. They measure the stage of progress of man at each period. The child is man's civilizer, purifier, and redeemer. The child's first mission opens with its helplessness, which is its great silent claim to be saved from the evils under which it is born, and from which it suffers while passing through life. There is the same unspoken appeal, whether the child be placed on the soft pillow of fine linen, in the subdued light and aroma of luxury, or whether it be on the worn- out, old-fashioned quilt on the stormy shores of the sea, or at the foot of the rugged mountain ; this is the appeal for 18 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. a recognition of its rights to a natural development of its higher being. Conditioned by numerous limitations, such as rank, custom, religion, etc., man unconsciously becomes the type of his time. How the portrait of the man who shall typify our race will look on the pages of history we shall not know, for our eyes will be dust when it is drawn; but we know that the characteristic of the nineteenth century is a craving for truth, an i;i- ' sight into the uniformity of organic law, and a growing courage to admit unflinchingly all its conclusions and applications. Man not only puts the almost invisible parasite and worm under the microscope, but he sub- jects himself to the same minute investigation. With the higher education granted of late to woman, she has proved fyer capacity to compete with man for honor and for bread ; but in doing this, she has only entered upon a general course of instruction which makes no pro- vision for her special and natural vocation. For this vocation her training should embrace anthropology, physi- ology, and hygiene, psychology, pedagogics, history of law, and ethics, and finally a thorough course of Froebel's system, theoretically and practically. Some one, per- haps, will say this is too much science and elaboration for the simple function of motherhood. We ask, Is motherhood simpler than eating and drink- ing and breathing? The preparation of our food is brought under the scientific analysis of the laboratory. The cutting and fitting of our garments are subordi- INTRODUCTORY. 19 nated to the principles of physiology. Ventilation, sleep, recreation, are presided over by science. Agri- culture, forestry, fish culture, stock breeding, all are carried on upon scientific principles. Beginning with comparative studies of the life, habits, and heredity in the improvement of plants and animals : increasing knowl- edge of the laws of matter and mind as evinced in the complex operations of labor in an ant-hill ; of intelligent obedience and co-operation in a bee-hive ; of adaptation of means to ends in the beaver, the dog, tho elephant, all these form the ascending steps in the knowledge which is auxiliary to the anthropological science of man, and to right methods in human education. Are, then, the pre-natal formation of man, his first physical, mental, and moral unfolding, the harmony between his inner nature and the outer world, the integrity of his char- acter, the education of his will, the early conception of the individual and social relation as a part of the whole, less valuable than cooking and breathing accord- ing to chemico-vital laws? Is the truth we seek for man the only truth exempt from scientific requirements ? Is woman's moral and physical relation to her child not to be adjusted by the same laws which control the uni- verse, from the star to the atom? Love will not let itself be harnessed in a yoke with Science, but Affection and Duty are willing to sit at its feet and learn, and woman must reach toward the ideal through the prac- tical. She must learn to glory in her real relations to 20 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. a real world, rather than in those that have existed for her in sentimental ignorance, poetry, and chivalry. The poetry of all ages has deified the wife and mother, making her the sole spring of all life and earthly happi- ness, the source of man's strongest and purest emotion and thought ; and the union of the mother and child has been crystallized into the symbol of all that is divinest in human nature. So nourished, it is little wonder if the young girl concludes that this ideal love will solve every problem into which her relation to life brings her. Crowned by a world which lavishes in blind enthusiasm its tribute to the celestial beauty of veiled hope and devo- tion, the loving bride lifts every flower thrown in her path, accepts every wish that reaches her listening ear, every whisper of friendship, every pressure of the hand, as a token for telling the endless days of happiness and peace this love will bring her, with little return on her part save the instinctive feeling that she possesses a love which her dreams have idealized. But this is not the relation we seek for woman, this is not the front which the nineteenth century imperiously commands woman to turn to the world. Once she was called on only to be pure, to be good, to neutralize evil without knowing it, to bless man without understanding him. We assert that a negative purity is not communicable, that a passive goodness will inspire no one, and that in order to bless man she must know him. But she must also know her- self; she must understand her God-ordained position INTRODUCTORY. 21 among the working forces of nature ; she must under- stand the great and holy message which she and she alone can deliver to the world. She can no longer shut her eyes without guilt. If she has been mistaught hitherto, she has now the means of teaching herself aright, and a solemn weight of responsibility will rest on her hence- forth if she does not fit herself for the demand on her intelligence, her energy, her proper conception of the world's progress and needs. But she must not think to do the highest work alone ; it is as she joins herself to man in the interchange of virtues and in a reciprocity of strength that she will find herself most womanly, most motherly, most divine. We must rise above the old defining of " man's sphere, and woman's sphere," seeing in each only a hemisphere ; in man and woman conjoined, the perfect sphere. The most prejudiced judgment must admit that the highest individual types of mankind are found where the best qualities of both sexes are united in one per- son, be it man or woman. President Warren, of the Boston University, in recommending co-education, says : "If the aim be to narrow a human being to one small function, isolation will be found helpful. If the aim be semi-development of a human being, semi-isolation is by all means desirable. On the other hand, harmonious all- sided development demands harmonious influences from every side. Masculine influence alone, feminine influ- ence alone, can never produce the broadest and com- 22 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. pletest human culture. Only in the full human society of men and women can a normal development of char- acter go forward. Where mental and moral improve- ment is the earnest common purpose, the refining and ennobling influence of each sex upon the other in asso- ciation can hardly be over-estimated. It is an elevating and molding force, whose potency and value have but just begun to be recognized in the higher education." And this is the force which, proceeding in orderly evo- lution, is to redeem us from our present one-sideness, narrowness, and ignorance. IL WOMAN AS A MOTHER AND FIRST EDUCATOR, AMONG THE ANCIENTS AND AMONG HER CONTEMPORARIES. Considering the problems of civilization, nothing seems to stand more aloof from discussion than the idea of motherhood. Most savages revere the physical union existing between mother and child, while our civiliza- tion has generally subjected this natural oneness to un- natural social regulation. " Motherhood " is the ideal relation, remaining forever unchanged. I regret not to be able, at present, to devote a part of this book to the historic anthropological development of conscious motherhood, but I hope before long to present a communication, proving that the primitive motherly emotions, by creating comfort, become the source of ethical civilization. WOMAN AS A MOTHER. 23 Among the Xicobarosians, a tribe very far from gen- eral civilization, while the wife is enceinte, a devoted care is lavished on her and even on her husband, both being freed from labor. They enjoy a life of holidays among their relations. Where they appear they bring pleasure in the simplest hut. The best pig is slaugh- tered to be eaten, and the woman requested to sow some seeds from which especial fertility is expected. The Somalis, a negro tribe on the shore of the Nile, ex- empt a pregnant woman from all labor, bringing burnt offerings to the gods for her well-being, and that of the child. The Carthaginians and Pannonians pay their highest respects and care to the coming mother, and the bodily strength and beauty of the Teutons must be attributed to the great estimation of the Sf)ecial rights granted to women at the period of the pre-natal life of the child. The superstition surrounding, at this period, mother and child evolved through all ages the most singular habits. This superstition hangs still and not seldom as a heavy cloud over our heads, and nothing can destroy it but a higher insight into motherhood. Mother's love was and is predestined to kindle the li(/h(x of life. Why, then, has not the mother of the present age, with this recognized power, reached the self-perfec- tion she feels herself entitled to? Let us try to find the reason for this anomaly. Xo human mother is able to ignore the similarity existing between herself and the animal mother. The 24 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. heroic self-abnegation and ingenious, loving care in ani- mals stand in some degree parallel to human love and human social organization. The power of leadership and protection to weaker ones, among the wandering birds and the elephants, not less among the horses, cattle, and buffaloes ; their selection of two of the strongest ani- mals on each side to fight for their disputed rights, in- stead of as with men, who fight tribe against tribe ; the remarkable patriarchal system among the walruses ; the co-operative actions of apes, of beavers, bees, and ants, offer vast material for comparison ; but these are exclu- sively for their own kind, and iso far as we are convinced, without any distinct design to connect by reason, not -by instinct, the past with the future, forming the ground of logical conclusion for further actions. And here we find the solution of the anomalies that prevented the growth of conscious motherhood. It rested on the error of accepting this instinctive power of motherhood as com- plete and sufficient on the error of narrowing her power to her own kind (family exclusion), and of preventing her from connecting by reason, not by instinct, the pres- ent with the future, for free individual conclusion and logical action ; condemning her instead to dependence and ignorance of herself and her duties. No woman in this great Republic is unaware of the changes concerning her own sex in the latter part of this century, and the question arises, Is this change the product of modern or the reflex of ancient civilization? WOMAN AS A MOTHER. 25 Woman's condition among the Hebrews, as a familiar sub- ject through the Bible, has, in many respects, remained unchanged till to-day. The mother is highly honored in her special functions, and the uniformity of strictly kept family love and duties supports a moral condition Avhich bears its recognized fruits. The historic record left us by the Egyptians and the Greeks widens in the same degree as nature and art freed the woman from her seclusion from the outer life to the high and vivid pul- sation of free individual creative forces. This is clearly demonstrated by their mythological figures and attributes, their festivals and literature. The conception of a humanistic individual statesman- ship placed woman's value, as the bearer and raiser of the coming citizen, not only on physical but on intellec- tual equality with man, for the needed perfection of soul and body. It is true, so far as we know, the boy remained no longer than seven years among the Greeks and Egyptians under the educational guidance of the mother, while the girl remained with her, in the inner part of the house, carefully restricted, though she was sent to school, the gymnasium, and lectures. But considering the care ex- tended to the boy, placed under the constant educational supervision of the so-called pedagogue, and later watched over by the best men chosen for this act of honor and trust, to be trained for the duties and hardships of life, we can but admit that it was not so much the mistrust in 26 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. woman's power, but the aim to prepare the boy, from the outset, practically and morally for life, which separated him from the home. This is shown by not allowing the young boy to go on the market, preventing his early contact with the debasing phases of life. A work of late by Jos. Cal Poestian, of Vienna, in German}' , aims to bring the female Greek philosophers of whom he mentions more than one hundred by name and character into an organic connection with the history of Greek philosophy and science, from which we give the following short abstract, as the author desires distinctly that his work might not be limited to his scientific broth- erhood, but fall also into the hands of women, devoting a special chapter to the "courtesans." According to his statement, the position of women differed greatly in Greece. The women of the Dorians participated with men in literature, art, science, and statesmanship ; for example, the poetess heroine Telesilla, by placing herself at the head of the Argioie, gained a victory over the in- vading enemies. The author refers to one hundred and forty-six distinguished women, six of them being paint- ers. Many women were able to fill and they filled the chairs of philosophy held by their husbands, brothers, and fathers. The moral, elevating intercourse with the wise Pythagoras, his faith in woman's mental powers, are illustrated by the actions and writings of his wife, the philosopher Theane, by an educational letter showing the strong demand for developing early self- WOMAN AS A .MOTHER. 27 control, about 500 or 450 B. C., and reads as fol- lows : She was distinguished for her beauty, a devotional love to her husband, and her oratorical and literary powers. She says : '' I fear you are spoiling your child by caring too sentimentally for it. Your intention is to be a good mother ; but, my dear friend, the first duty of a good mother is not so much to give passing happy feel- ings, as to lead the child to what lays the foundation for a constant happiness by virtue, moderating and con- quering, from the beginning, ' sensuous desires.' There- fore, be careful that your love and devotion does not play the role of a flatterer or destroyer, instead of a builder of its happiness through character. Children, from first babyhood allowed unrestricted sensuous enjoyments, will become unable to resist the temptation of lower pleasures, so great in after-life. Your duty is to educate your children by such means that their natural gifts are not turned in the wrong direction, which will happen when the desire for empty pleasure gains the upper hand in their souls and bodies ; becoming accustomed to enjoy only pleasant sensations, a condition which leads to an excessive effeminacy of the soul and body, in opposition to moral etlbrts and labor. Consequently, nothing is more important than to create right desires as well as overcome what children dislike, even when, for the mo- ment, they may not see the reason, and their feelings seem wounded ; for no better remedy exists to free them 28 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. from the slavery of their own passions of voluptuousness and aversion than being aroused to work, creating in them desire and esteem for all that is beautiful and noble. Therefore, pray reform the education of your children. Expose them rather to hunger and thirst, heat and cold, than leave them without habits of self-denial, self- restraint, and patience. The power of endurance of labor and submission to discomfort are for young human beings what a solution of alum is for cloth to be dyed purple, the more it has been penetrated, the deeper enters the color of virtue. Any education which is luxurious and effeminate can produce no other fruit than frivolity and insolence, and the very opposite of every quality by which a human being becomes useful to himself and others." " If you nourish your children too richly and too lav- ishly, constantly thinking how to amuse them, leaving them without restraint to continued frolics, allowing them to say everything they desire, and to do everything they like, fearing it might diminish their momentary happiness, permit me to say, you do wrong. Allow me also to refer to the danger of an extreme bodily care. Compare the rearing of poor children with those of rich families, and judge for yourself. What will become of a boy who, when asked what to eat, only wants the best, and always wants his own will ; when grown up, he naturally falls a victim to his own appe- tites and those of others." The earnest consideration and WOMAN AS A MOTHER. 29 forethought in the letter of Theane, the Greek mother, brings her in full accord with the educational necessities and ethical views of the present, in spite of a lapse of almost twenty-four hundred years. Thus the philosophic and ethical culture and wisdom of her time, the power of debating and competing in wise and witt} r words and thoughts, were not the result of year-long book learn- ing, reading and writing was little taught, but of free and constantly exercised nationally recognized ora- torical gifts and oral discussions. In the same degree her husband, Pythagoras, influenced his disciples by moral inspiration for the highest virtues of man, so Theane, though co-education existed, directs special attention to woman's educational, social, and domestic duties. For example, "on the right direction of ser- vants and others." The need of such unity in work with the husband, aiming to bind men and women to an equal devotion to virtue, still exists, finding its re- vival of late in the "White Cross." The Greeks developed their highest culture of body and mind, of art and science, almost entirely orally. So did Theane, and in doing so, she used a gift which belonged through all ages to woman as a special tal- ent. It comprises one of the highest privileges of motherhood ; standing out forever in " mother's say- ing." In this sense, the power of woman became the oracle of man, and its leaders in justice and wisdom. Did bhe reach above her strength, or did she full a 30 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. sacrifice to her earthly ideal? But it was her own voice, heard through the mouth of the oracle, which subjected mankind to a blind submission that brought man and foremost the woman finally under the fatal ban which keeps her to this hour. The oracles de- manded ''submission without reason." The truth-seek- ing period of Greek creative philosophy gave place to submission to authorities. It brought ruin to the most lofty period of man's existence, smothering and blackening forever the transparent action of a crea- tive, co-operative equality of the two sexes. Can we regain it? We will regain it by enlightened mother- hood. We know of the Dark Ages, and its effect on woman, not less the religious fanaticism and its hate- ful cruelty; we know of the subsequent frivolity and its twin brother, the cynicism of the Middle Ages, till the morning light of the Renaissance played in our own glass-stained windows. And we ask, What principles of independent re- sponsibility, what conscious development of thought, what higher aims, were pointed out to the mind of woman, to nourish her inborn gifts and her devo- tional love to the family? On the other hand, how readily did woman answer to a special heroic act, to a special call on her talents, her enthusiasm for the right and beautiful ; but her passiveness and lethargy being fostered, woman, as a whole, has not yet regained the position she kept among the ancients, her growth burst- WOMAN AS A MOTHER. 31 ing in flowers in individual, not national, perfection. And history is full of these single instances of woman's greatness. But they were exceptions ; woman's exist- ence, the origin of authority and fashion, was used neither CREATIVELY nor CO-OPERATIVELY. "The house and the family" and "the world and mankind" became two great retarding divisions. Even more, it was de- clared that woman belongs to the house, man to the world. What then of the child, the product of both? Thoughts, experience, and the inspiration of woman began to search for truth. Awakened from her winter sleep of blind submission to the past , she had to DEFEND herself for this AWAKEN- ING. Kequestcd to lie down again to sleep for her own and her children's sake, she became aroused to look at the world and her relations to a world in which she was ordained to bring life and continuity through the child she was bearing. For the sake of this child she read the history of the past ; and turning her eyes from the pres- ent to the future, she began to feel the whole weight of being a responsible woman and mother. She found that, of all knowledge dealt out to woman, the scientific knowledge of herself, her motherly function and her moth- erlij duties, have up to to-day been WITHHELD. Accom- plished, learned, and led into the profoundest studies, inspired by art, but without any methodical preparation or instruction for the most difficult and important office, that of motherhood, save some advices of superior 32 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. mothers, and perhaps superficial insight into the phys- iological construction of herself, she enters the home of her coming child. She and the world learned, that to be a teacher needed years of training and prepara- tion ; but to be a MOTHER AND a teacher in ONE, at the most important period of child's life, was left to chance. "What is needed to improve the education of our children?" asked Napoleon. "Mothers," was the reply. To which he answered, "That will. comprise an educa- tional system by itself." (" U 'Education des meres de families," by Martin, is a book on this subject.) Convinced of the irrepressible influence of women, the distinguished Sheridan planned a National Woman's Education, to be applied to all women of England. In presenting his plan to the queen, asking her to give it her patronage, he said: "It is woman who governs man ; it therefore becomes our duty to perfect them as much as possible by education. The wisdom of man depends on the mental culture of woman. It is woman who dictates the laws of nature to man." This idea of Sheridan was grand, and if carried out, who knows what England might have been at present? Kant, the philosopher, referred all his powers to the first influ- ence of his mother. HI. WOMAN'S SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY. We refer to some different conditions in the history of woman, and we refer once more to the time when " the WOMAN'S SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY. 33 castle was her home"; when she wove and spun, cut, embroidered and dyed, the costly garments, with her maid, for the sovereigns of the land ; when the humble knight drew up the iron drawbridge which hung between her and the outer world, who blew the bugle-horn at sight of her, bridled the horse to prevent her tender feet from touching the roughness of the mother earth and its soil, with its hard labor. The castles are gone, and the woman of to-day has to face the world as it is, and to walk the common street of life with a thousand others. What does she meet? Is it that youthful frankness and joy which knows no limits in its unconscious happy contentment with the wayside treasures of life? or does she meet with a conscious earnestness for the matured principles of truth and its higher gifts, free to all ? The first she meets is the whisper : Do not trust this world ; its glittering folds hide but pain and grief and dirt. Do not try to touch these veiling cur- tains. You cannot keep clean yourself if touching them. The world is not better fitted for you than one thousand years ago for your sister in the castle. Do not walk the common street of life; return to. your home, and be silent. Who counts the million of women who pressed their folded hands closely over their burning hearts and eyes, in conflict with their inmost religious devotion and their unwanted love for all men, sent home to be silent? Who counts the million of noble women, whose endless love on account of narrowness, idleness, and emptiness 34 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. of the heart turned to vanity and selfishness? This time still hangs over us, but thanks to ourselves and social necessity, the spirit of the latter part of the nine- teenth century begins to struggle against the ban of the past. The woman of the nineteenth century begins to acknowledge the evolutional forces retained by her passivity which have called her so suddenly to the front. She recognizes herself as the missing link, with- out which no sound fruit can ripen on the tree of life in human society. She recognizes herself as the missing element of affectionate motherly insight and care in the great household of man, in his laws and regulations, and in the most painfully neglected, lawful protection of her young. She recognizes herself in her moral responsi- bility, equally great, to the state, the family, and the school. The truth thereby revealed to her is based on the following points : 1. That woman, in its fullest meaning, is the other half of humanity. 