Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2007 with funding from
IVIicrosoft Corporation
http://www.archive.org/details/educationthroughOOmcmirich
EDUCATION
THROUGH THE IMAGINATION
"Where there is no vision the people perish."
Education
Xhrough the Imagination
BY
MARGARET McMILLAN
LONDON
SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO., LiM.
N Paternoster Square
1904
l-BlO&Z.
To THE Memory
OF
My Mother
JEAN CAMERON McMILLAN
IN ABIDING LOVE AND GRATITUDE
141925
PREFACE
The importance of the role played by Imagination in
the higher branches of mental activity has been long
admitted by the learned. Sir Benjamin Brodie, speaking
at the British Association in 1859, alluded to the Im-
agination as " that wonderful faculty — the source of
poetic genius — the instrument of discovery in Science
without which Newton would never have invented
fluxions, nor Davy decomposed the earths and alkalies,
nor woiild Columbus have found another continent."
Popular opinion does not incline to regard imagina-
tion as a very important faculty for all. The imaginative
person is usually regarded as a visionary. Poets, painters,
romancers, children — these are supposed to represent
the imaginatives. People enjoy their works more or
less and indulge them in their fancies as children. But
they^ are apt to regard imagination as a kind of weak-
ness in practical men.
And yet nothing justifies us in prescribing imagination
to a few occupations and persons. It is the creative
power of the mind which gives life to all work. The
discoveries of science, and the creations of art, represent
certain forms of its activity — forms which attract and
compel attention. But it is as reasonable to say that
there is light only on the summits of hills as to say that
there is creative power only in the minds of artists and
scientists. There is light in dungeons and caves, in
X. Preface
workshops and fields. The brain of every man and
child is a kind of world in which various degrees of
creative energy are represented. Day-dreaming, reverie,
hallucinations, etc., are abortive forms of imagina-
tion. All our vague hopes, our shadowy schemes
represent as it were the twilight of creative energy.
In no mind, save that of the lowest type of idiot is such
obscure activity long absent. But with every conscious
•effort and desire, the mind rises into a fuller light. In
the days of craftsmanship and hand labour people rose at
once into the upper sunshine, in working. To-day the
"hands" of the factory, engaged in mechanical labour
live in a state of suppression — the " lamp of the soul "
literally put out. And yet never before in the history
of the race did the creative faculty — always supremely
active in the field of industrial and practical life — find
fuller embodiment than it does to-day in the work-a-day
world. The world of primal needs and desires and
labour was always the great world of Imagination.
Such it remains and will ever remain. We may feel
certain that if we could measure the amount of imagina-
tion which is now consecrated yearly to the improve-
ment of mechanical and industrial appliances, we should
find it to be much greater than is the amount that is
consecrated during the same period to all the fine arts.
Moreover the demand for artizans possessing this
qualification of imagination is increasing, and becoming
.acute. So acute that not only public representatives
acknowledge it, but the learned men of the nation feel
it their duty to speak of it. At the last meeting of
the British Association, reference was again made
to the Imagination — not as the gift of the scientist
alone — but as the faculty whose power and exer-
cise vivifies and pervades all the fields of human
labour, and particularly the industrial world. Pro-
fessor Dewar, in an interesting speech declared that
the failure of elementary education up to the present,
was a failure to develop and train the imagination of the
Preface xi.
•children of the masses. The learning of facts and of
formal arts, the training of the verbal memory, the
discipline of the class-room and school may be good
things in their way. But when the youth of the country
have left the school-room, when they are out in the open
of industrial life, competing with educated workmen of
other lands, mechanical training and formal attainments
will not carry them far; and to business men this is already
apparent. It is they who complain most bitterly of the
results of mechanical systems. On every hand there is
a note of unrest and disquiet. Authorities are ex-
ercised on the question of technical education, and the
advisibility of opening schools of research. A new
order of workmen — not the mere " skilled " workmana#-
but one who may possess skill but should also possess
enterprise, insight, initiative^ in a word imagination^ is
in demand. Routine methods, unreasoning fidelity to
mere use and wont, are no longer regarded as marks of
superiority even in the prosaic walks of life.
But if Imagination plays such an important part in
every sphere of life, it can hardly be wise to ignore it in
the elementary school. Though very few studies have yet
been made on Imagination in children, still it is very
generally admitted that this faculty is conspicuously
present in the young. It is conspicuous — probably only
because it is precocious. It takes the lead of Reason,
and so suggests in its first development that divorce
from reality, which many persist in regarding as the
essential nature of Imagination. The child's Imagina-
tion is allied to that of the primitive man, and eveni n
a less degree to that of the madman. He becomes
readily the dupe of his own suggestions. And yet it is
through the Imagination that the Reason begins to
declare itself, and finally to appear as a kind of rival
faculty, disputing the sovereignty of the first comer.
The child begins by seeing fantastic resemblance, which
is the first step towards the perception of real resem-
blances — that is to say to reasoning by analogy. More-
xii. Preface
over, a tale is very often for the young child a kind of
answer to a pressing question. The legends and myths
of primitive races are not a mere aesthetic creation of
the Imagination — they are also an effort to explain the
origin of things. Their makers were not capable of seeing
objective analogies — but they saw silbjective analogies.
They had a logic of images, if not of ideas. Mankind
cannot wait through long kges for full and clear answers
to urgent questions. And where he cannot find he
creates. In such creation the germ of reason appears.
" Between creative imagination and rational research
there is a community of nature — each pre-supposes the
faculty for seizing resemblances." Thus Imagination is-
at once the substitute and the " fore-runner" of Reason.
The child-mind develops then mainly through the
free activity of Imagination. To suppress or ignore this
faculty at that period means the suppression of all
the faculties — latent as well as developed. Freedom
of invention and creation in its freest form — in play,
tales, etc., must be secured at the sacrifice if necessary
of all formal arts and training. And yet it is not to be
forgotten that the child's mind as compared with that of
the adult, is the slave of its own affirmations, and that
this slavery is a kind of madness. The imagination of the
savage is a temporary madness. That of the child —
though more subject to correction — is in essential respects
allied to it. If left to ramble uncontrolled it leads into
the land of mists and shadows. It is the aim of education
not to destroy but to direct. And to this end all the
arts — but especially the plastic arts — appear to be the
ideal means. Herbart has placed Drawing between the
sciences and humanities as the connecting subject. And
everything points to it as the great subject through
the study of which the perception is trained, and the
mind images rendered clear and workable. In short,
Drawing, taught with the view of preparing the mind
for the reception of ideas is not simply a subject of
general education. It is a means of general education.
Preface xili.
Not with a view to multiplying the number of painters
and sketchers — but with an entirely new aim and pur-
pose must we now consider it.
The same may be said of music and other arts. For
the great mass of children they are not goals in them-
selves, they are means to an end. And they are
indispensable means during the time when human
beings are confined to the world of sensation and
imagery. Instinct draws the child towards art.
Various as human beings are, nearly all play in child-
hood, nearly all express themselves too in rude drawings,
or models, nearly all love rhythm — that is to say all
choose the free forms of arts as means of growth and
•expression. And this period of life and its activities is
not to be considered unimportant, because very soon
playthings are cast aside, and Drawing and Drama lose
their charm. The education received in the early period,
if sound and liberal must be fruitful in the next. True,
the Imagination may and probably zf/// deviate. It will
begin after a time to find its materials no longer
perhaps in forms, colours, words, movements, but in
the world of natural forces, of mechanics, of commerce, of
science, and human relationship. Only a small propor-
tion will continue to occupy themselves during the whole
•of life with the forms of creative activity favoured during
childhood and youth. But this does not minimize the
importance of the early training.
It is not strange that the importance of the role
played by Imagination in childhood should have been
long ignored by most of the administrators of public
•elementary education. There is no other faculty which
requires so much room. Its free exercise by each and
every child must give a great deal of trouble. The
young child is troublesome — unless he be an idiot. At
no period is the ardour for physical investigation and
activity so keen as between the age of two and four. This
is very well from an educational point of view. Physical
investigation, according to Sir Benjamin Brodie, more
xiv. Preface
than anything else teaches the value and use of the Im-
agination. Nevertheless the investigator of three or even
of seven years old is troublesome in a class. When he
begins to draw on every surface he is still more difficult
to deal with. Indeed, as classes were formed, teachers and
administrators found him impossible. The problem of
teaching large classes of children of any age from three
to fifteen is quickly solved only if one canj leave the in-
dividual Imagination out of account altogether. The
temptation to accept a false ideal has been great. If
many have yielded to it almost unconsciously few can
wonder — and perhaps fewer still can blame. . . .
Nevertheless the time is ripe now for a study of
education through the Imagination, and of the role
played by the creative faculty in mental life during the
first fourteen or fifteen years. The present book repre-
sents a very tentative effort to apply some of the teach-
ings of modern psychology, in a restricted field, to the
curriculum of the ordinary elementary schools as at
present constituted.
Reference is often made in the course of the following
pages to children of the poorest class. Needless to say
it is not this class alone that is under consideration.
Just as the defective and feeble-minded have furnished
telling illustrations of the more obscure teachings of the
neurologist, so the children of poverty illustrate through
their misfortunes and weakness the evil or good in
various methods.
May it become the aim of the nation to make such
sorrowful illustration impossible.