2. That as such, she is an essential part in the well- being of the whole. 3. That her creative power lies in moral reforms. 4. That to accomplish this, science has to be made her ally. 5. That practical and theoretical preparation is ne- cessary for this work. WOMAN'S SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY. 35 On this basis, she demands the necessary knowledge of the relation of body and mind, and their reciprocal influences on heredity, their relation to health, crime, and their sequences, morality and happiness. In order to save man, she has to study man. Women have concentrated their efforts to action in common. Their organization may not yet be com- pleted, nor is the whole ground covered with what lies before them, but the germ is sound. It is bedded in woman's moral strength in union. This germ will grow. Not as a work belonging to one nation, but to all nations. Not one class, but all classes. Not one sex, but both sexes. No one can anticipate the fullness of the power of such an organized union in work finding its point of culmination in the higher conception of an ideal mother- hood toward a sacred parenthood. Its plea is urgent, as its platform broad. It will be called out by the clear voice of the thinking and the loving woman for the soul of her child. It is from the home and for the home where she was kept silent that her voice will rise in divine inspiration. It is the truth for mankind that she demands where it is most needed, namely, in the true understanding of its nature. It is her own fitness which she demands for the highest, the most powerful religious mission trusted to the hands of mankind, her fitness for the creation and unfolding of her child. CHAPTER II. UNION OF BOTH SEXES IN IDEAL PARENTHOOD. I. Child's Creation before Birth. II. The Increase of Crime, Insanity, Idiocy, and Suicide among Children. III. What is told by Statistics. IV. Unity in Parenthood the Nucleus of the Moral and Physical Perfection of Man. I. CHILD'S CREATION BEFORE BIRTH. * SCIENCE, busying itself always more or less intelli- gently about man as an object of study, has in these last days seemed to find the right key wherewith to unlock both the outer and inner courts of his nature. It has tried all keys, it has fumbled at all the locks of his many-doored and complex organism, and in deciding at last that the physiological key was the real pass-key to all the doors, science has but planted its feet in the " long untrodden way " used two thousand years ago by the Greeks, who, by means of object les- sons on a grand scale, in the shape of art products in every form, the drama, pictures, statuary, architecture, oratory, gymnastics, in a word, every activity that could develop the human being, and every sort of knowledge that could reach him through perception, *This paragraph was kindly furnished by ray dear friend and reviser, Mrs. M. G C. CHILD'S CREATION BEFORE BIRTH. 37 managed to bring into being the most symmetrical race the world has ever seen. Why have we as a rule pro- duced nothing like it since? Why have we had either disproportioned prodigies, or half-endowed organisms, or intellectual dwarfs in giant bodies, or giant intellects in inefficient bodies, or a varied imbecility and terrify- ing insanity? Dr. Seguin says (and his authority none will dispute), it is chiefly because women, those sacred living cradles in which the human babe is rocked for nine all-important months, in which atom is placed on atom of that wonderful structure which is to become the dwelling of an immortal selfhood, women are not rightly related either to their privileges or their duty. Their education has not kept pace with that recognition of their value and peerhood with man which is gradually taking place. Seguiu says : " Their education is a jumble of that which has made all the male mutilitus we have known. Their hygiene and habits have disqualified them for motherly functions ; their education has not taught them one iota of woman- hood. How can a woman conceive and nurture, with a living enthusiasm, a child which has no room to grow, which she has no strength to carry, no substance to feed, no idea how it is to be handled, cared for, etc. ? " Does anybody suppose the Greek mother, to whom we must refer again before quoting further from Dr. Se- guiu's invaluable monograph, does any one imagine the 38 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. Greek mother could have given birth to those men of incarnate suppleness and grace, obedient muscle and balanced mind, all the organs acting with such functional harmony that melancholy and suicide were all but un- known among them, if tho Greek mother had placed an unyielding wall of whalebone and steel around those parts where nature put a wall of the utmost flexibility and adaptation to the changing needs of its contents? Those beautiful waists, whose models have come down to us through the ancient marbles, appeal in vain to the silly, or imitative, or wilful women of to-day, who, with- out knowing the origin of the fashion, have followed the lead of fashion-setting courtesans. And how can we expect a noble race to be born of women who sacrifice first of all that attribute in which God lets them be most like Him, power to create human beings, or in the word most used, their procreative power? Seguin, after repeating, "The unborn child has no place to grow in peace," goes on to speak of the fact that idiots and feeble-minded children are much more numerous than formerly ; and as this is a condition nearly always developed before birth, he asks, " What has hap- pened to women, that, simultaneous with more freedom and more intelligence, they should breed a feebler progeny?" This question he answers with sad conviction, by declar- ing that women are, on the one hand, overburdened, are exhausted by their heroic efforts to aid their husbands (who have themselves, in these days of artificial wants, CHILD'S CREATION BEFORE BIRTH. 39 undertaken more than they can do), that they have anti- physiological educations, and lead uneasy, feverish lives, owing partly again to their sympathy with their husband's speculations. "Women," he says, "who would, if se- cure in their homes, willingly raise a brood of loving creatures, now pray earnestly to God to send them no children to fear for." They suffer more than their hus- bands, because, after suffering with them, in head and heart, they add to this the anguish of their wombs, and this anguish it is which chills and dwarfs its fruit, when it does not render the womb itself entirely barren. On the other hand, the inactive, useless, unreal lives of women of the class of idlers leave motherhood aside as a function incompatible with social gayeties, and the acci- dental and unwelcome products of such wombs are all unwarmed and uncheered by love and hope and tender emotions. The remedy lies in a return to physiological conditions, in a recognition of the mothers power to shape and mold her child, not physically only, but mentally and morally, before it is born. The natural laws which determine such results are no more immutable in the breeding of a race-horse, an apple, or a rose, than they are in the production of a human being. It is true, we are not yet able, in the case of the human being, so to ally ourselves with those laws as to make it possible to predict the result with such cer- tainty as we may in the lower organic kingdoms. This 40 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. is because of the immense complexity of the stream of human heredity, and the sensitive condition of the pregnant mother who is subject to the thousand vary- ing impressions of her daily life. One fact stands out clear, the flood of light that is to-day poured on the working of natural laws, and our power to modify natural processes, increase our responsibility in a fearful degree. When a mother is taught that the sensitive fluid, in which her unborn child is suspended, can and does con- vey to it every shock it receives by her ; when she knows not only that her anger or her fright may cause the ner- vous system of the forming babe almost to dissolve, and turn it into an idiot or an epileptic, but that, on the other hand, she may decide his morality before he is born, will she not tremble in her eagerness to know how she must act in order that her child shall be brought into the world healthy, and with right disposition of soul, and balanced aptitudes of intellect ? Unfortunately, the problem of how to give each child that sacredest birthright, the right to be well born, the world is not yet ready to solve in the only way in which it can be truly solved, the way in which it must be finally solved, viz., by right marriage ; and so, for the present, we who wish to aid mothers must content ourselves with offering such help as will be accepted. And the following are some of the facts and principles which it will be helpful for them to know and to ponder, and faithfully to act upon. First of all, then, there is a duty we owe our children, even before their CHILD'S CREATION BEFORE BIRTH. 41 conception ; it is, that we should desire them, that we should preconceive with love and longing the immortal being whom we are to aid in fashioning for a life on this planet. Then, from the instant that a mother knows herself pregnant, she should begin the education of her unborn infant. If, as every one believes, a mother may mark the child in her womb by some hideous deformity, by a sudden impression on her senses, so, conversely, may she mold it to symmetry and beauty of body and soul through con- stantly recurring sensations of an exalted kind. " In Vienna, when an heir to the throne was expected, the Empress was given in charge to a special directress, who would regulate all her actions and surroundings, in view of commencing the education of the contingent monarch, as early as the first evolution of the yolk-substance of the human egg." Here there is recognition of pre-natal edu- cation because it is the heir of the throne, and the child of an Empress. Has not every unborn human being a right to pre-natal education, being the "heir of all the ages," and the child of God? Alluding to the ancient Israelitish custom of permitting the newly married to live one happy year free from labor and necessities, Seguin says : "This was economy (to the state) , since it cost less than the life- long support of infirm children born of ill-developed and careworn young women, who themselves hardly ever recover from the simultaneous drain on their constitutions of pregnancy, overwork, and moral distress." And he 42 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. goes on to say : "No wonder, on the contrary, that from the martyrs of the flat and depressing dramas silently enacted in our days for a miserable livelihood, are born children not only idiotic and epileptic, but insane ; . . . insane before their brains could have been deranged by their own exertions ; insane, likely, by a reflex action of the nervous exhaustion of their mother." On the other hand, Seguin, as well as other earnest writers, deplores an indolent, purposeless life for the pregnant woman. He speaks of the inferior and defi- cient children born of w the endless siestas and satieties of the rich." If the child is to have good muscles, the mother must use her muscles ; not to the point of fatigue, for that is bad for every one, but she must exercise them, for it is those organs and faculties which the pregnant mother actively uses that are most apt to be in fullest function in her offspring. Over and over again it has been proved, and but for fear of making this chapter too long, cases could be cited to show how, by the careful and conscientious use of her own powers, with direct reference to the molding of her child, a mother has pro- duced the effect she most desired. Not by silly gazing at pictures, or by fitful wishes that her forming offspring should be thus and so, can the breeding mother hope to effect the object ; but by being herself what she wishes her child to be, and that earnestly, steadily, patiently. Above all things, self-control, being one of the most price- less possessions of humanity, is the characteristic I would CHILD'S CREATION BEFORE BIRTH. 43 entreat both the gestative and the nursing mother to cul- tivate. Instances could be multiplied where mothers, by giving way to ungoverned anger, have so poisoned their milk that the nursing babes were killed by it. One case that I recall was of a young woman, whose first babe had died from that cause ; and who, knowing that fact, still persisted in giving the breast to a second child on one occasion when she had been passionately angered ; and when that child also died, the wretched woman became a prey to conscience, and died herself in una- vailing remorse. How often must one combat the superstition that, unless a mother is gratified in every whim during her gestation, her child will be marked? Let every preg- nant woman receive the tenderest care, yes, let her harmless fancies be indulged; but when she "longs" for anything pernicious, teach her that there are two sufficient reasons for denying herself: first, because the thing itself will hurt her or her offspring, or both ; second, because her conquest of herself will strengthen the power of conquest in the child. When one remembers how the babe within the womb depends, not only for every atom of its body, but for every tendency and disposition of its spirit, on the flow of nerve-force from its mother's brain and the steady current of blood from her heart; that her every thought, and especially her every desire, influences it ; that even her dreams may fashion somewhat its limbs, or give 44 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. color and direction to its impulses, then one begins to realize how tremendous is that responsibility that God has laid on the mothers of the human race, and how great, also, is the responsibility of those who should ade- quately teach them their relation to their duties. U. INCREASE OF CRIME. The fact that eminent physicians have of late become earnest promoters and writers on a necessary reform in education, must be regarded as a proof of the growing anthropological conception of the human being. Among these writings we note the educational works of Dr. E. Seguin in America, Dr. Maudsley in England, Dr. Dalie in France, and of Prof. Wilhelm Preyer in Ger- many, and others. They recognize in the increasing crime, idiocy, insanity, suicide, intemperance, and pov- erty a slowly increasing deterioration of the race. The foregoing views on heredity and kindred subjects prove that a priori "man is not born aright." This cannot sur- prise us. With the prevailing uncertainty as to the desired normal standard of his body, his intellect, and his morals, man enters a world which receives him without convictions as to what he ought or ought not to be. Our claims on freedom for all, and equal rights, are neither strong enough nor sufficiently clear to constitute and carry out a matured idea of how man should be educated ; that is, we neither know of a true art how to live, nor do we know how to prepare INCREASE OF CH1.ME. 45 others for living. The ancients educated every man according to his caste, using his individual powers as a part of the whole. He fell or rose in and with his pro- fession. This condition passed away, with the exception of the rigid preparation given in our day for military duty in Germany. Apart from this, there is no stability in opinion, custom, or law, save the passing through a cer- tain curriculum of intellectual training which ignores manifestly and fully the obligation of an all-sided prep- aration for life. " Let him fight his own way," " Let him be strong enough to avoid wrong," are all the watch- words to the young, inexperienced human being, where- with to conquer the thousand daily temptations, to control passions of whose existence he was till then wholly unaware. These conditions are the common ones. Young people, in most cases, are called upon to act responsibly for themselves, as free as the air they breathe, yet without sufficient protection. To succeed "mate- rially " in life is the aim of practical training, as we call it. This is the goal to be reached. The higher and more conspicuous this is, the more valued is the success. How to reach this goal is the pointed motor of all actions. No time or inclination is left for broadness of aim, of fullness, of conception of being happy by making others happy ; at least, not as a rule. All that lies to the right or left, above or below this aim, is of little consequence. Nothing remains constant but SELF! self! The home, not always demonstrating unity in will and 46 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. higher aspiration, develops not seldom little faith in authority of either father or mother. The child neither seeks nor gets the needed watchful assistance from the close union of parenthood ; and if this is not reached, the home will never be his sole resting-place, though by higher laws it is the ordained place for the recuperation of his better self. The child's whole nervous system from his first remembrance is too much stirred up by the discords, the struggles even, of the battle of life. These he has not seldom found in the heart of his own home. He has hourly become aware, instinctively and intrinsically, of the conflict between the two sexes. Fried. Froebel, before he was six years old, suffered so deeply from the discordant life between his father (a clergyman) and his father's wife, that he asked his older brother " why God did n't make all men or all women, if they could not live without quarreling." Which question his brother answered by leading him to a hazel shrub, calling his attention to the difference between the male and female flower in the necessity for reproduction, a fact which directed thus early the young child's mind to the prob- lems and beauties of nature. On a recent occasion, Archdeacon Farrar, of Westminster Abbey, London, to whom we referred as regards the necessity of the culture of emotions, said of Persian education : " We boast of our educational ideal. Is it nearly as high in some essentials as that of some heathen nations long centuries before Christ? The ancient Persians were worshipers of fire INCREASE OF CRIME. 47 and of the sun ; most of their children would have been probably unable to pass the most elementary examina- tion, but assuredly the Persian ideal might be worthy of our study. At the age of fourteen, the age when we turn our children adrift from school and do nothing more for them, the Persians gave their young nobles the four best masters whom they could find, to teach their boys wisdom, justice, temperance, and courage, wisdom, in- cluding worship ; justice, including the duty of unswerv- ing truthfulness through life ; temperance, including mastery over sensual temptations ; courage, including a free mind opposed to all things coupled with guilt." Let us consider frankly the course pursued toward the children of the nineteenth century. Science, the absolute power of the age, tells us by clearly proved facts that our children are not born as well as they should be ; that they have to encounter more compli- cated moral-tempting and moral-destroying elements than life has ever before presented to obstruct the physi- cal, mental, and moral condition of man. The effect of these evils is manifest in the degener- acy of our youth. History describes education in past ages as inculcating, with the exception of some special periods, extreme simplicity, frugality, and the utmost moral restraint by means of family ties. It tells of guilds of apprentices bound to the family of the master in the exercise of patience, obedience, and respect ; of the motherly influence of the master's wife, and sometimes of 48 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. the pure, long wooing of the master's lovely daughter ; this simple, pure love shielding the young man for seven long years against temptation, while traveling from place to place, practicing his trade for a living, and studying man and the world ; his heart light as his feet, assured that in every place, however small it might be, he would receive a fatherly and motherly welcome, and be cared for by the officially appointed (Herberg.svater) village innkeeper and his loving wife, till at the end of his journeying, after having finished his "masterpiece," his loving bride would meet him In a happy home, for which he had labored patiently, dili- gently, and honestly, true to his first vow. We know of the Greeks, and their careful watch over their youth. Their best men were kept with them night and day, affording them their highest influence and example. Their boys and youth were not allowed to go to the public markets, in order to protect them from low influences. We know of the Spartan fathers, who took their boys to their feasts, lest they might not neglect for a moment their self-control in partaking of food or in giving expression to their thoughts. We know of similar restrictions among the Hebrews ; and it is an undeniable fact that, as stated in the report of the Bureau of Education at Washington, prisoners and criminals are very rare exceptions among them, not less unhappy marriages. This brings forth the question, Are our children to be INCREASE OF CRIME. 49 blamed? That our children are not to be blamed, is beyond all question. It is also evident that the in- stinctive love of the mother, which makes her willing and read} 7 to sacrifice her whole life to the welfare of her child, is not quite sufficient to meet the extended and complicated wants of the child, and in this inca- pacity her over-burdened husband participates. Thus individual family fitness is, unless with exceptions, inefficient. The simple duties and obligations of fam- ily living, that is, attention to the style and the required environments, are all a woman of average capacity can attend to. And the burning question of the day is, I low can a mother devote herself dutifully to her family and also to her social position? The school in its effect is partly weakened by insufficient home influence, and partly by not recognizing itself as a fully responsi- ble institution to perfect the man in the child AS A WHOLE, but to prepare him for life AS A PART; and as long as neither the conception of the individual man (/.s 64 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. been thirty per cent ; but the apparent increase in the defective or afflicted classes has been a little more than one hundred and fifty-five per cent." Compendium of the Tenth Census of the United /States, 1880, page 1659. The ratio in returns of idiocy for 1880 shows an in- crease of two hundred and nine per cent over the returns of 1870. He says : " The Juke family offers an educational view which does not seem to have been hitherto taken. Max and Ada Juke rarely fail of an introduction in these con- ferences, and always, it seems to me, under a cloud of prejudice that may bias judgment as to true conditions. Any close study of these unfortunate people reveals clearly the existence of a neurotic taint as the rational explanation of their crime, pauperism, and bestiality, and suggests all through their needed protection arjainst themselves. "The undoubtedly weak-minded Juke sisters married the two sons of Max, who is known as " a drunken, eccentric, and lazy ne'er-do-weel," who leaves a large illegitimate offspring. It is not strange that these unions entailed blindness, pauperism, prostitution, and crime upon children and grandchildren. The record of Ada Juke, through the marriage of her first legitimate child, who married her first cousin, is only less fearful than that of the illegitimate line. Both, in the sixth generation, after passing through the darkest and most loathsome INCREASE OF INSANITY. 65 channels of impurity, are represented in living stocks of half-witted bastards, criminals, and paupers, who will continue to roll up the bill of expense for petty crime and misdemeanors and the untold expense of ruined character, wherever such plague-spots are permitted. Had it not been too early in the history of society, it is fairly pre- sumptive that the twenty-one grandchildren of Max and Ada might have been recognized as unfit members, and, very consistently with the public welfare and their own best interests, have been detained for the better part of their lives in jails or sequestered in hospitals. "Another view of this serious subject confesses that the need of this age and of ages to come is paternal govern- ment rather than an ideal impersonal government, a government wisely dealing with the wants of individual man. It recognizes that a very large portion of humanity is still in its swaddling-clothes, or scarcely yet beginning to walk, requiring much help and much patience before arriving at that self-knowledge which guaranties self-care. It holds that, in our present development, government, when best for the common weal, should assume the rela- tion, not of almoner, but of parent to its unfortunate children, whose only fault consists in not being born right. w There is another sorry phalanx of misery, the aban- doned prostitutes of our cities, recoiling on the commu- nity for its laxity of law and surveillance, and contaminat- ing how many births of even lawful wedlock ! Who are 66 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. these prostitutes? A class so feeble in will power, so ignorant and of such uncontrollable emotions, that it is no forced conclusion that very many are unsound and irre- sponsible, the sinned against rather than the sinners. "And yet another host is darkening the whole land, the alcoholic inebriates, more numerous than all the insane, idiotic, blind, and deaf-mutes together, re-enfor- cing the ranks of pauperism by other legions, and sowing a birthright of misery unto children of the third and fourth generations. Expert physicians are telling us and daily their testimony is better received that alco- holism is a neurosis, amenable to medical measures under the regitiie of complete isolation from provoking causes. This is wiser than to call it a crime, without depriving the criminal of his misused liberty. "To the practical, it would seem that the functions of government are not discharged toward its peace-loving, frugal, and law-abiding citizens so long as these disor- derly, contaminating, and misery-breeding elements have share and share alike of that " personal liberty under the Constitution " which should attach only to personal relia- bility. Under the ethics of law and religion, they are almost unreached. The so-called education of the schools is admitted in the oldest communities to furnish a great many of its pupils only a better armament for mischief. So that, education, law, and religion failing, shall we not reform our conclusions as to the nature of the ills from which we suffer? May not the study of the humble idiot INCREASE OF INSANITY. 67 and imbecile in our institutions aid us in discovering o some analogies heretofore undreamed of, and perhaps a healing to the so-called corrupt, and the only safety to the healthy be found in an arbitrary but legal isolation of the unfit ? "There is no field in political economy which can be worked to better advantage for the diminution of crime, pauperism, and insanity than that of idiocy. The early lecognition of some of its special, upper, and more dan- gerous forms should be followed by their withdrawal from their unwholesome environments and their perma- nent sequestration before they are pronounced criminals, and have, by the tuition of the slums, acquired a pre- cocity that deceives even experts. Only a small percent- age should ever be returned to the community, and then only under conditions that would preclude the probability of their assuming social relations under marriage, or becoming sowers of moral and physical disease under the garb of professional tramps and degraded prosti- tutes. " How many of your criminals, inebriates, and prosti- tutes are congenital imbeciles? How many of your insane are really feeble-minded or imbecile persons, way- ward and neglected in their early training, and at last conveniently housed in hospitals, after having wrought mischief, entered social relations, reproduced their kind, defied law, antagonized experts and lawyers, puzzled philanthropists, and in every possible manner retaliated 68 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. on their progenitors for their origin and on the com- munity for their misapprehension? How many of your incorrigible boys, lodged in the houses of refuge to be half educated in letters and wholly unreached in morals, are sent out into the community the idiots they were at the beginning, only more powerfully armed for mischief? And pauperism breeding other paupers, what is it but imbecility let free to do its mischief? "We should not deplore, and we may certainly antici- pate, a steady statistical increase of insanity and idiocy for the next four or five decades ; even should it be at the rate of hundreds per centum increase for each census, it will indicate not so much absolute increase of the diseases named, as a broadening of definitions and better analysis of conditions, common-sense and a higher Christianity dealing with defective and irresponsible people." What can be done? Man, with his burning heart, thinks of the almost eighty thousand children whose only fault exists in not being born well. To what can he appeal but to education? Not that education which presents mere learning, mere knowing. It is action, not mercenary but moral action, and its fountain spring is Conscious Motherhood. Unable to find some reliable statistics on juvenile suicide, it may be said that, according to European state- ment, their number is steadily increasing. UNITY IN PARENTHOOD. 69 V. UNITY IN PARENTHOOD THE NUCLEUS OF MORAL AND PHYSICAL PERFECTION OF MAN. " Know yourself " stood out in solemn letters over the entrance of the oracle at Delphi, two thousand years ago, to be re-read in flaming words by the progressive spirit of the nineteenth century. Self-knowledge is the appeal heading each page in the science of man. Self- knowledge is the aim of the endless labor of statistics to warn against growing evils and their causes. Self- knowledge finally is hailed by woman, the mother, throw- ing new lights on her powers and her duties. Not for mere " woman's rights," but as the indisputable com- mand of science to step forward with independent thoughts and actions for the well-being of the human race, of which she is the bearer. This last great office includes the fulfillment in and her connection with a partnership, without which the highest gifts of her nature would have been left without completion. And it is in this natural completion that we recognize a special qualification called motherhood. The process which leads from the poetically veiled nature of the virgin to the free unfolding of mother- hood has aroused in man through all ages the spiritual and ideal conception of womanhood. We find them still connected in a thousand individual forms with the daily dealings of savage tribes, while our modern habits lose from day to day the character of a natural, not fashion- 70 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. able, conception and restriction among the two sexes ; a fact which can not be cast aside, considering its grave consequences toward a higher conscious unity in par- enthood. History tells that the Visigoth who touched the fingers of the free, woman had to pay 600 derniers ; her arms, 1,200 derniers; her breast, 1,800 derniers; and that the man who destroyed her virginity was made her slave for life, with all his property. The high estimation of the free woman, the trust of one man in another man, of which our age shows decidedly the opposite, was beautifully illustrated by a king of the Normans, who sent his only daughter away to be educated by his unmarried friend, a farmer. These facts have been preserved in the records of ancient history, and prove the purity and chastity of the Teutons and the Scandinavian races, of which Tacitus can not speak highly enough ; facts which must fill the heart of every woman with pride and hope, because they reveal the higher qualities in man, whose innate respect for motherhood is even exemplified to him by the actions of the male animal. Or is it true, what Maudsley says, that man actually is so far from nature that he stands far below the ani- mal? a saying the better woman can and will hardly believe. But she cannot deny, from her personal daily observation of life, which is illustrated in our belle literature, the silliness of woman, the pettiness and narrowness of her aims, the want of faith in her UNITY IN PARENTHOOD. 71 higher capacities even by her own sex, that if man comes not up to the desirable standard, woman is not less what she might and it is hoped will be. But as Josephine Butler claims, regarding our young men in society, "as long as selection is renounced, and even barefaced vice is no disqualification to their being well received in the wealthy drawing-rooms, the young men feel and improve all the privileges of their position. They even become careless of hiding what is no longer reprobated, and they begin to speak of and to be seen talking to the notorious harlots of the day. When the best sanction of social morality the reprobation of vice by woman is cast aside in the highest circles presenting the moral culture of our sex, who can tell how widely the encouragement may act?" Savages claim that a queen governs well under male assistance, while men become enfeebled by women. Woman had a female senate in the empire of Rome. Eminent men of all ages had faith in woman. Goethe, in his immortal sentence, "the ever-womanly draws us up," refers to the law of nature reborn in every woman, yet by countless years of unnatural conditions lead- ing woman from the height of self-conscious woman- hood to its deepest degradation, as read in the follow- ing laws, still found in existence in our sister republic, France, and in England : 1. Toute seduction est impunie (seduction is not punishable). 72 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. 2. Toute promise de mariage est nulle (neither is the promise of marriage) . 3. Les enfants natural reste d la charge des meres (illegitimate children are to be supported exclusively by the mother). 4. Le droit de correction le droit absolu sur les actes de la femme me me sur le corps est au marl (right of punishment absolute control over all actions of woman even that of the body belong to man). 5. Le devoir conjugal explique ce droit (conjugal submission explains this "right"). In the last Woman's Journal we read as follows : A Nova Scotia mother, Mrs. McPherson, placed her three- year-old daughter temporarily in the Halifax Infants' Home for safe keeping. Without her knowledge, the managers of the home gave the child to a family living at a distance, to be adopted. When the mother discovered what had been done, she applied for possession of her child. Judge Smith, of the Nova Scotia Supreme Court, has just decided the case against her, on the ground that the mother has no locus stamli; that she has no right to the custody of her child so long as her husband may be alive. Mrs. McPherson's husbaud deserted her several years ago. "We do not aim to refer to the need of special la ?/..- concerning women and their necessary improvements, but we know that America, with her glorious Declaration of Independence, and her demand of equal rights to the pursuit of happiness, in case she is to become the God- ordained and first nation, to solve on free soil the prob- r\ITY IN PARENTHOOD. 73 leni of social equality, and not to turn her great future into a most fearful chaos of human passions and destruc- tive forces, has most of all to revise those laics which touch the central germ of her higher or lower existence, namely, the home! Nothing but the home and the puri- fying influence in society can change, frankly spoken, our morally criminal condition. What result can a state ex- pect, though it may be the grandest on the globe, which does not by all possible means protect the purity of the home and the rights of the mothers, the bearers of her children? Why shall she have to beg through a whole generation for her equal rights? Let the mother be set free, permitted to think and to act by reason; let her be made responsible in her duty as mother for the shaping and molding of the coming race, assisting and guiding where she has no voice at present, and her innate powers of motherhood will lead her back to former dignity and moral leadership. Complaining of man, we may frankly confess the per- haps strange doctrine, that it is only through woman, through enlightened motherhood, that man will be raised and partly freed from the evils under which he is born. The quotation from Josephine Butler tells a great deal in a few words. This condition, and the better man agrees with it, has to be changed before we can expect " (hat unity in parenthood" absolutely necessary to perfect the human race, morally and physically. It is the mother who mu.st become enabled to judge the value, and to 74 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. select, by means of this value, in the highest loving inspi- ration, the man suitable to be the ideal for her child, may he be a prince, or the simple laborer gaining his bread from day to day. Do not say this condition is a dream. Ask any highly organized man, who takes the wife of his heart, if he does not identify her value and her lovingness with the capacities she will bring to his home as the mother of his coming children. He knows very well that no wealth, no rank, and no earthly structures, however beautiful they may be, can give him the home, namely, the spirit of the home. We complain of di- vorces and kindred topics. Why is it, then, that a man can be divorced one month, and be remarried the next to a fair woman? Why is it that a man can be divorced even twice > and find open arms which he may leave soon for his third choice? The practical conclusion formed by the writer on this subject is presented in the following petition, with the desire to accomplish practical results : Recognizing in your honorable body the power of regulating and directing the general educational advancement of our state, we, the mothers and daughters of America, trust, in coming to you, that you may use this power justly in helping us to reach and to perfect those qualifications which form the nucleus of woman's sphere, namely, the child's earliest moral, mental, and physical unfolding. To this end we, the under- signed, take the liberty to present the following to your favora- ble consideration : WJiereas, it is the characteristic tendency of our age to free the female sex the other half of humanity -from the UNITY IN PARENTHOOD. 75 instinctive passiveness and lethargy toward the outer world, thus leading it, by its vocation as the bearer and first educator of the human race, to equal responsibility with man ; and WJiereas, we have learned that to be a teacher a scientific preparation is needed, but to be a mother and a teacher in one is left to chance, we find the vocation of some women more considered than the vocation of ALL women ; and WJiereas, this is an injury to the race at large, and to the welfare of the state in particular, which depends on the moral, intellectual, and physical condition of the individuals and their first educators, it becomes evident that if possible such pro- vision should be made by the state or by society as is neces- sary to prepare all women, and likewise men, for their natural position as mothers and fathers ; and Whereas, the connected sciences of our day, promoting the highest culture of man, claim that the spiritual and physical development should be blended in one, and that such develop- ment beginning with the first day in life, and before life, the basis of all later doing and knowing, belongs to the mother and to home influence ; and WliereaSi this motherly development, based on the understand- ing of the laws of nature in general, and of the nature of the child in particular, resting largely on the studies of physiology, psychology, and pedagogy, is destined for the first time in history to unite the highest scientific efforts of both sexes to one end : Therefore, the question arises, How can the state or society furnish such preparation as will enable our young girls and boys to gain, besides a general education, a special education for the understanding of the sacred duties of motherhood and fatherhood ? This should be done By connecting with our higher school grades and normal 76 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. schools a special connected curriculum of studies, as follows : Anthropology, psychology, and the science of education ; his- tory of educational theories, of law and ethics, and hygiene ; Froebel's system and its connection with the earliest develop- ment of the human race, physically, morally, and intellectually ; the attendance of suitable kindergartens, cooking schools, and visits to children's hospitals. By establishing in our universities special educational chairs or courses, designed to prepare special teachers, such as are needed to furnish the above-named instruction in our schools and normal institutes. By encouraging able lecturers to diffuse new light on this most important problem of man. Not until the science of life and man is equally understood by men as well as by women ; Not until this understanding brings equal weight of responsi- bility to men as well as to women ; Not until the preparation for fatherhood and motherhood forms a lasting curriculum in our higher school instruction and in our universities, can we expect a sound and lasting progress of mankind. Thus elevated by knowledge and the sense of duty, higher moral responsibility will create laws unconceived in our time of blind ignorance on the most vital topics concerning man in his whole physical, mental, and moral being. The laws of to-day directed to the keeping of the existence of man will be evolved into the preven- tion of the existence of man. While "crime" stands out in bold letters concerning the first, "crime" will not be less the name for bringing life into existence, where UNITY IN PARENTHOOD. 77 certain conditions upon which society will watch with severity and judgment are not fulltiled. "The incrca.se of divorces during the past thirty years is an ominous symptom," says Dr. Dorchester. They have doubled in our country, and this very likely presents the average ftfaftis quo in civilization. A\4iat can and will be its sole remedy ? Nothing but the union in an enlightened ideal parenthood. The "onward creative" powers of the world are "bisexual." Only one of these powers has been given, heretofore, the full liberty of action, the power of tJie male sex, to govern the female and her child. The deciding instead of the considering, the defensive instead of the uniting forces, the submitting instead of equal reasoning forces, have prevented an equi- librium of justice, freedom, and higher love. The bias of parenthood was, in law, an act of submission. In the name of childhood, let it be evolved into a free but indissoluble union of love, friendship, and estimation. CHAPTER III. THE CHILD'S EIGHT TO ^N EAELY EDUCATIONAL UN- FOLDING.. BEGINNING AT THE CRADLE, BASED ON A SCIENTIFIC CONCEPTION OF THE CHILD'S NATURE. I. "Wilhelm Preyer and Friedrich Froebel. II. Inviolate Childhood III. Children's Diaries. I WILHELM PREYER AND FRIEDRICH FROEBEL. W. PREYER, Professor of Physiology and Psychology at Jena, furnishes a scientific record on the physical, mental, and moral development of his son, from his first hour till he was three years old. Preyer's merit con- sists in the fact that while he intended to write a scien- tific book for the learned world, he wrote a book for mothers. The previous idea, that a mother's devotion and instincts were sufficient to guide her in forming and molding the human race, vanishes before the statistics of the causes and effects of crime, idiocy, insanity, pov- erty, and suicide. The woman of the nineteenth century, equally repressed and oppressed by her ignorance and vagueness of her knowledge, is ready to welcome from the depths of her inspired nature Preyer's most valuable work. "Woman of this age has to learn that " to save man "is " to study man." Preyer's work leads the way. WILHELM TREYER AND FRIEDRICH FROEBEL. 79 Once knowing this book, no woman, no mother, can fail to follow its guidance, which leads into the sanctum of the child's body and soul, for which the mother is made responsible. Here childhood and motherhood, without losing their former love, glory, or poetry, have united in a solemn demand for justice and law, based on science. No higher appeal was ever made to woman. Tlie religion of faith has called forth a religion of action, a religion of action which, by directing and elevating woman's creative forces, turns them into a moral reve- lation to mankind. May God help and bless her ! To this end the writer offers to women and mothers a trans- lation of Preyer's work. His work combines a lengthy observation of experience of infants in public institu- tions, and an extensive comparison with other writers on the subject. It consists of extended and detailed psycho-physiological observations, connected with the study of the gradual educational development of his child. In this work is combined the educational influ- ences of two authorities, each strengthening and com- pleting the other, namely, W. Preyer and Friedrich Froebel. FRIEDRICH FROEBEL was born in April, 1782. It is a remarkable coincidence that Prof. Preyer's work, "The Soul of the Child," was published in the same year in which Froebel's centennial anniversary was celebrated, remarkable on account of the similarity of their concep- tion of the nature, the physiological and psychological 80 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. educational needs and restrictions of the child. Froebcl had not studied medicine, neither was he prepared >vHh lens in hand to look into the mysterious, nervous texture of the human body. But his intuitive concep- tion of the wants of harmonious development directed his keen observation of the outer life to the inward nature of things, and reciprocally their outward relations to cause and effect. He arrested his thoughts before the great stillness of nature. Her grandeur, her beauty and government by law, became his teachers. Identi- fying the lack of harmony with man's ignorance of the laws of nature, he set himself to study these l:i\\s. Wishing to lead man back to nature from which he sprung, he became a philosophical and practical student of man and nature. Imbued with the educational prin- ciples of the ancients, strengthened by the views of Locke, Comenius, Rattich, Basedow, and Jean Jacque Rousseau, he at last found the idealization of his views in Pestalozzi's method. He lived for more than a year under the roof of this great teacher, and came fully to agree with him that the mother should be recognized as the first and natural educator of the child ; a conviction which Pestalozzi illustrated so touchingly in his story of "Leonard and Gertrude," and by his lecture when eighty-two years old, "on the simplest way to educate the child from the cradle to its sixth year," a lec- ture which, at the time, filled all eyes with tears. Froebel, recognizing his natural vocation as an edu- WILHELM PKEYER AND FRIEDKICH FKOEBEL. 81 cator, prepared himself earnestly for this responsible office Around the bright bivouac fires in the famous camps of the Luetzower Corps, which was composed of the best young men of the country, he found a warm en- couragement. He gained strength from an ideal and lasting friendship, combining effort and strength with faith, joy, and hope, which grew and developed from the blind enthusiasm of youth into the earnest, practi- cal labor and endurance of manhood ; a friendship that knew but one head, one heart, and one noble, united aim, which was " to serve mankind." Such friendships, often formed among the Teutonic race, seem like echoes from the dark, green, everlasting, sacred forests of old, whose legends tell of a devotion and sacrifice for which our busy life has hardly time or taste. In 181fi, Froebel, assisted by his two friends, opened in a simple farm-house his educational institute at Griesheim, in Thuringia ; Middendorf and Langsthal, his two friends, serving and maintaining this establishment at unparal- leled sacrifice. Here also lived FroebeFs wife, a woman of. high rank, brought up in luxury. When assistants were engaged, there was never a fixed arrangement as to salary, the income being used but for their barest necessities. So hard were the times that chalk-marks were often made on the bread, to indicate the amount that was to be eaten each day of the large loaves, baked at the institute. One coat served the four friends in 82 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. turn as a best garment. Mr. H. Barop, who entered as an assistant in 1802, and who still holds the princi- palship of the mother institute now at Keilhau, Thu- ringia, a most distinguished university college for boys, did not see his own child after it was four years old, as he was called away to establish similar educational institutes in Switzerland and elsewhere. Land and several large buildings were given Froebel and his dis- ciples for new institutions. In the heart of a peaceful and picturesque landscape, surrounded by the beauty and undimmed freshness of nature, far from the restless noise, the young child and its physical and mental needs became the fructifier and inspirer of thought to this unselfish, high-minded body of men and women. Com- parison made here between the children born in their own family circle and those entering the collegiate course, showed very clearly the lack of early develop- ment of mind and body during the first years of the children from the outside world. Froebel himself had lost his mother when a baby. His instinctive desire for harmony, beauty, and mother's love led him quite early to the observation of the divine beauty in na- ture and plant life. With reverence and acceptance he learned to recognize the divine intention in creating similarities. In a most pious submission to the supreme will, he sought for light in studying the laws of harmony, that he might remedy the discords of life which filled his mind and thoughts. As a boy, from seven to eight WILHELM PREYER AND FRIEDRICH TROEBEL. 83 years old, his tastes were peculiarly fostered by his botanical studies in the forests of Thuringfia, under O ' the care of a forester. Thus so favorably predisposed, aided, and trained, Froebel learned to recognize in each child a new educa- tional problem, to be solved according to its nature. Studies directed to the action of mothers were valued by him as crystallized practical experiences. He proved them to involve conformity to his views of the child's natural wants ; thus leading him, when at the height of his influence, to devote the rest of his life to the search of a method for a harmonious human unfolding, begin- ning at the cradle. It is a great error to suppose that Froebel's system is only applicable to very early life. Froebel bases the fundamental principles of education on the universal laws of nature, demonstrated in their manifoldncss, and recognized in mankind by individual forces. He therefore demands a methodical unification in education, in order to reach the divine through a unifi- cation of action. Froebel says: "All that exists mani- fests an eternal law. This law forms the unity of all objects in nature of which man is a part ; and however the stages may difler, they come under one universal law of development, through a gradual process of per- fection or deterioration ; leading either from the chaotic unformed to the formed, or else going back to chaos. These universal laws manifested in plant and animal life we recognize equally in the coiled-up forces of the acorn 84 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. as in the developed forces of the gigantic oak-tree. The slightest interruption in the growth, the slightest disturbance of the healthy condition of the mother germ or the baby plant, will cripple the whole plant, root by root, stem by stem, flower by flower, fruit by fruit." Recognizing that these organic laws of nature are applicable to men, as disclosed by each step of a true science of man, Froebel perceived the methodical devel- opment of the man in the child. The perception of this unity of forces directed to the perfecting of man's nature led Froebel to anticipate a gradual development of man, through emotional and intellectual activities in which the child should be recognized as part of a whole, and as a whole in its parts. In this higher unity, Froebel foresaw, not only the present psychological conception of man, but also the present moral standard. In spite of the existing diversities of our life, the ide.il watchword of our time is "unity": unity in body and mind; unity and equality in law, in responsibility, in labor, in hope and fear : unity in perfection and elevation ; unity in nature and man, is the moral, pedagogical, and religious solution of our time. Froebel's educational theories and practice, completed by Preyer's practical, psychological, and pedagogical observations, meet the present anthropo- logical and moral needs. These two great authorities, approaching the subject from opposite points, seem to open a new pedagogical era in the bringing home to men's hearts a conviction of these high educational truths, INVIOLATE CHILDHOOD. 85 and it is the writer's conviction of the necessity of a uni- versal insight into the depths of these truths that has urged her to attempt to merge the utterances of these two authorities with her own life experience in education in the following chapters. H. INVIOLATE CHILDHOOD. Inviolate childhood is heaven on earth. Without riches, without honor, without merit, without science or art, childhood finds the world full of priceless treasures and of ineffable wonders. Given a few broken pieces of glass, a flower, a fruit, a colored string, a doll, and out of them the baby imagina- tion constructs an immeasurable happiness. A few anointed ones of the human race have kept this power of creation, of symbolizing alike the mysteries and the realities of life ; we call them our ordained poets and artists, and receive with reverence the gifts they bring us from their childhood. The child knows naught of earthly gains and losses ; it knows no dread of death ; to it, life and peace are without end. The suppleness of its body coincides with the suppleness of its soul. For him, the stone lives ; and, like the kiss of his mother on his ruby lips, like the flowers and ribbons with which he adorns his obedient playmate, the dog, belongs equally in the great brother- hood of things of which he is himself a part. Compare 86 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. his faith, his hope, his love, his simplicity and happiness, yes, his spontaneous altruism, with our own aggressive selfishness, our artificiality, our efforts to seem what we are not, our complex wants, and our hypercriticism, and the question arises, Are we not aware of the dis- torting effect upon a normal childish development of the effort to stamp children early with adult forms and patterns ? Was the conception of childhood and the reverence for childhood not lessened in the same degree as that in which the present generation has been hurried away from it? "Les extremes se touchent." Fifty and sixty years ago, educational principles dictated, "Keep the child as long as possible a child, in spite of early instruction." They dictate at present, "Force the child, however pre- maturely, to take on the shape of the adult, without early instruction." In the first method there was individualizing ; in the second, formalizing of the child. Our still limited insight into the hereditary psycho- physiological influences of which any given man is a product, and furthermore, our limited knowledge of his dependence on or independence of the environments of his life apart from education, leave unsolved the prob- lem, what elements were brought in contact to crystal- lize into the individuality of a Plato, a Shakespeare, or a Maria Theresa? INVIOLATE CHILDHOOD. 87 What laws, fixed, yet unknown, and perhaps forever unknowable by human intelligence, directed these atoms and forces into the formation of beings of a higher orjran- o o o ization and a finer, freer individuality? If we may not know the laws, we know at least that all law is orderly and logical, and we see that in proportion as we keep our meddlesome hands off that sacredest pos- session of childhood, its own individuality, we leave untrammeled the continued operation of those laws which brought it into being just as it is. As no two plants are the same, as no two leaves are the same, so no two human beings are the same. Same- ness is neither an aim nor a possibility in creation. The uninvaded seclusion in which Mother Nature keeps the babyhood of her offspring, the reverent care recalled in the thousand known and unknown ways in which she protects the first germinal activity against any influence adverse to the preservation of its special characteristics, might well be considered and imitated by the human family, and reduced to moral obligation. "Were it only possible to make this reverence for childhood real ; were it but possible to have people realize the injury they inflict on the infinitely delicate mental and moral tissues of the little child ! Almost every one of us might admit, if we were candid, that we carry to-day a scar from some cruel, unthinking stab in our moral consciousness. We wrap our little ones' bodies in furs against the winter's cold, we temper for 88 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. them the summer's heat, and meanwhile we assault their souls with the spectacle of our anger or our cynicism, and we do not hide from their innocence our self-excuses for lack of duty, our moral debility and cowardice. Again, with how much of awe do we rehite ourselves to the still sheathed buds of their mental powers. Do we treat with any adequate intelligence and delicacy those folded-up responsibilities ? Do we stand guard over the awakening of those inborn capacities, and forbid all in- trusion on the child's intellectual individuality? If not, then we are responsible, culpably responsible, for the thwarting of their destinies. Not that we are to expect that under favorable circumstances every child should attain the distinction which, according to statistical esti- mates, falL to not more than one in four thousand, but we are tacitly pledged to assist every child to reach the highest that is possible to him, that is, the complete development of his individual organization ; for only by this means will he be equipped to take possession of his full share of personal happiness, and to wield among his fellows his full and normal influence. We should cultivate a child as we cultivate a rose, by supplying the very best conditions of growth, and then respecting its individuality in the use of these conditions. It is by this compliance with the laws governing each separate living organization that we see developed those personal peculiarities that enchant us, the modulation of voice that distinguishes a woman among a thousand INVIOLATE CHILDHOOD. 89 others, that tranquillizing touch of the hand in one whose one charm it may be, the power of command which some men exercise unrebuked, the nameless fascination which, by whatever expression, is still the result of that combi- nation of inner organization and outer environment which we call mere individuality. Of course, then, as the means to the end we seek, we are brought back to inquire, How are we to supply these needful best conditions ? No doubt, nothing is more difficult to understand and nothing more difficult to meet than just those grave needs of childhood, to give it the right materials and opportunities for the awakening and exercise of its senses, to lead it to the right use and control of its own will, and the right perception of its relations to others, and at the same time to avoid molding it arbitrarily ; to place before it the wonders and riches of life, and yet to leave it free to see them with its own eyes, and not with ours ; to refrain from spoiling its simple self-created joys by lavishing upon it costly and complex toys, and yet to respond to its yearning for sympathy in its play. We make our children clever, but we do it at the ex- pense of their childlikeness and their originality. We teach them to be critical, even censorious, before we have permitted them to exhaust the full pleasure of admiration. We hold up before them the faults which we bid them avoid, rather than the virtues and harmonies they are to imitate. In a word, which we cannot too earnestly 90 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. repeat, we do not sufficiently and always realize the value of leading children to an affirmative conception of life, before we fill them with negations. From the begin- ning, we should, for example, instead of putting life and death in sharp antithesis, direct them to the idea of life rather than lives ; of one life which bursts into visibility everywhere, in the star, in the spider, in the violet, by the same inherent positiveness, and of death as not so much the extinction of life as its change of form. Of this they have abundant illustration in the life of plants, the flower transferring its part of the universal life to the seed, the seed life transmuted again into sprout and root, and so on through the endless chain of being, which a little child is quicker to apprehend (according to my ob- servation) than is the over-taught adolescent; for every child is quick to feel and find resemblances and unities. Their nimble, warm imaginations perceive or construct kinships in nature, where we with our cold classifica- tions see naught but separations. One of the little girls of my school, just now at my desk, looking at the picture of two pears in one of the drawing-books, said to her mother, "They are two brothers,'* thus showing again what is exemplified constantly in the kindergarten, the carrying over of the family relations into every embodi- ment of life. In this case, however, it may be well to note in passing that the mother of little Marion is herself a thorough Kindergarterin, who has nourished at home that tendency to unification which the child gained at the INVIOLATE CHILDHOOD. 91 kindergarten ; and this mother assures me that Marion holds the same attitude toward everything, and receives in the same spirit all the facts an I events of existence. This self-assumed attitude leaves the child free to be happy in his own activities, in his oWn discoveries, and is, indeed, the secret of the natural contentment of childhood which only disappears when we overlay it by our own obtrusive discoveries. That, a happy child is a good child is true in a scientific or educational as well as in the ordinary sense : and to preserve this happy spontaneity, which is itself the preserver of innocence, we need as far as possible to leave a child to his own unconstrained self- expression in play. Froebel undisputed authority as to the normal facul- ties and wants of childhood says the child has eight instinctive activities, of which the following meet our present purpose: viz., the instinct for play, for pro ducing, for shaping, for knowledge, for society, and for cultivating the ground. In all these the child is independently active, and only needs to be provided with the material and the opportunity. But this provision is more inclusive than we think, until we are warned of it by the child's restlessness under privation of material and opportu- nity, and nothing so completely answers and satisfies these higher impulses as a plenary communion with Nature. She is the foster-mother of the soul. She 92 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. calls the child, without frightening him ; she teaches him, without repelling him ; she speaks a language he understands better than words ; and it is in proportion as he does not forget this grand, simple dialect, that he remains long a child, that is, a poet. Attend but reverently enough, and you will catch a glimpse in the treasure-house of a young child's imagi- nation. See him, when harflly able to hold a pencil, making groups of smallest dots, to } T OU barely, visi- ble, and utterly meaningless ; to him, representing the most elaborate pictures of life. Forests are there, towns, streams, horses, flowers, birds ; in short, all living objects which have inspired his love or excited his fancy. And in what ardent words, with what evi- dently vivid visualization, he will describe to you these scenes ! Oh, beware of throwing an obliterating breath or a distorting ray upon such soul-pictures ! From ger- minal specks like these are to grow man's memories, potent for good or ill. In these pregnant hours are quickened an alien indifference to, or a supreme and life-long joy in, a poetical relation to nature. Which of us will deny the absolute influence over his life of certain recollections carried up from childhood like the holy contents of an ark ; certain odors, certain melo- dies, some unexpected or mysterious light? These, how- ever often reproduced, bring with them a whole epoch of our childish years, years in which we fit into the windows of the soul those wondrous bits of stained INVIOLATE CHILDHOOD. 93 glass which shall form forevermore the medium through o O which we regard life, and which shall make it either lurid, grotesque, or beautiful. The poets, as I have said, are those who have not outlived their childhood. (Some romantic doctor has declared that the myster wusfonfaneUes of infancy remain always open in the poet.) And among them all there has not lived one who more completely retains the very tone and mood of his first impressions than the prose poet, Bogumil Goltz. In his prose poem, "The Book of Childhood," he almost brings back to our lips the taste of mother's milk. Rousseau and Jean Paul and numerous others have embalmed their own infancy within book- covers, but Goltz brings our childhood to us, and we live it over again with an ideal light upon it, " the light that never was on sea or land." There is room for more such literature, for all that puts or keeps the adult in sympathy with the child. We shall be the better parents and teachers for remembering with Bogumil Goltz the raptures and reserves of infancy. He says : " In childhood one feels as never again the poetry of a corner, of the little space shut oft' from the larger space that encloses it. Such, too, is the poetry and mystery of a pocket, especially of a pocket that buttons. The pocket is a symbol : it means the most intimate outside space ; the place apart, peculiar, sacred, and inviolable, where one's special posses- sions are preserved ; where a free creature bestows 94 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. his property in complete separation from the general possession." The author from whom I am quoting should be read by all who wish to get an insight into the real poetry of child nature. This poetic quality is referred to by citing the child's sense of increased power, his sense of knight- hood, when he dons for the first time a new pair of boots with brazen heels. This early sentiment of poetry, as it may be called, is no unreal thing ; it continues to exist, though unrecognized, throughout many years of severe and exhausting labor, as far as possible removed from anything which seems to be poetic. The golden age of childhood is not altogether lost, though years may sepa- rate us from it ; it still lingers within the breast of every man or woman not wholly abandoned, and lost to vice and crime. It is because the writer feels has verified in her own person as a child, and in numberless observations of other children as a teacher all this sensitiveness and power of childhood, that she has endeavored in some drawing-books to lead the child gently along a road in which there are no gaps, and where, far from closing the gates on innocence and poetry and mystery, he is but given precious, alluring glimpses of the inexhaustible mystery and poetry of nature and life. The intro- ductions, too, in each book, are intended in part to illustrate the ideal relation between teacher and child, to give joy to the one, and perhaps help to the other. INVIOLATE CHILDHOOD. 95 From lesson to lesson and from book to book there is the gradual evolution of form, color, structure, function, ethical and aesthetic signifying cause, crystallizing finally into the last results of science as far as science answers the questions in that department of study, and missing its mark if it is not found to have promoted the child's moral growth as well as his dexterity, physical and mental awakening. These are lost now for our children because too much is given them ; the poetical atmosphere here is ruined, is replaced by reason, and grammar, and bald, lifeless knowledge. The literalness, the irrever- ence, the lack of imagination, the criticism and irony of grown-up people, are put upon the children. This is the more lamentable, because "there is but one learning, but one hearing and seeing, but one reproduction and creation, one being, doing, and having, one growth, experience, and life, and that is the life of child- hood. All that one labors, perceives and learns, feels and knows, is a half-life, a feeble arrogation of posses- sions." To the child each object, each season of the year and time of the day, each landscape and instrument means as much more than to the ordinary adult as the child's inexperience and innocence exceed theirs. As said before, he symbolizes all things ; hence he is a poet. Goltz says further : ' The highest culture, beauty, grace, poetry, and art, all work essentially by a pyni- bolicul power." "Without symbolism the creation re- 96 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. mains dead material, a corpse without a spirit, a cipher writing of God, without meaning or key." "Esthetic culture finds in this symbolism of the reciprocal relations of art and nature, of the soul of nature, of the soul of the external world, and the ways in which these groups of factors attract and repel each other, interpret, complete, deny, or affirm each other, in a word, on the whole interplay of sub- ject and object, an inexhaustible study, a new world of processes and principles/' " All processes, all forms, all colors and tones in this world of ours, are but the reflections of an ideal world, of a divine order of things. All objects and conditions, deeds and situations, signify a thought of God, and conceal or reveal an eternal secret." I will end these extracts frcm Bogumil Goltz's book in the words in which he begins the book : '" There sounds through all our lives a tone as solemn and holy as the tone of harp or organ ; it is the tone of our childhood, which reverberates in every human soul as long as it is not utterly demoralized ; and even the villain, the robber, the murderer, thinks of the days when his life was peaceful and innocent ; of the heav- enly days when a mother's love still guarded his steps, and an unprofaned nature still held him above the dirt and scum of mere earthiness. w Oh ! childhood, thou sweetest time ! In thee is truly heaven upon earth, for indeed children live at the CHILDREN'S DIARIES. 97 same time in heaven and on earth, and with the invis- ible cherub wings of their divine simplicity and imagina- tion they keep open for their parents, their teachers, for all those adults who have shed their an> from a mere dim sensation to a clear perception, as de- fined in Preyer's book. He states that his child showed the first effect of light on the sixth day, and that on the twenty-third day he became fully assured that his boy followed a candle-light with his eyes, turning them from right to left, and vice versa, an experiment which he enjoyed both as a father and as a scientist, rqu-at- ing it more than twenty times the same day. At nine- 116 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. teen weeks old it was evident the child followed with his glance some objects passing by, or to be seen in the room. VI. EMMA MARWEDEL'S COLOR PLAY NO. 3, CALLED FAMILY COLOR PLAY. This introduces Prof. Magnus's color chart, used by Prof. Preyer in teaching his boy to distinguish colors and their names. It presents round tablets in nine colors, each color being subdivided by four tones from dark to light, making, on the whole, thirty-six colors which are doubled. They may be used as follows : 1. In the manner described by Prof. Preyer. 2. In forming symmetrical figures or borders, similar to the patterns in the ring play. 3. In using the colored pencils to imitate the series of tones, as seen in the chart, by producing the four colors belonging to one shade with only two pencils, thereby forming a connecting link between the three successive color plays ; the coloring of the fruit and flowers in the circular sewing, and the circular drawing-book No. 1. "It was on the twenty-third clay," says Prof. Preyer, w that I observed for the first time an impression made on my boy by color. He laughed aloud at a pink cur- jtain on which the sun shone. But it was in the eigh- teenth month that I introduced the first systematic ex- amination of counters of similar shape, but differing in EMMA MARWEDEL'S COLOR PLAY NO. 3. 117 color. Xo sign of the power to distinguish color was evinced, though a certain doubt could he perceived." Prof. Preycr then introduced the arrangement of colors presented by his color chart, consisting of nine series of colors, each containing four shades. He also gives an account of his proceedings and success, stating that when the child was two years and seven weeks old he gave right answers about the colors to all questions except one. We recognize the great value of this scientific experi- ment to psychology and pedagogics ; but as a follower of Froebel's educational principles, it seems preferable that the conception of a mere difference in colors, with- out name, should be aimed at, in order to exempt the still speechless child from memorizing words. The ed- ucational aim is to give the child at this age attractive play occupations ; to learn to see, not to know ; to open its mental eyes for the aesthetic conception of light. AVho can tell what came first under the mental eyes of the young painter (he died quite }'oung) who, when one of Rubens's large pictures was stolen, offered to replace it from memory? His picture was accepted, though with reluctance and doubt. But how great was the surprise in artistic circles, when, after recovering the stolen pic- ture, it was found to be the most exact copy in all respects, in all its varied coloring, grouping, and expression ! Undoubtedly, the 3'oung artist felt a deep sympathy with the picture itself; but what had favored 118 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. his marvelous power of memory and conception ? Was it his mother? It was doubtless she, who, kneeling by his cradle, heard the whispers of his inner, his divine nature. VII EDUCATION THROUGH THE SENSE OF SIGHT. Sense influence on the higher conception of the beauty of nature. It is clear that with an increased sensitiveness of sight to the beautiful, sympathy with nature becomes identical with the conception of beauty in nature. The child who, still in the arms of its mother, sees her caring for the wants of the beautiful plants, and imagines he assists her in giving them nourishment, learns to associate the needs of his own existence with the food, air, and sunshine necessary to plant life, not less than he is led from the simple tone of music to the full scale, from single colors to their shades and harmonious combinations. Once baptized into sympathetic communion with na- ture, and the harmony of colors those incalculable treasures of beauty which our Mother Earth gives so boundlessly to the initiated becomes his individual possession. Treasures which flame in a thousand colors, yet are not seen, which sound with innumerable voices, yet are not heard, save by the elect priesthood of poets and painters and song writers, then are brought home to all, for all should be priests in the open temple of THE SENSE OF HEARING. 119 nature. We begin to be well informed concerning the o o life and customs of savage tribes, yet very little, com- paratively, is known of their relations to and conceptions of nature, except that their language contains poetical treasures, indicating their spiritualized sense and dra- matic comprehension of nature. Here love, in true companionship with nature, hands down from generation to generation its riches afresh, felt anew in their fullness, because filled afresh by individual experience. The con- centration in our large cities, the artificiality of living, the complexity of our wants, the wide field of our pleas- ures, have led us away from Nature, and still worse from her purifying influences, which offer to man in utter unselfishness all the gifts she possesses. She teaches him a moral truth which, once brought home, cannot fail to elevate and ennoble him. VIII. THE SENSE OF HEARING. The foregoing statements have shown to what extent the sense of sight is capable of perceiving differences, practically and intellectually. The sense of hearing pos- sesses similar powers, though its application is less wide. Professional musicians are able to distinguish the differ- ence between two tones, the pitch of which shows a differ- ence in sound-waves of one thousand to one thousand and one, which is equal to one twenty-fourth of a half-tone. Early exercise or special talent is of course needed, to 120 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. develop such sharpness and accuracy of the hearing. Not to all men do the gods accord the superior gift of musical talent, but all men most emphatically have the right to claim a thorough culture of the sense of hearing. The perfection of this sense among savages is well known, and the time may and should be not far distant when in- struments shall be used to test the capacity of hearing among officials and children, in the same manner as prac- ticed now with the sense of sight. This culture would free our children in school from some of the unjust blame they receive; as Dr. Seguin says, "The culture of the hearing and the touch have culminated in a new enjoy- ment." The writer has often been surprised to observe the quickness with which children learn to distinguish sounds, after a very few repetitions of plays arranged for this purpose. Not less surprising has been the recognition of the voice by little children blindfolded for this test ; and these plays should be played as early as possible. IX. EMMA MARWEDEL'S PRACTICAL GYMNASTICS FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE SENSE OF HEARING. The materials for this consist of ten series of metals, wood, and other substances, which by their differences in size offer extensive exercise of the sense of hearing. This game should be played by the whole family in the nursery. EDUCATION THHOUGH THE SENSE OF HEARING. 121 X. EDUCATION THROUGH THE SENSE OF HEARING. Singing and speaking are the fullest expression of man, a free gift, without regard to wealth, rank, sex, or age. Madam Catalini was received with the same enthu- siasm when she was eighty years old as when she ap- peared first at eighteen years old. Hardly any nation is without some original melodies, which are, in most cases, traditional remnants of unknown ages. Italians sing, Swedes sing, Germans sing. All these are recognized as musically gifted nations. Singing and speaking raised to the highest and purest art should have their place at every cradle, where the tunes sung should be soul-awakening hymns of sweetness and deli- cacy. In every home, in every school, in our mar- kets and thoroughfares, sweet sounds should rise like stone walls against the present vulgarity in tones and words. Fortunately, our own country feels the necessity of moral elevation through music ; and our Bureau of Education has issued a circular in regard to this subject, which, in connection with similar efforts coming from the headquarters of the Sol-Fa system, will soon bear fruit. To this end the color plays and the ball plays are ac- companied by simple tunes. 122 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. XL THE SENSE OF SMELL. The sense of smell in man and animals has of late re- ceived much attention from scientists, and the discus- sion of the question is still going on as to whether an extreme sensitiveness of the organ of smell may not outweigh its usefulness. The following is a statement of the delicacy of the sense of smell in man, which in animals is, however, greatly superior : "The delicacy of the sense of smell has been shown by a series of experiments by Messrs. Fischer and Pet- zoldt. In a room of 230 cubic meters' capacity, tightly closed, a small quantity of the substance was thoroughly mixed with the air, and the observer then admitted. Of different substances, it was found that the smallest amount was .01 of a milligram of mercaptan. It was estimated that 1,460,000,000th part of a milligram of this substance was recognizable." The spectroscope has hitherto been considered the most delicate of all means of analysis, indicating less than a millionth part of a milligram of sodium ; but the sense of smell, in the case of mercaptan, at least, is seen to be two hundred times more delicate. How much more sensitive the sense of smell may be in some dogs we cannot decide, but it must be considerably more acute. Though we accept the fact that the savage enjoys a greater amount of general sense development, this is said not to be the case as regards the sense of smell, and that THE SENSE OF SMELL. 123 its deficiency is observed as well among civilized as un- civilized races, when not developed and strengthened by use. The case of Julia Brace, who, though blind, was able to sort the wash of the institute through her sense of smell, brings her required capacity almost into the condi- tion of concentrating her life's experience in this one sense. The following are practical illustrations of the possibility of the sense of smell in man : Mr. Moyle mentions a blind man at Utrecht who could distinguish different metals by their different odors ; and Martials recalls the case of a person named Mamurra, who could tell by smelling whether copper was true Corinthian or not. Travelers in India have recorded that certain natives, who habitually abstained from the use of animal food, have a sense of smell so exquisitely delicate that they can tell from which well a vessel of water has been taken. It has been related that by smell alone the negroes of the Antilles will distinguish the footsteps of a Frenchman from those of a negro. Marce Marci has left an account of a monk O in Prague, who could tell by smelling anything given to him who had last handled it. The guides who accompany travelers in the route from Aleppo to Babylon will tell by smelling the desert sand how near they are to the latter place. John of Liege, when a boy, flying in terror from soldiers in time of war, passed many years alone in the depths of the forest of Ardennes, where he lived upon roots and wild fruits, the presence of which he could detect from a great distance by the smell alone. In the same way he 124 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. detected the presence of men long before they came in sight. Dr. E. Seguin says, in his " Education of the Med- ical Senses": "The profession of the writer enables him to show from it how much the efficiency of our intellectual education depends upon an equally thorough sense train- ing. I premise that the capacity most needed by a phy- sician does not come to him so much from the stores of general knowledge and of professional traditions, as from the ready capability of his systematically trained organs of perception (the senses) and of execution (the hand). The first sense called into requisition in medical practice is that of smell ; before the door of a patient is opened, this sense can often tell what is the matter with him. It must be educated by a special curriculum, without the help of the other senses, not only to the point of being able to diagnose almost every disease, at least any group of diseases, by their specific odors, but to that of recog- nizing when* patients and their surroundings are in dangerous milieux, affected with concealed poisons, etc." Our daily existence, greatly improved of late by hy- gienic science in the art of living, demands emphati- cally the full co-operation of the sense of smell. We have not learned to consider the lack of this organ as an incompleteness in man. No one can doubt that this sense is to be recognized as one of the most essential safeguards of a healthy and pleasant condition ; and that its development should come under the educational EDUCATION THROUGH THE SENSES. 125 requirements of childhood. To this end the following is arranged. XII. EDUCATION THROUGH THE SENSES OP SMELL- ING, TASTING, AND TOUCHING. Emma Marwedel'a gymnastic of smell, called Smell Gymnastics, consists of: 1. Vessels containing essences of flowers. 2. Vessels containing essences of fruits. 3. Vessels containing essences of medicinal plants. EDUCATION THROUGH THE SENSE OF SMELL. In considering the education of the sense of smell, we can readily recall early associations through this organ. Who is it that has never felt hours of love and high resolve, days of friendship and youth, scenes of home and home life, suddenly opened by the magic association of odors? What tender memories are brought back by the fragrance of the first lilac, of a certain rose, of haymak- ing, of a corn-field, or a violet ! These recall to us the simplicity and purity of life, and who can tell how often a soul, about to go astray, has been checked in evil by such means as a bunch of lilies-of-the-valley, this emblem of childhood's love fresh from the woods, once placed in the hands by a loving mother? THE SENSE OF TASTE. The sense of taste is the capacity to discriminate between the different effects produced by the contact of substances with the organs of taste, the tongue, and its 126 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. seat of sensibility, the mucous membrane. That this capacity varies, nay, more, that it keeps equal pace with the degree of mental and physical development of man, is unquestioned. It presents a condition which, far from its natural intention to serve as self-protection and self- conservation, becomes not seldom a power to which man falls a victim. As regards the former, it has been stated by author- ities that taste, as a continuity of structure in the tongue, has seemingly the power to discriminate between digest- ibility in telling at once whether a substance will agree or disagree with our stomachs. Zj Recognizing the animal instincts in using taste and smell combined as a safeguard against injuries, taste demands not less educational consideration than other senses. Admitting a priori the possibility and necessity of the development of taste, we may ask, How can and shall we be educated through the sense of taste, practi- cally and morally? 1. Practically: this is accomplished in training the sense of taste by comparison, in placing different substances on the tongue of the child with closed eyes, and by making a substance stronger or weaker by mixing it, using its different degrees of strength as a test for comparative judgment. 2. Morally : by allow- ing no child to become a slave to the constant satisfaction and consideration of this sense. " It is the -first drop that tells," is a common saying, when we see men and women fall below the lowest. Why ? Is it the drop, or EDUCATION THROUGH THE SENSES. 127 the want of self -control , which could not resist? When, as it is said, we have a State in the Union which contains the largest number of rum-shops, consumes eighteen mill- ions of dollars for sugar and candy, and produces sev- enteen millions worth of gold, we ask, Is .there not a logical connection between these three parts? And would its standard not rise, if indulgence for sweets did not begin in the cradle? It seems as if the world had no comprehension of these logical consequences. The young child tied in its " high chair" is actually trained, as Theane says, " to want everything " and " always the BEST."' Until we reach out educationally for greater simplicity and frugality, our vices will not decrease. In the same degree as we pity a person under the ban of depend- ence on his whims in eating and drinking, we should learn to honor and respect the man or woman who eats or drinks to live, a point with which we should impress our children deeply. This excludes, by no means, the art of preparing and serving food. Food well prepared and tastefully served is an essential part of home and social life, deserving the best will and the best talents. It is its exaggerations which draw man down to a ma- chine of digestion constantly at work. Our children should know this danger, and be led to avoid it. THE SENSE OF TOUCH. While the skin appears to contain the sense of touch, it is, in fact, the nerves which form the sensory or pos- 128 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. terior roots of the spinal nerves for the limbs and trunk, and certain of the cerebral nerves for the head, face, mouth, and tongue. It is cleaj^that considering the exten- sion of this sense, and its direct communication with our daily actions, its value becomes as great as our dependence on it. The experience gained by the blind and idiots has taught us considerably of late, yet ouside of Froebel's system we have no systematic development for our chil- dren. This has to be changed in our common curriculum of instruction, and a systematic training must begin in earliest life. The fact that a soft touch with a feather on the ear pro- duces greater sensations than a hard pressure, shows the delicacy and sensibility of the nerve-sense. And it was for this reason, namely, to direct mothers' attention to a practical development of the sense of touch, that Froebel suggestively proceeded from the rough to the smooth, from the soft to the hard ball, in his method, thereby opening the widest range for a development in touch. It is therefore expected that no mother in the nursery, no kindergarten, and no school will fail to exercise in the most original and spontaneous, yet most methodical extension, the sense of touch. Even the impression of heat and cold and its intermediate condition, not less weight, size, and shape, become obligatory exercises in home and school for a normally developed child. As regards weight, a special arrangement is made, known as Emma Marwedel's Gymnastic of the Sense of Weight, SENSE INFLUENCE. 129 consisting of a scale of weight of the same si/c for practical exercises. XIII. SENSE INFLUENCE ON THE DEVELOPMENT OP LOGIC. Having commented in our opening sentence on the importance of sense development in the development of the human race, we must not undervalue its relation to abstract thought. Right seeing, right hearing, right feeling, evidently lead to right thinking, right speak- iiur. and right acting. The power of conceiving at once the unity of manifolduess, and the manifolduess in the unity, develops unconsciously a logical concep- tion of all objects. The early play exercises of the child, which, in Froebel's method, suggest tho inven- tion of harmonious combinations of form and color, have never from this point of view been meaningless to the writer ; on the contrary, they seem to carry a valuable mental training, by no means to be neglected in the nursery. About three years ago, Prof. Stanley Hall arranged, in connection with his inquiries of "What Children Know," a list to be used in Boston for the examination of children entering the public schools. This list consisted of questions concerning animals, plants, human beings, and domestic conditions, and yielded valuable results in statistics. At Kansas City the experiment was repeated, and colored children being included in the examination, they were awarded 130 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. the prize. It was thus made clear that the suscep- tibility to individual sense impression, and that power of imagination which is very strong in the colored race, had caught the logic of things directly from form, color, and use, by experience and without teaching. The observations on Preyer's child show how early (at nine months old) the baby reached out for the logic of things (which is identical with the logic of truth) , a reaching out for which we give it, in most cases, nothing, unless indeed it be "a stone for bread."* Preyer's child was six months old before it followed with its eagerly questioning look any object it dropped on the floor.' This demonstrated clearly the equal amount of intelligence and practical exercise which was needed to perfect the sense of sight into intel- lectual use. All power of perception is measured by the precision and quickness with which similar and dissimilar qualities are perceived in a given time ; which, supplemented by refinement of distinction and conception, present the whole foundation of later in- struction. What does not a clever horseman see in a horse, where those with an unskilled eye see but a few points ? How much does a physician, an actor, read from the face, the gait, the speech, etc., where an untrained eye * Sir John Lubbock, referring to the inefficiency of the development of the senses of civilization, as in savage tribes, ignores the educa- tional influences through the development of the senses. SENSE INFLUENCE. 131 and mind sees nothing? What is disclosed to the botanist in a single plant, when he has learned to rec- ognize its countless treasures, which we do not see, because we were never taught to find them? What does a landscape painter not sec, where an ordinary person sees almost nothing, being devoid of a clear conception of colors and their associate tints? Helm- holtz, the distinguished professor of physics, demands the earliest color training for children, referring to the ex- isting difficulty in distinguishing the pure blue, in which learned opticians often fail. Recognizing, therefore, the necessity of early sight exercises, no mother should withhold them from her child. For this the ring play is attractive as well as useful, affording ample oppor- tunity to increase the given patterns by new inven- tions. XIV. SENSE INFLUENCE ON ORIGINALITY OF CON- CEPTION. Like to the gradual acquisition of verbal expression is the child's learning the mute language of each thing around it. Besides the wonderful power of expressing itself without words, it learns without words the full meaning of things. With this capacity, the child becomes at the very outset of life an original recipient and an origi- nal reproducer. Any interference with this inherent nat- ural power results in death to the creativeness of the child, and this is the very reason why a delayed power of 132 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. speech, instead of being deplored, should be fostered, since the hackneyed every-day phrases which are taught the child tend to overlay and kill out original perception, and subsequently original description. Especially is this true of objects containing the elementary qualities com- mon to all, and which should be left to the child's own discovery and original classification. XV. SENSE INFLUENCE ON IMAGINATION AND MEMORY. Great attention has been directed of late to the power of forming internal pictures, or of " visualizing," as Fran- cis Galtou calls it, the scenes of the past, and reviewing past sensations with the aid of the imagination. The per- manent gaining of knowledge depends largely on this power of visualizing events. Children possessing this gift not only acquire more easily, but forget less quickly. Modern teaching therefore recognizes in this power of associating ideas, vivified by the imagination, and supple- mented by objects or the representation of objects, the true method of all learning. Francis Galton announces the interesting fact that mind-pictures of the kind referred to were characteristics of several members of one family (in this case a curious visualizing of number forms in colors), and that, existing from babyhood, it proved, not only that it had passed into an inherited function, but that it is one of the faculties earliest developed. Children's plays and dreams consist of introductions SENSE INFLUENCE. 133 of sense impressions, transmuted by imagination, and stamped with their own individuality ; while the ease, exactness, and extent of these active reproductions de- pend on the nutrition and exercise supplied by surround- ings. Aside from being a reproductive feeulty, imagina- tion in its highest function combines and recombines original conceptions into creative thoughts and acts. Memory is but the storehouse of connected and discon- nected facts and events, of harmonies and discords, of form, color, and sound ; in a word, of all mental acquisi- tions, whether from without or within. Imagination is the transforming fire which fell once from heaven to earth, never losing its double power of blessing or de- stroying, and is of far graver educational importance Hum the attention we bestow on it would lead us to suppose. Words cannot tell what divine illumination flashes upon the child in these earlv waking hours of his imagination, * o o drawing him up and away from all that is base and hurt- ful ; or,' on the other hand, what lurid lights may not lend fascination to low propensities which have perhaps been induced by his early associations. Besides a direct edu- cational necessity for cultivating the imaginative faculties through sense impressions, there stares us in the face another urgent human need, to which imagination must respond, if it is to be answered at all ; namely, the need of something to aid man in overcoming the bald mo- notony and adverse conditions of the daily routine of life. The power of retaining and organizing facts, of 134 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. associating and disconnecting parts, of changing, com- bining, and assimilating the details of life, so as to be able to take at any moment a clear and serene survey of special and general relations, is both the sign and the result of the intelligent use of spontaneous imaginative force. Idealizing the impressions of the realities of life lifts man to a higher moral and aesthetic conception of the social condition of all men. No preacher, no teacher, no orator, and no writer can reach success without its magic aid. But most of all is it needed in our homes. The mother, the all-tranquillizing spirit of the household, finds it the gift richest in blessings she possesses, and it is the crown of true fatherhood. So great, in a word, is the potency of imagination in making the home life, all life, beautiful and beneficent, that it should be considered, nurtured, and directed from the earliest beginning of education. The mother should know how to foster it even in the cradle, attaching, as Seguin says, "an idea to every form, giving form to every idea," so enabling little children to receive a physical impression or image, and to store it in the memory, whence they can call it at will, either to idealize it, or to combine it with others for after-enjoyment. In practice, such a training of the imagination is rendered easy by beginning with simple materials on a rational psycho-physiological plan. As regards the development of memory by early sense impressions, we have indicated already the capacity for visualizing facts as the true ,-ource of all learning. CHAPTER V. THE CHILD'S EARLIEST CONCEPTION OF COMFORT AND DISCOMFORT DEVELOPING EMOTIONS. I. The Study of Emotions and Temperaments. II. Educational Direction of the Temperament. III. Sense Influence developing Sympathetic Emotions and a Happy Temperment. IV. Sympathetic Emotions fostering Innate Activities. L THE STUDY OF EMOTIONS AND TEMPERAMENTS. PREYER'S investigations, comparing the temperament of the newly born human being with that of the newly born animal at the same period of life, have fur- nished the world with most valuable details concern- ing pre-natal development and inherited propensities. He says : M Very little is known regarding the inherited or acquired functions of the brain ; although the truth and importance of these facts are recognized, and the Mwstion most important to be considered, is the earli- est phenomena as exhibited in each individual case, in order to avoid being confused by varied appearances and opinions. Above all, we must not doubt that the fundamental and spiritual functions which appear after birth, were created before birth, because, if they did not exist before birth, the question of their origin would remain forever unanswered." 136 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. Everything goes to indicate a hereditary transmis- sion of sensibility. This capacity does not evolve a new condition in every being out of insensible matter, but it evolves from an inherited quality in the ovum acted upon by different outside stimulants brought into activity, which, though hardly perceptible in the embryo, become distinct in the newly born child. The soul of the newly born child is not like a tablet on which the senses write their first impressions, so that from a unit of spiritual conception the manifold reciprocal united attributes may proceed. On the contrary, the tablet is already filled with many illegible and unrecognizable sounds ; traces of inscriptions of countless sensuous impressions derived from generations past. These remnants, defaced and indistinct, make us read the soul tablet without any ciphers, when its many changes are investigated at the very earliest period of the child's life. Still, the more attentively we observe the child, the easier becomes the deciphering of the inscriptions which it brought with it into this world. These, seemingly incomprehensible at first, we learn to see in time, and study in capital letters. Many of these qualities are never developed to useful- ness, so that it is a mistake to presume that a man can develop exclusively through his emotions, his concep- tions, and his power of will, by the use of his senses. This would give hereditary influences equal importance with individual activity in psychogenesis. No man can be called strictly self-made, nor is he capable of develop- THE STUDY OF EMOTIONS AND TEMPERAMENTS. 137 ing his psyche by his own life experience ; on the con- trary, each individual tries to cultivate and renew the experiences and activities of his ancestry. It therefore becomes very difficult to decipher the mystic language of the soul in the child. "My aim," says Preyer, "is to introduce the soul-deciphering as the chief duty of mothers." Preyer recognizes in each individual child two starting-points of development, namely, inherited propensities and pre-natally developed qualities ; stating that their existence is merely indicated in the germ, and depends for growth on favorable circumstances. This brings the mother and father at once face to face with the necessity of knowing the individual qualities of the child committed to their care, and their responsibility for the right unfolding of its higher inborn faculties into a good and happy being. When the Crown Prince of Prussia and his wife became aware of the self-consciousness and tendency to haughtiness of their eldest son, they at once looked for such a change of his surroundings as would coun- teract this probably inherited disposition of the young prince, a disposition necessarily nourished by his present circumstances. A parental care directed them finally to a peoples-kindergarten, presided over by a kindergartener of such integrity of character that she would not admit the child as a prince, but only as a child among children, in the miniature society where all were equal. Here the noble mother and father of 138 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. the prince watched for many hours a day the desired educational influence on their child of this equality. Power of early insight into the natures of children, with sufficient knowledge and a clear sense of parental responsibility as regards hereditary influences, will in- duce in parents educational precautions similar to those in training their offspring. The mother of the future will, more than an ordinary gardener, bend the sapling carefully in the direction in which it should grow, not waiting to let his heart draw him before she attempts to bend its then too inflexible atoms. Emotions indicate the most visible expressions of individual conceptions. These develop, according to Preyer, in the following or- der : first, impulsive ; second," reflexive ; third, instinc- tive ; and fourth, conscious movements. Preyer mentions the first experiment with his child on the twenty-third day of his life, using the flame of a candle as a test of conscious conception ; the boy followed the flame of the candle with his eyes again and again with such signs of intelligence that the father repeated the experiment more than twenty times on the same day. The boy seemed to expe- rience a pleasant sensation from the shining light of the flame. Preyer speaks also of early sensations of comfort and discomfort observed on new-born babes, and those from three to six days old, by placing un- pleasant substances on their tongues, such as quinine, salt, sulphur, and these and pleasant substances showing THE STUDY OF EMOTIONS AND TEMPERAMENTS. 139 the same effect as on adults, though the whole vital act was entirely a reflexive one. As regards the four kinds of motions, Preyer, refer- ring to their difference, origin, and value, remarks as follows: "The impulsive motions are the least control- lable, being fully independent of any peripheric stimu- lation, and already developed in the embryo. These appear even in sleep. Second, reflex movements depend on peripheric sensations, which in a normal condition follow very rapidly, though the movements are uncon- scious to the child. Third, instinctive movements based on previously received sensations, needing three asso- ciate nerve centers, connected morphologically. The reflex of sensuous impressions create impulsive emotional activities, aiming at a certain point, but unconsciously and evidently the result of inheritance. If a man or an animal makes a motion which was never made before, it is no longer an instinctive movement. Fourth, con- scious movements are in their lowest form imitative, depending on sensuous perceptions, and needing at least two associative nerve centers, as, conception of time, including space and pause. Conscious movements are impossible without the participation of the large brain ; while the first, second, and third kinds of movement may be made without the assistance of the brain. Preyer regards them as the basis of all existing varieties of sentient movements, of which No. 1 presents purely physical sensations. Xo. 2, peripheric, purely physical 140 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. sensations. No. 3, emotional. No. 4, concept ional sen- sations. The study of the child is the man's full understanding of the educational value of the foregoing knowledge. It is clear that two children, of whom one makes slow and passive movements, while the other answers in quick excitement to every sensation, must differ greatly in temperament, and that a great differ- ence will exist between these two children, both in their self-development and the labor that lies . before them. We have learned to recognize differences be- tween the normal condition of the child and a condi- tion of physical and mental weakness, but we ignore entirely those half-abnormal conditions which, not being correct in the beginning, grow worse and be- come injurious to the child, and consequently to man- kind. The temperamental condition of man presented for direction in the earliest period of his life is one of the most important manifestations, because it is based on inherited propensities, and yet it is the one most ignored. Comparing the man of the past with the man of the present, the increase of thought and action is striking. No one can fail to see what educa- tional and social advantages have been derived from the past by the present existing race of men. But, on the other hand, the utter lack of recognition of the rights of others, the blind, restless desire for change, the haste to accomplish, at all risks, the thirst for ex- citement, for glory and wealth, and the unlimited EDUCATIONAL DIRECTION OF THE TEMPERAMENT. 141 desire to gratify the lo\vcr passions, without consider- ation for the rights of fellow-men, in body and soul, are so closely connected with temperament in its he- reditary influence, that every mother should devote her- self to the study and guidance of the temperament of her child." H. EDUCATIONAL DIRECTION OP THE TEMPERA- MENT. Preyer says: "The first period of child life is the most uncomfortable one. It experiences hunger, thirst, cold, heat, fatigue, discomfort of position, bad air, pain of teething, and the denied desire to handle objects." He calls attention to a series of motions used by the child to give vent to the feelings, and warns the mother against the theory that a young child is not capable of distinguishing between comfort and discomfort. As long as the knowledge of these facts was left to tradi- tional influence, devoid of scientific truth, though based on mother love and mother care, an excuse could be found for not knowing positively the wants of a young child. If the human being is destined to enjoy at least equal privileges with the now scientifically reared fowls, fish, cattle, and even pigs, the mother of our age can be no longer excused for ignorance in he] special sphere, ordained to her by the Creator. A daily paper mentions that mothers seek mental stim ulation outside of their domestic life ; in the study 142 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. of languages, music, literature, painting, and in char- itable work ; proposing instead the attendance of mothers' classes. We are very far from wanting to limit woman's culture, and a broad contact with the interests of the past or the present social problems ; but considering the education of a human being, it seems as if woman would be hardly able to accomplish half the tasks which devolve on her at present. It would seem that attending lectures illustrated by able physicians, visiting hospitals, asylums, and kindergar- tens, thereby learning to compare a normal with ab- normal conditions of the child, and by discussing these topics with experienced mothers and nurses, would open to women a field of further study in the science of man, embracing psychology, physiology, history of man, history of education, the study of Froebel, the study of temperance, of crime, insanity, idiocy, suicide, and kindred topics. III. SENSE INFLUENCE DEVELOPING SYMPATHETIC EMOTIONS AND A HAPPY TEMPERAMENT. Accepting the idea that the gradual evolution of civili- zation is repeated in each man, we call attention once more to the creation and elevation of home and family life through the higher emotions and affections. Medical authorities have decided that the greater death-rate among children in our foundling houses, where the infants SENSE INFLUENCE. 143 arc provided with excellent bodily care which is in excess of that of their poor home, is caused by the want of motherly sympathies, of those thousand nameless acts of life-kindling and life-thrilling love, of fondling by brothers and sisters, of sympathetic smiles and laughter. For, to the child, the appropriate nourishment of its sympathies brings life and growth of body and mind ; and its lack, disturbance and death. So, too, the mo- notony of impressions to which we condemn our babies, by putting a shrill, unsympathetic whistle or harsh rattle into their eager little hands, for months without change, becomes unpardonable when considered educationally. The Greeks amused the growing infants with select toys and exquisite music, as if they were musical critics ; while we, in phrases like "What's the difference for a baby? the baby won't understand!" or, "The baby doesn't know anything ! " are committing an error bad beyond measure in its effects on the progress of the human race. The morning is dawning. Psychology and physi- ology, including heredity, begin in the nineteenth cen- tury to hold watch over the cradle. No longer will it be treated as a mere utility piece, to be pushed into a corner, but to take its place in the midst of the family, like the ancient altars on which each one lays down the highest offerings of his better nature. We blush when we compare our ignorance of child-nature with its own wonderful selfhood ; working silently and incessantly, as it does, to procure its mental pabulum and to nurture 144 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD , its expanding mind. We begin dimly to apprehend the sacred process of its self-enfoldment. The past of its long inheritance, the reflex of the world into which it is born and lives, trembles in its tender organism, escaping in its plays and dreams, as expression of its individualized sense impressions, to be organized and directed. Whoever has observed childish play in its purity, must have marveled at the fullness of thought and poetry which it clusters about the most trivial facts of life. No worldly wisdom, nor calculation, nor ambition, guides the little symbolizing artist from one mind-pic- ture to another. A few little stones, or dishes, or flowers, or pieces of colored paper, are sufficient to re-create the world of wonders it carries within. Whoever has not felt the fresh living breath of nature, childhood's sacred myths, the lofty dreams of eternal happiness bursting forth in holy flames from its temple of faith and hope and love, whoever has not looked into a child's eyes in such moments of divine ecstasy, has missed the highest baptism man receives from man. This is the time, these are the moods, when, all plastic and alert, the ardent young being is ready to grasp the hand of any sympa- thetic guide who will lead it into the arena of life. A thoughtful, observing mother knows how easily the youngest child is brought into sympathetic relations with the beautiful through music, sweet songs, softly spoken words, the charm of light and color ; and here is the task SENSE INFLUENCE. 145 to open forever the avenues of beauty and goodness. For this identifying of the sense of beauty with right- eousness, as a necessary harmonious connection of parts to the whole, is, in the culture of the child, of most vital importance. Refinement of pleasure, creating refinement of thought, leads to refinement of conduct, forming finally the habit of mind by which man judges his rela- tions to life and the world ; and it is on the earliest guidance of man in the child that we rely for the ful- fillment of our hopes of reform. Until the state, the com- munity, and the individual are able to concede this point as the early and sufficient preventive of our moral deficiencies, until the education of the inner man ceases to be subordinated to the practical need of the outer physical man, we shall never evolve into the highest perfection possible to the race. Almost nineteen centuries have passed under the ban- ner of Christianity, of brotherly love, of forgiveness of others' faults, of justice to all, and we are not far enough advanced to settle our differences of political opinion, except with murderous weapons. Francis Galton relates that when two herds of wild cattle meet, they send out on each side the best qualified animal to fight for their respective parties ; they fight in single combat, and their victory is respected as decisive. How much further has civilized and Christianized humanity pro- gressed than this? We stint the educational fund, but we y serenity, love, and attention in its sur- roundings. How many thousand hysterical women might thus have been saved from their painful con- dition in relation to society and the human race, by not transmitting this evil to other future generations ! The writer has observed that German children cry the most. After these are the English children ; then the French children ; and American children cry the least of any, especially those born in California. An unconscious direction of the child's individual freedom of the will, and the out-door life, doubtless produce this result. The surroundings are not less influential on the chJM's quietness. In France and America, families arc much smaller. This gives the newly born child the privilege of quiet environment. It prevents a multitude of too early and too violent sensoric emotions. The plastic features of the Oriental races, the perpetuation of the Roman nose among the French, and the production of the Vulpine nose of the Americans, and their fine plas- tic features as a race, seem to result from this early period of undisturbed and unemotional growth. It is by no means the intention of the writer to claim an absolute truth for these opinions, but it is certain that this period is the starting-point for all future mental diseases, such as idiocy, insanity, and crime, and should be considered with all the information our age is at present prepared to furnish. 150 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. Jean Jacques Rousseau speaks of the torture to which a young child is condemned when brought up in lux- urious surroundings, having the constant craving to touch things it can never reach. This shows clearly that children born in humble conditions, and still more, those born under the influences of a half-rural life, are those who regenerate the world by their higher phys- ical and mental powers, which city life so mercilessly deteriorates. It is evident that in acknowledging the influences of national, family, and temperamental types, we admit the influence of habits of unconscious imita- tion and inherited predispositions. In this idea Goethe sar.guinely predicts a race of children born educated, and may ho not be right ? In the child we deal with a self-conscious and self-willed human being, unable to speak, and yet often, indeed almost always, ignored in its sign language. Who can tell the cravings and dis- appointments and heart-breaking rebukes the child's efforts meet? People say, "It only puts things in its inouth, or throws them on the floor." We ask, where should it put things, and what is more natural ? Is not the mouth the seat of taste? as Froebel says, "The central organ of its short life's experiences. Besides, it has a desire to help itself in teething." After a month's longing, it may get what it has been craving. Once in turning it round it drops it and it remains un- returned. This one experience may lay the foundation of its obstinacy, willfulness, and rudeness. Who can SENSE INFLUENCED 151 tell? All we know is, that a child two months old already gave preference to a certain tune ; so its likes and dislikes for persons and objects were equally strong. And what was worse, it has not the power of expressing them. May it not often happen from this cause that naturally and gradually impatient manifes- tations arise which grow later into permanent ill-tem- per? It is natural that a child born in the eighteenth century must differ from a child in the nineteenth century ; that the child of the nineteenth century should produce different results from its earthly ex- periences from the child of the past, and that the mother and father should prepare their child in the nineteenth century for higher conditions than those of the past. Our over-excited mental condition shows plainly the errors of the dark side of advanced civili- zation. And herein must be said again, and cannot be enough repeated, that until we abolish ignorance and the tread-mill fashion of actions without individual power of conception by women, until woman learns to regard man as the product of evolutional development, and until she is able to comprehend that she, as the mother of the race, is by nature and functions divinely selected to work for the ideal better and happier man, until this condition exists, no lasting progress can be expected. 152 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. IV. SYMPATHETIC EMOTIONS FOSTERING INNATE ACTIVITIES. Preyer states that grasping movements, accompanied by expression of attention and pleasure, were made by children from four to five months old. From this period up to two years old and over, we deal with a self-conscious and self-willed being, unable to speak, yet whose sign-language is almost ignored. The child throws the spoon on the floor to enjoy the effect of sound. It stretches out its little hands in sympathy with all it sees and hears. What is its answer? A rattle, a ring, or a gray, unattractive ball is the meager share which falls into poor baby's eager hands from the bewildering variety of the glorious high-colored riches around it. Some one says, " Give it anything ; baby does not care what it is." This may be true in some cases, but doubtless this injustice or misappre- hension often leads to ill-temper in the child. Think how the celebrated naturalist, Edwards, the son of a Scotch cobbler, was misunderstood, when he was de- prived of all clothing but his nightgown, in the cold month of November, in order to hinder him from going to the beach to get crabs, fish, and shells to serve his investigations of nature. Notwithstanding, though not yet four years old, he went to the beach, and filled the lower part of his nightgown with shell-fish, etc. Psychological records demonstrate the absolute necessity SYMPATHETIC EMOTIONS. 153 of the earliest satisfaction of the emotional and sym- pathetic feelings of the baby, including harmonious and joyful surroundings, to break the monotony of its life. Rousseau, speaking of the better health of the chil- dren of the middle classes, and the fewer vexations and irritations in their early life, says : " What artist would remain indifferent if an unskilled, careless hand should misuse the strings of his instrument, bringing from it confused, unmusical chords, and inharmonious vibrations?" Does not the nervous system of the human being equal the most delicate instrument, and de- mand as much skill in manipulation as a fine harp or violin? With the increasing study of early psycho- logical development, the importance of the right con- ception of fundamental life becomes very great. According to previous statements, we find the inner- most germ manifested in the activities of the emotional and sympathetic feelings. No later period in life can be compared in its enormous power of perception, awakened by sympathy and imagination expressed by language, concluded by individual abstraction and comparison, with that demonstrated in the mental and physical activities of a child under three years old ; and this not as the result of intellectual capacities, but through sympathetic attraction, awakening an eager self- activity, which retains the impressions of those objects which meet its feelings. 154 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. Can we imagine a single day with its hundreds of new impressions and experiences for the child, a single walk of a three-year-old child? Can we imagine all that is unknown to it and has to be investigated by its own powers of observation, the houses, their divisions and uses, the animals he meets, the flowers and trees he sees, grandfather's house, grandmother's peculiarities, the dealings of the servants, and hundreds of other matters? The importance is not alone in the amount of practical knowledge gained, but in the higher spirit- ual connection of individual conception with the outer condition of things. We all enjoy the beautiful flashes from the inner workshop of our babies' minds, in mold- ing the outer world to suit their own fancies in word and action. How rudely and misunderstandingly we check and shorten this period of originality as to everything it sees, by seeking to make our baby boy or girl at once into the desired " little gentleman or lady"! The writer was sadly impressed with this, on seeing once, in a restaurant, a little girl not yet able to speak, who had been made to resemble a perfectly trained lady, and what was worse, she was aware of it ; she held and placed her spoon with one finger raised, took crackers with the tips of her fingers, wiped her mouth and fingers, and folded her napkin like a grown person. In short, in her every action conscious artificiality was shown, and what was still worse, it was to the delight of the company. Who SYMPATHETIC EMOTIONS. 155 can estimate the bad consequences of leading a child so early out of its individual nature, forcing it into a dead, senseless fashion before the exercise of its innate powers of forming and using its original, creative, sympathetic feelings, at an age when individual conception and impulses should be left entirely free from outward re- straint or misdirection in learning grown people's arti- ficialities and conventionalities? The child should be unconscious of observation, save when it is necessary to check it for actual wrong-doing. We cold-hearted, un- interested grown folks make our children suffer from our own mental conditions. Our own indifference, igno- rance, and selfishness may often be traced to the fact that no inward warmth or light was kindled in us by early cultivation of our sympathetic emotional feelings. Here the question may arise as to whether a child should be constantly furnished with new objects to^its hands, making it believe that everything was at its command. Not so ; yet no human being can be taught to exer- cise higher feelings toward its fellow-being before it can call something its own. This is manifest in the child's instinctive desire to make everything its own. But as soon as this disposition goes to the extreme, the child should be induced to give at least a part of its possessions to others, making the idea of mine and thine at once clear. Possession as well as desire to get, both need educational direction. Many bad habits arise from inherited dispositions, 156 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. but very many more entirely ignored by parents are caused by idleness, the waiting for food, and most of all a misapprehension of and disregard for the child's first desires. The sucking of its fingers or blankets, or biting the nails, is the result of neglect. Who knows the straits to which we drive our children by depriving them of their sports and plays in the open air, and of such right companionship as is needed to satisfy their vivid imaginations? And the writer's ex- periences have been such as to prove that a few weeks of isolated, in-door life may forever destroy the morals of the child. The glowing appreciation of a toy leads the child to magnify its qualities almost into an ideal. This association of toys is handed down from grandparent to grandchild, and who can tell the many feelings and domestic virtues clustering around such toys? Unfortunately, the restlessness of the present age, the narrowness of the homes, the cheapness and changing fashions even in plays, destroy the life-germ of these associations. Even the glorious period of pocket treasures is in danger of dying out ; the poor boy and girl are left to the mercy of ready-made clothing. Yet what a world of study of children's nature is offered by these hidden recesses of mind and body ! What sacred rubbish passes from hand to hand, from mind to mind, on the waves of imagination, curiosity, veneration, mystery, and the desire to have and to know ! What ideal beauty does not a child's mind find in a broken SYMPATHETIC EMOTIONS. 157 handle of a cup, a piece of colored glass, a string, a nail, a shell ! It is the life within the child that grows and glows in sympathy, knowledge, care, and generosity through these mere nothings, toward that great brother- hood of universal existence, these treasures often form- ing its first stop to classification. Mothers do not always see the bright side of this, but the kindergartener, half a child herself, understands it all. For instance, a little boy about six years old once took from his pocket a little envelope not two inches long. It had a stamp with a white dove hardly bigger than a pea. "That is from last Christmas," he said ; " McKay " (his brother, four years old) "gave it to me; I kept it since last Christmas." It were Avell if all enemies of pockets, of hidden treasures, and relic drawers could have seen the expression with which he spoke these words. The tiny stamp bore a flying dove. What impressions may the child have gained from this simple dove ? All the bird stories he had been told by dear mamma and at the kindergarten he saw incorporated in this picture, read- ing them over and over again in his own mind. Chil- dren are poets, poets in perceiving intuitively the harmonious association and beauty of their surround- ings. We should strengthen this gift, which chisels silently but fully the moral and intellectual evolution of man into a freer and higher conception of life, lead- ing him back to nature, by early sympathetic simplicity instead of intellectual negation. CHAPTER VI. EMOTIONS LEADING TO POWER OF WILL AND INDI- VIDUAL ACTIVITIES. I. Sensoric Emotions leading to the Development of the Power of the "Will. IT. The Power of Will directed and purified by early Emotional Impressions. III. The Power of Will demonstrated hy an Innate Desire for Individual Activity. IV. Fried. Froebel's Educational Method of using the Child's Innate Desire for Individual Activity. I. SENSORIC EMOTIONS LEADING TO THE DEVELOP- MENT OF THE POWER OF THE WILL. BEFORE attempting to direct the attention of the mother educationally to the successive development of the power of will, a previous study of the muscular movements, directed and analyzed by Preyer, is supposed to have taken place. Though these intuitive motions differ in every human being, certain motions which existed before birth continue after birth. They are impulsive and inde- pendent of will, anorganic process 'resulting from the center organs of the nerves situated in the spine. They are active without any previous peripheric irritation on the sensoric nerve. To this class belong the frequent mo- tions of the child's legs, arms, and fingers. The activity of a free will is not possible before the development of the power of conception. Repeated sensations and com- parison of emotion are necessary to discriminate between comfort and discomfort, before any distinct preference io SEX SOHIC EMOTIONS. 159 the act of a conscious will can be shown. The newly born child has no preference, and therefore no will. Without experience of self, without comparison of emo- tion, it is unconscious of outer effects. The will of man is not merely the product of knowledge gained by self- experience, but by learning to adjust his habits and motions to general needs. To judge the progress in development of the perceptive and executive powers of the child leading to the evolution of its will, requires a study of every motion. " I present," says Preyer, " my observations on my own newly born son and those of others, on the motions indicating the growth of will- power. It is impossible to recognize the will of the child in motions of mere muscular attraction, such as closing of the eye, or motions of the lips and tongue. But these become reflex motions when resulting from impressions of light, sound, or touch. The execution of such motions is, at the beginning, quite slow, and though their quickness gradually increases, they differ from those of the adult. This may be attributed to the fact that the connections are not fully made, so that these reflex motions have to travel a roundabout way. Any sensation strong enough to produce irritation will affect them. Action of a free and independent will does not exist before the development of the senses is sufficiently advanced to distinguish the qualities of different impres- sions, and to feel each impression separately, with the power of localizing them and comparing one with the 160 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. other, in order to recognize difference in space and time. This is the result of cause and effect, and finally leads to the conception and formation of will and idea. Without the activity of the senses there can be no sufficient con- centration in form and idea, for the power of will is actually inseparable from the emotional effect on the senses. The will ceases when the senses are inactive, as in deep sleep. This mutual dependence does not prove that the activity of the senses includes the power of will. On the contrary, the numerous impressions transformed into conceptions are turned into motoric movements, before the child is capable of directing its definite efforts ; and it is owing to the repeated impulsive, reflective, and instinctive sensations on the center of the motor nerves, that finally a co-ordinate and modified conception is developed." H. THE POWER OF WILL DIRECTED AND PURIFIED BY EARLY EMOTIONAL IMPRESSION. Close observation has revealed that the movements resulting from free acts of the will are at first invol- untary, and lead to a conception of facts. In the child's first six months, having learned a number of motions, it finds that the number of muscular contractions of which it is master does not sufficiently answer the ex- pression of its enlarged and more complex desires. Therefore new combinations are formed for new asso- ciations ; showing for the first time direct efforts to execute voluntary motions intellectually. " This was THE POWER OF WILL DIRECTED AND PURIFIED. 161 proved," says Prcycr, " in my child at four months old, when taking its food from a bottle, it held it." The child not only originated his motion, but it co-ordinated it with its purpose. The important fact, that "will" consists in a reciprocal activity of conception by the use of motions, isolating, combining, repeating, modifying, and hastening them, explains the great diffi- culty under which the child begins its experimental ac- tivity ; that is, the child has to teach itself by ex- perience. Any act of free will demands attention, each concentration of attention forming an act of will. Preyer says : " In the seventh and eighth weeks I became con- vinced that my child showed attention. But an inde- pendently directed attention to an object, and occupying itself with it, did not occur until it was four months old, when it noticed its own picture in the looking-glass." To control and direct these motoric conceptions at this early age becomes the work of education. Very few mothers follow intelligently this wonderful development, and still less are they capable of directing the child's will- power to intended exercises. Some mothers have learned the necessity of controlling the earliest habits of their children, good or bad habits being so easily planted at that age. But the child needs more than this. It requires not merely the subduing of the will in obe- dience from the first, nor does it require an arbitrary direction of its will, which would be the first step towards suppressing its originality and spontaneity of action. 162 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. The natural submission of the child's will, and its blind faith in the judgment of others, are an appeal. It shows its aptitude for learning. Its perfect obedience at this age is because of its small amount of clear self-will, which is similar to the hypnotizing condition of adults. As if to supplement the child's want of self-will or its marvelous powers of imitation, together with its intense interest and observation of the manners and actions of those around it, this power enables even a very young child to excel in accurate imitation of accent, pronuncia- tion, and intonation of many languages. Domestic ani- mals also show these imitative capacities. Dogs and cats acquire the peculiarities of the different nations among whom they live. Hence the saying in England, "The dog barks as his master speaks." The first impressions make the most lasting effects on the child. Therefore, educational influences which transmit good or evil results from generation to generation cannot be too earnestly studied by mothers, for with them lies the physical, men- tal, and moral development of the child in the cradle. The world begins to recognize this as the dawning truth of the age. m. THE POWER OP WILL DEMONSTRATED BY AN INNATE DESIRE FOR INDIVIDUAL ACTIVITY. The most superficial observer of man and nature knows that no living organism, of even the lowest order, js ever absolutely inactive. In each plant and animal THE POWER OF WILL DEMONSTRATED. 163 form, in spite of the apparently lifeless stillness of rest, there exists, though unobserved, a continued activity, preparing for the next step toward perfection or de- struction. The seemingly dead plant is preparing the fresh sap for new growth. In spite of the winter sleep of some animals, the activity of their organism is not annihilated, and their physical activities return with the warmth of the sun. The words life and activity may be considered, therefore, as synonymous, as life does not exist without activity. In plant life we call this activity, whether justly or not, "vegetative powers"; in animal life, "instinct"; a conscious use of activity designed to accomplish a definite result, by means of distinct efforts, wi- call in man, labor. Prof. Preyer refers constantly to the labor or activities of his own and other children for their mental and physical development, by instinc- tive movements. The opening and closing of the hands, the almost perpetual motion of arms and feet, prepare the strength for use of the muscles as well as for gain- ing experiences in space. Preyer tells us that to this end the instinctive habit of throwing things in all direc- tions observed in his boy belongs to all children. His child's lack of knowledge of distances was shown at two years and a half old, when desiring to hand a piece of paper up to his father, who was looking out of the second-story window ; this was also shown in his continued activity with an elastic glove, which he used as a toy, studying the effect of expansion and 164 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. contraction, and when playing with his mother's hair; all these activities being experimental and educational to the child. Preyer mentions the considerable time necessary for this purpose. How often must the child grasp in vain, with his little hand, that sensitive in- strument of human development, before it can reach or hold the desired object. And this is because it has to teach itself, by repeated experiences, a conception of direction, distance, muscular contractibility, and weight. Nothing is less undertood than the child's instinctive impulse to handle everything it sees. If the opposi- tion to the satisfaction of this instinct was based upon the fear of leading the child too early to an intellectual development, scientific facts would need to be con- sulted ; but unfortunately the child falls a victim to this opposition of one of the most important factors of human self-development, the order of which is, according to Preyer : First. Activity of the senses, awakening emotional feelings. /Second. Activity of the emotional feelings, connecting and disconnecting impressions. Third. Activity in comparing impressions in space and time, abstracting individual feelings and actions. Fourth. Activity in controlling individual feelings and actions, by force of will and reason. Fifth. Activity in developing consciousness of self- hood. FRIED. FROEBEL'S EDUCATIONAL METHOD. 165 IV. FRIED. FROEBEL'S EDUCATIONAL METHOD OF USING THE CHILD'S INNATE DESIRE FOR INDIVIDUAL ACTIVITY. It is interesting to compare the conformity which exists between the previously cited psycho-physiological conception of the innate activities of the child, by Preyer, with the philosophical and educational concep- tion demonstrated by Froebcl's developing principles. To him we owe the demand to connect these instinctive activities with the earliest education of the child, lead- ing it gradually and methodically from unconscious to conscious play, and from unconscious to conscious labor, demonstrating the so-called "new education" with its claim "through work to work," and knowing by doing. Admitting that the child's activities, as revealed by its nature, were received in all ages with the instinctive genius of mother's love and mother's care, ho made the dealing of the mothers with their babies a practi- cal study. Not among conventional women, but among the most natural, simple, loving mothers in the forest of Thuringia. Here Frocbel found ample material to furnish ideas for his mother and nursery songs, his ball and round games. Prof. Hermann Poesche, one of his disciples and a distinguished trainer of kindergarteners at Berlin, wrote a very interesting essay on the antiquity of these songs. The songs and finger plays prove the possibility of 166 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. early communication and of impressing the child edu- cationally with its surroundings, instilling meaning by sounds and motions, when words are not understood, thereby laying the foundation of a lasting play activity. These play activities Froebel classes as follows : first, the innate love of the beautiful ; second, the innate love of play ; third, innate love of music; fourth, innate love of society ; fifth, innate love of forming and shap- ing; sixth, innate love of building and constructing; seventh, innate love of cultivating the ground; eighth, the love of the spiritual. It is not our purpose to refer in detail to the means he proposes for gratifying this love by leading the child to occupy itself with the ob- jects it naturally craves. His aims are to give the op- portunity to the child to express its higher spiritual qualities in its play activities, at an age when the nature of the child can in no other way be brought to light and knowledge, and in no other way controlled and directed. Dr. Tiregoff says: "En prennant soin du ber$eau de Thomme en instituant les jeux de son enfant, en lui qpprenant appeler les premieres paroles les femmes deviennent les architectes princlpeaux de la socicte, dont la pierre anguliere est pose par leurs mains." In taking care of the cradle of mankind, adjusting the child's plays to the first words it utters, makes women to be the architects of the age by laying the corner-stone to the social structure. The plasticity and elasticity of the psycho-nervous organization of the child makes its cul- FRIED. FROEBEL'S EDUCATIONAL METHOD. 167 ture and life perfection inseparable from its earliest conception and direction ; a plasticity shown clearly in the learning and use of one or more languages, besides the exact meaning of words and their connection with persons and objects, a capacity which considerably diminishes in later years. This educational phenomenon needs grave consider- ation, in order that we may be just to the individual, and to mankind at large. In this sense, the education of the human race rests on the woman. But as long as woman stands outside the platform of logic, and inde- pendence of thought ; as long as she remains indiffer- ent to the great questions of the time, that is, the wel- fare and happiness of mankind, of which she and her children are but a part, both will remain narrow, selfish, and indifferent toward the higher religion of the one great brotherhood, "in the elevation of the human race." To Froebel not a moment of child's play activities is insignificant; he requires them to be used methodically to develop the power of will, emotions, and intellect, and this at an age when neither words nor prohibition can be serviceable. When Preyer said to his child, "You are not hungry," and it laid down its biscuit, his commanding words controlled its will. This shows that its will-power was still feeble and flexible, and proved its aptitude for direction. The practice for the mother consists not so much in using just such means, but in a systematically arranged 168 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. method of principles in accordance with the nature of the child and its educational environments. This is not so difficult if both parents devote themselves to it with conscientiousness, being careful not to do one thing and say another, or to say one thing to-day and contradict it the next day. No other result but damage to the will and character of the child can be expected, if it is left to ignorant, unprincipled, and inconsiderate nurses, or if left to parents who have neither conception of, nor preparation for, their high office. The main point of educating the will lies in the living of the parents with their children. " Let us live with our children," is Froebel's motto, expressing the idea that even the .living for the children is insufficient. We should live with them, laying problems in their way to be solved, requiring the creation of will, as well as the suppression of the will, of thoughtfulness, of self-denial, kindness, justice, steadiness, making our own actions illuminated images of perfection, which the child is sure to feel. The elements of repressive movements of which Preyer speaks are of great educational importance, in connection with the auxiliary virtues of attention, con- trol of will, cleanliness, order, truth, obedience, and reason. A neglect of this may become injurious to the whole character, as want of insight and good-will may lead to shiftless, capricious actions. Modern pedagogues attempt to secure moral educa- tion by manual education, by studying the innate play FRIED. FROEBEL'S EDUCATIONAL METHOD. 169 activities which need to be controlled morally in the cradle. The productivity of the baby harmonizes with its growing power of reason, imagination, emotion, will, and bodily strength. Educators have to depend on the amount and direction of this strength. Meanwhile the restless, unsteady child has to be brought in contact with but a few objects, prompting it by a careful insight and direction to gain the habit of steadiness. The .slow, lifeless child needs to be animated and urged. Froebel's occupations are adapted to the average child's tempera- ment, and to a slow gradual unfolding. Simple as they are, they form a unity, to reach successively the wider plains of individual conception and creative activities. All higher pleasures of existence rest on and result from these inborn creative forces. The child conceives them more easily and clearly than in after life. To gratify the creative forces each step forward follows logi- cally the last step taken, reaching out for perfection in each and all. The terminal point, according to Froebel, is directed to play activities. Individual activity connects the very young child with the outward world. Its experience consists in controlling and being controlled. These lead the child into the arena of the cultivation of social virtues. The child delights to be useful. Its own activity becomes its best mentor. Words are not needed ; self-experience and direction suffice. The child longs for success. Every success strengthens its powers, every failure weakens them. Education directs the will 170 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. and action into the success of the true, the beautiful, and the good. What our children need is animation. Inborn energies to action and to understand things die for want of animation. Here rich and poor stand on the same footing. The writer's experience in this respect forms one of her life's griefs. As the instinctiveness of the soul forces rests on unknown spiritual strength, so the instinc- tive creative forces, even in the child three years old, rest on the unknown relation of soul to soul ; and no one feels this more keenly than the child. V. "BABY'S DELIGHT" BALL PLAYS, ACCORDING TO FRIED. FROEBEL, PARTLY ARRANGED BY EMMA MARWEDEL. The play with the ball was known among the an- cients, where it served through all stages of life for pleasurable recreation and gymnastic exercises. To them, physical education was an auxiliary science to poetry, music, history, and oratory. The ball used for this purpose passed from the hands of the baby to those of the poet, the artist, and the philosopher. The Teutons made ball plays national, and their ball houses, built expressly for the purpose, were found all over Germany ; until, at the end of the sixteenth century, billiards supplanted the other more manly sports. Ball plays have been used in various forms in the latter part of the last century, and are uniting the two sexes to-day in natural and healthy exercise. Dancing parties "feABY's DELIGHT." 171 seem to have outgrown our realistic sense of amuse- ment, and make room for a new genius in play, giving the two sexes natural pleasures in the open air and broad daylight, in which the beautiful Greek ball fig- ures in the front rank. The introduction of the ball, the typical form of life and motion, as the first educa- tional toy of the baby in the cradle, is of recent date, and is due to our great master, Froebel. Its simplicity of form and attractiveness of color and motion are the best means of awakening early attention. But the still greater importance of the ball plays consists in the mental unity of love and joy developed through these childlike play communications between mother and child. Day by day, step by step, she perceives the growing intellectual powers under her affectionate plays, doubting if it be her love, her play, or the ball that affects her darling most. As for the baby, it lies in its very nature to use the ball like any young animal ; to roll it, to toss it, to jump after it, finding in it the magic attraction of motion and emotion, life in life. The seven cards contain thirty illustrations and ex- ercises for earliest ball plays with the baby, called Baby's Delights. They are not lessons, but soulful and mirthful plays for the home circle, needing the sweetest voice, the best speaker, and the merriest laughter, while the cards explain themselves. The fol- lowing may serve as hints : first, keep perfectly rhythmical measure in all motions, in speaking and 172 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. singing. Second, while good singing is essential, good speaking is of almost greater importance. The writer, being amazed at the singsong manner of reading in her elementary department, gave much thought and effort to find the cause of this bad habit, even among children carefully watched and directed. Suddenly it was made clear ; the cause was Mother Goose's rhymes, which, putting the accent mechanically on the last sylla- ble, created a vicious elocution, a habit transmitted from one generation to another. Nothing inspires a child (even animals feel the same effect) more than the modu- lation of the voice, the soul of the words. This no one is more capable of perceiving than the child ; and if for nothing else, each mother should be prepared to be a soul elocutionist rather than an art elocutionist, speaking, singing, and asking with facial expression. If you cannot perceive the electric flashes passing between your giving and the child's taking, your efforts are lost. Never demand the attention of the playing child longer than it is willing to give it. Play depends on creative dispositions and impulses, which are free born, never forced. The rhymes accom- panying the illustrations are collected from many sources, wherever they were found, without taking time to ask permission to print them. Some very graceful little gems are original or translated by Mary G. Campbell ; some were boldly transferred from Miss Peabody's little book of ball plays ; while the music comes from the "BABY'S DELIGHT." 173 distinguished composer, H. B. Pasmore, San Francisco, and Dr. N. Batchelder. In order to find a normal type to answer a methodical unfolding of the human being, and to satisfy the natural desire to play with and to enjoy colors and motions, Froebel, the pedagogue, introduced as first toy gifts the soft-colored worsted ball, psychology stating that with its first entrance into life each child is solf-experimentally active through its senses, and that, after a lapse of a few months, it becomes attracted by color and form, supplemented by a .sensation through which a conception of position and direction is early awakened. But with that great step forward in mental development, by comprehending itself as a whole in parts, and parts subjected to a whole, the child experiences connection and disconnection, and relative conditions, gaining successively the idea of space, shape, and time, developed by experience in its own ex- istence. Recognizing itself as a whole, the child desires a whole.; steadily refusing a part of the whole. The ball, in the order of its simplicity in form, its attractiveness and connection with all forms, is related philosophically, symbolically, analytically, and typically, as the nucleus (egg-shaped) with all life. Therefore Froebel selected the soft worsted ball, presenting in its simplicity the greatest manifoldness, as a funda- mental basis, from which the child is led by right seeing, right feeling (handling), and right hearing, to experience an extensive series of sensuous impressions. 174 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. First, relating to the shape of the ball ; fruit, vegeta- bles, flowers, seeds, leaves, eggs. Second, relating to the motion of the ball, indicating position and direction ; up, down, right, left, middle, front, back, over, under, high, low, here, there, near, far, behind, between, com- ing, going, rolling, jumping, turning, swinging, throwing, catching, hopping, creeping, stopping, running, knock- ing loudly and knocking softly. Third, relating to the color, surface, size, and weight of the ball ; rough, rough- est, smoothest, large, smaller, smallest, heavy, light, lightest, with shades of color. To accomplish this, Froebel urges the mother to provide herself with six balls. With four or six balls the mother begins her lovely task. Hanging the red ball, on account of its brightness, over the cradle of her child, she directs his attention to it, till he follows it with his eyes, by swinging the ball forward and backward, keeping per- fect time and giving her explanation either in rhyme or prose. What a family delight will be the higher con- ception of these efforts by proving the normal condition of baby's senses, in hearing, seeing, touching ! The hap- pier and livelier the manner is in which the sympa- thetic feelings of the baby are aroused, the more lasting will be the impressions it receives. See, it begins to stretch its hands, to listen to the words and tunes, follow- ing the motion of the ball, proving that it has learned to connect facts with ideas. Recognizing in the ball, further- more, the nucleus of all rounded forms in nature, I have "BABY'S DELIGHT." 175 arranged a series of ball-like forms to be placed succes- sively in the hands of the baby, to direct the perceptive faculties to the existing similarities and dissimilarities, giving the child the necessary opportunity for a playful and joyful self-education by occupation with the follow- ing objects: 1. A number of solid balls, differing in color, size, and material, of which not one should be smaller than the baby's mouth. (Patented Color Ball Play, by E. Marwedel.) 2. A number of solid balls divided into zones, differing in color, size, and material, to be rolled and laid in figures. 3. A number of solid balls, divided into rings, differing in color, size, and material, to be strung on a cord, and laid in figures, awakening the sense of order and beauty. These rings should be so arranged on a long string, which the child, or those who play with the child, can join or separate. (Patented by E. Mar- wedel.) 4. A number of ball-like forms, as found in nature, consisting of apples, peaches, pears, flowers, and vegetables, made of rubber, porcelain, papier-mache, or any other appropriate material, to serve the child's amusement and self-occupation, developing its faculties of perception and comparison. This should be aided playfully by the adults, without depriving the child of gaining for himself independently a knowledge of cause and effect, an educational point of great importance, even at so early an age. 176 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. VI. FROEBEL'S MOTHER AND COOING SONGS. In man, immediately after birth, we perceive much less extensive powers associated with co-ordinate move- ments of the muscles than in animals. On account of their greater multiplicity in man, they need a longer period of gradual, in an educational sense methodical development ; making clear the impossibility of perfect- ing such a complicated and associated mechanism before birth. The capacities of man lie dormant, depending upon his experience and a stimulant from without to make him aware of what he is able to be and to do. The human child has to learn. Changing but in form, the excellence of animal instincts lessens in the same degree as general intellectual capacity broadens, as is observed in the savage and the domesticated animal. The former loses the keenness of his instinctive powers under the shelter of civilization, in the same proportion as he gains the capacity of acquiring general culture. While the child of civilized races progresses slowly in its mental and physical growth before completing its maturity, it has to undergo many changes of habits and thoughts of life. D Owing to the flexibility of his limbs, any impression on the still growing man remains, influencing the whole organism with an everlasting stamp from the very earli- est period of life. The human tendency to form habits by participating in and imitating the actions of others, FROEBEL'S MOTHER AND COOING SONGS. 177 must be considered the prime mover in the evolutional, physical, moral, and intellectual development of the child. They do not consist in positively acting forces, example and surroundings being sufficient; and in this sense is to be understood Froebel's demand to com- pare the child with the plant, and its slow, gradual development, to be placed in a child's garden. In this child's garden, Froebel says to the child : " Grow ! grow in full harmony with thyself and thy surroundings. Grow with all the vigor of which thy nature is capable. Grow to be thy full self, and nothing else than thyself. Make thyself, morally, intellectually, and physically." To whom did Froebel intrust the care of this growth ? To whom did he look forward to prepare and fertilize the ground? It was the mother! His heart was with the mother, in whom he recognized the sole motor of all higher principles and devotional virtues. His words are no more heard, but the most eloquent interpreter of his thoughts and aims lingers still among us with that tenacity of will which helps eminent minds in the frail- est bodies. A clear knowledge concerning the bodily care and de- velopment of the human mind in the child is found only in specially cultivated mothers, while, without even a conception of its need, an instinctive love and traditional fancy are thought sufficient. Froebel attempts to furnish the mother with the knowl- 178 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. edge to which she is entitled by the laws of God and her nature, predicting enthusiastically that "the mother," once becoming conscious of her duties, will lead in the highest of all sciences, namely, "that of man." Froebel's nursery songs, consisting of a series of poems, point first to the feeling of the mother herself beholding her infant. They may be called imperfect as poems, even in the original German, the words not being equal to the superiority of the ideas, a fact necessarily affecting the American translation. But in both cases only their outer form is injured. Froebel requests the mother to receive the child as a special gift of God in religious devotion as a new, valuable light to human society ; as a new germ of a responsible human mind, to be recog- nized from its first hour in its higher rights of the soul, to bestow equal share of spiritual influence on her new- born immortal child, as she offers physical care to its body. Most young mothers play with their children as with their dolls. Any childish remark serves as amusement, ignoring any connection with education. Froebel says it is impossible to correct in the second year the wrong- doings of the first year, thereby heaping the shortcom- ings of one year on those of the next. Mothers will say, " As soon as my child understands what"I say, I give my commands and forbiddings, teaching it to control its will and to do right." What a mistake ! When the child un- derstands these words, the most important time has been FROEBEL'S MOTHER AXD COOIXQ SONGS. 179 lost. If good habits and inclinations, obedience, order, cleanliness, kindness, and other virtues have not been rooted in the first year, it will be most difficult to uproot bad habits and to implant new ones. Frocbel attempts to convince mothers that the highest self-sacrificing love, without the knowledge of these shortcomings, may lead the child to crimes and sin. Science demonstrates that almost with life itself the child discriminates between pleasure and the opposite. The nursery songs are intended to awaken the higher emotional feelings which grow from the sensational impressions the child experiences from its surround- ings. Numberless children remain dull, indifferent, and mentally asleep, because no one arouses their sympa- thy and emotional feelings. Therefore, no elderly nurse, who is unable to play with the child, nor any untrained and uncultivated young girl, who is often rough and silly, should have the care of its mind and body. Nurses should be trained in schools for nurses, accord- ing to Froebel's principles. The first natural relation of the child is with its mother. Nothing develops this higher union more strongly than motherly bodily and mental care. "It is too stupid ! " said a mother who only took her child occasionally from the arms of the nurse. It is no less important how the baby is placed in the cradle at night, and who puts it to sleep. A sweet, short prayer by the mother, a soft, melodious morn- 180 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. ing song before the child leaves the cradle, will affect a child in opposition to the thoughtless harshness of the business spirit of the day. The first vague impressions made on the senses of the child are perceived little by little. By many repetitions they are transmitted into a conception, from which and by which it gains at last an individual emotional feeling. This early visible process explains the most wonderful and mysterious relation between mother and child, and it is a great error to believe that the bodily development of the child demands an undisturbed monotony of its mental condition. On the contrary, no period of life connects body and mind more closely than the earliest one. Therefore, physical and mental exercise have to keep equal steps ; plenty of food, plenty of sleep, with much-considered simple excitement. The nursery songs offer this by muscular exercises, through play of the limbs, united with mental nourishment by tunes awaken- ing emotional feelings. The activities of life and joy thus awakened improve health ; even the digestive func- tions developing that power of resistance in sickness so often missed, the absence of which becomes fatal in fat, lifeless babies. Activity is predestined for man. He is born with cer- tain organs to support his free creative powers for labor. The first development of these organs is the prerequi- site of the following activities, reached by muscular exercises, a truth manifested by nature through the con- FROEBEL'S MOTHER AND COOIXG SOXGS. 181 stant movements of the hands and feet of the child, accompanied by its pleasure. To facilitate this natural desire, a mattress has been lately invented, giving the child free scope of exercises ; likewise a softly lined basket, by a physician, which promotes free position and motion, and in which the child is to be carried by hand, thus preventing carrying on the arms, and in the brain- shaking carriages. Gymnastic exercises are no longer questioned as to the quickening of the circulation of blood, and they have still higher value in the case of the body. Besides, by the early use of the limbs the child gains that independence of will which, by free activity, develops energy toward certain aims necessary to form "force of character," without which no higher moral power exists. The moral development at such early period of life depends entirely on impressions made on the senses, the most important being that of touch. The simple move- ment of kicking may be turned into a measured gymnas- tic exercise, accompanied by song imitating the stamping of horses' feet, or the clattering of wheels in a mill. The influence of music has been tried successfully on babies not older than two months. With the introduc- tion of the kindergarten, the finger plays concerning the family circle are spread almost around the globe, but they should not be less " a mother's song." It was a charming idea of Froebel to point to the family and the loving relation of each to the other. 182 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. A great part of Froebel's exercises are for the earliest development of the hand as the most important organ of human labor, and as furnishing the best means for a gradual growth of the brain, which develops very slowly into its normal condition. Furthermore, as all human development starts from the labor of the hand for human comfort and art, it is evident that manual ability must not be neglected at the earliest part of life to prepare the skillful and trained hand, so important to the laboring classes. The difference between children under different men- tal and physical treatment has proved clearly how much is neglected. Good or bad habits instilled in the first year of the life of a child will last forever. Little children still carried in the arms of the mothers have shown themselves very unhappy if their clothes were not placed and folded "just right." This may seem to be an insignificant matter in education, but it is not. The baby's attention must be directed to the right actions of its older sister and brother ; let simple impres- sions be repeated, supplementing and strengthening them by the expression of your features, giving approval and animating language to all good deeds of the young mind. The recognition of gestures and manners, a kind or un- kind face, is astonishingly great and well defined in babies, and it has been known that very young children copied all the peculiarities of their nurses. FROEBEL'S MOTHER AND COOING SONGS. 183 Moral education depends mostly on the efforts to overcome innate egotism with the care and love for others. Far from destroying the self-will, without which no self-esteem exists, it is necessary to counter- act in the first months that selfishness which leaves no place for others. It is very true, a child can express only its own needs, as it feels only for itself. It knows nothing outside of itself, but the pleasure to acquire what suits or pleases its senses. This is shown in its continued graspings after anything in its reach. This must not be identified with selfishness. It is absolutely necessary to develop its self-will. Before man has any- thing he can call his own, he can neither be active nor use his influence over others. He can hardly show, his love by tokens and actions. As soon as a child is able to reach what it desires, and hold it, it should be led to return it or to give it to its sister or brother ; in short, every possibility should be used educationally to dimin- ish selfishness. To this end, give the child very early opportunity to fulfil certain obligations. Froebel's finger plays and songs serve, however, to further this end. The child, small as it may be, is sure of the use of its hands for itself and for others. It takes care of the ground, of plants and a garden. Froebel de- mands flower-pots for every nursery. The mother, in watering the flowers, he says, with the baby in her arms, allowing it to place its little hand on the watering-pot, singing afterward a song from the nursery book, forming 184 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. the watering-pot with the fingers and flowers and buds, and the older children representing the gate of the garden, does a great deal, and even the smallest child should be allowed to have the care of one or more pet animals, the feeding being always a great delight to small children. The close relation to nature, of which the child is un- conscious, is demonstrated by the great affection the child shows for animals. This affection, used and cultivated, has to be turned into love and kindness to its own kind. Shape, color, motion, in short, all characteristics of differ- ent material, the child will learn to understand by the com- parison of animal and plant life, as shown in the Froebel nursery songs, "The Barn-Yard" and "The Garden Gate." The peculiar sounds of different animals, so easily and joyfully imitated by the small child, should be used in its first attempts to speak. "Bow-wow" of the dog, "moo- moo " of the cow, the croak of the frog, the crow of the rooster, blend or present a number of sounds of foreign languages. Even the highest of all feelings the religious feeling can be united with the first observation of nature the works of God. Froebel arranged the finger play, "the bird's nest," for this purpose. It symbolizes the pro- vision for those God created ; the care of the bird parents indicating the care and love of God for all, man and ani- mals. Without the actual making of the nest, with its little fingers, the child would have no conception of the FROEBEL'S MOTHER AND COOING SONGS. 185 abstract meaning. Not the words, but the visible impres- sions of the birds' nests, the tune of the music, the en- lightened face, the compassionate delicacy of the mother's voice, work educationally in elevating the small child. Nothing leads the child nearer to God than the visible impressions of creation on the senses, a reason why children should be for the first months as much as pos- sible in the open air, placed under the influences of the beauty and harmony of nature. A baby awakening in the fresh air, amidst trees, lawns, and birds and beauti- fully colored flowers (like the eminent botanist, Lin- naeus), will be very differently developed from another brought up in-doors, not leaving silent, gloomy rooms, where there could be no emotional impressions on the senses. The Mother's Nursery and Cooing Songs provide : 1. For the gymnastic of the limbs; 2. For the recog- nition of the beauty and usefulness of nature ; 3. For family and social relations, by exercises of the hand, finger, leg, foot, and senses, supplemented by songs and music, and should be in the hands of each mother. How much merit of FroebeFs originality we may feel obliged to assign to educational reformers previous to him, we have to confess that no one wove a similar filigree net-work of tunes, silvery threads of love, and childish plays to suit and fit our babies in the cradle. The tender little hand, with its still more tender fingers, he uses as the symbol of family unity. Not a 186 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. single member of the whole, great or small, does he leave out. Family unity the nucleus of earth's hap- piness and earth's goodness as a part of the large brotherhood, he sings and plays into the awakened soul of the baby. Love and tenderness are the educational atmosphere in which he wants the young child to be continually nourished and trained. The following present a few specimens: TO A CHILD. 187 TO A CHILD. O child ! O new-born denizen Of life's great city, on thy head The glory of the morn is shed Like n celestial benison ! Here at the portal thou dost stand, And with thy little hand Thou openost the mysterious gate Into the future's undiscovered land. Longfellow. 188 CONSCIOUS MOTHERHOOD. FROEBEL'S MOTHERS' AND NURSERY SONGS. 189 NOB. 1, 2, 3, 4. Pigeon-House. 1. The Pi y f on- ITouiif. 1. Their Flirt,'! t. 3. The ^hutting of the M