CONTENTS
1. THE UNCHANGING PROBLEM — DEVELOPMENT AND
DISCIPLINE OF CREATIVE ENERGY
II. ORIGIN OF IMAGINATION . , , .
III. IMAGINATION AND MOVEMENT — THE EYE — THE EAR
IV. MEMORY AND EMOTION
V. THE HIGHER HUNGERS — COLOUR — SOUND
VI. THE CHILD AS ARTIST
VII. THE CHILD AS ARTIZAN .....
VIII. IMAGINATION IN THE COMMERCIAL SCHOOL
IX. IMAGINATION IN THE SCIENCE ROOM
X. IMAGINATION AND MORAL TRAINING
XI. CONCLUSION
I
19
66
112
14&
161
167
177
189
Of THE
VNIVER8ITY
CHAPTER I
THE UNCHANGING PROBLEM
In one of his books on Education, Count Tolstoi dwells at
some length on the fact that all governments, and nearly all
great institutions, churches, societies, etc., concern themselves
with questions affecting the training and instruction of the
young. Governments — ecclesiastical and secular — are eager
and anxious to influence the children. They, as it were, fling
themselves upon the little ones, crying, ^'Thus and thus shalt
thou do and learn — before it is too late." The child is no
sooner out of his mother's arms than the solicitude of the
Powers that Be attains its maximum. '* Give me the child till
he is seven," cried the priests of former centuries, " and you
can do as you please with him (comparatively) afterwards."
And in England to-day. School Attendance officers are in-
structed to advise parents to send their children of three and
four to school, while the five year old is expected to attend
regularly, as a matter of course. When we look abroad
at neighbour nations we find that though the French and
Germans do not possess such a system of infant schools as
our own, yet these and other continental nations vie with us
and each other in drilling, instructing, training, and influencing
the young, that they multiply schools, and spend an ever in-
creasing amount of thought and treasure in building up
2 The Unchanging Problem
national systems of education. Thus at home and abroad
Government, Churches, Sects, and Powers that Be, are deter-
mined to lay hands on the young and change them for better
or worse !
But what is the nature of the change which all statesmen,
politicians and sectarians desire to effect ? Is it a very
deep or very vital one ? At the first blush it may appear
so — especially to one who frequents public meetings
or reads speeches by prominent ^'educationalists" in the
newspapers. Much is made of the " religious question," and
something of foreign competition, and the national place of
the workers in the world market ; but gradually as we listen
and read popular speeches and articles the truth is borne home
to us that the word " education " has a widely different meaning
for different writers and speakers. It has become *' popular"
without on this account, becoming more than an empty symbol
to many, and the very facility with which we use it does not
tend to make us examine very closely or exhaustively its true
meaning. Now there are certain words that may very well
have a work-a-day meaning and be used quite safely as work-
' a-day symbols. We all use the word ** water," signifying in so
doing a transparent, colourless, odourless liquid, good to drink,
and which at a certain low temperature becomes ice, at a
certain high temperature vapour. That is enough for ordinary
purposes in the way of content. The chemist and physicist
mean a great deal more than this when they think of " water"
— but their knowledge is supplementary, a mere enlargement
and development of the popular interpretation. But the popular
content of the word ^' education " is not fixed. Far from being
the nucleus of a complete content it signifies to thousands
instruction in the three R's, or it may be a name signifying
some vague scheme of drilling and discipline, whereby the
children of the rising generation are to be benefited some-
how. Olsen, of Denmark, found that of the public school
The Unchanging Problem 3
children 100 per cent, of the boys and 100 per cent, of the
girls had a good working content for the word " ball," only
thirty per cent, of the boys had a good working content for
the word " dew." There are probably few grown-up persons
who have not a good working content for the words " money,"
"' trade," " bread," " water," " interest," while the working
content of even the average politician for the word '^ educa-
tion " is not that held by Froebel, Herbart, Spencer, or even
that of the ordinary person who has thought seriously on the
subject.
Before going on to inquire what the content of the word
" education " means to the psychologist and great teacher,
let us look for a moment at the army of children who have to
be " educated." Uniformity, the Ideal of the Indolent, has
prevailed in the past, and yet in spite of the evil in-
fluences of a system that favoured an indolent sameness of
treatment, nothing is more remarkable than the variety of
type, environment, and experience which British children
represent.
Here is the little London urchin who has graduated on the
streets, whose wits are sharpened by manifold social ex-
periences. Here the child of the rural midlands, familiar only
with the fields and a few social usages and kinds of labour. Here
is the son of the mill-hand of the northern counties, whose parents
and elder brothers all work at the factory, and whose own life
and future is bounded by a vista of tall chimneys and driving
wheels. Here is the slum child with his hoard of sorrowful
and evil impressions. And here the son of the fisher of the
Western Isles, with his wealth of golden lore, locked in a
strange tongue, his eyes keen to discern the changes of the sea,
his ears full of its voices. What wealth and what poverty
these represent. It is now well established that the mind of a
school child is not, a tabula rasa — that he brings some menta
possessions to school with him, and that this (so far as school
4 The Unchanging Problem
is concerned) original endowment, is the starting point of all
subsequent progress and achievement. How diverse is
the original capital of these embryo citizens ! Among the
city children, many have never seen a grain-field, an oak, a
lark. They know nothing of such common and necessary
labours, as reaping, sowing, or sheep shearing. Of the country
children, some have never seen a railway train. And of the
young islanders, many have never seen a time-piece, or a tree.
Yet original capital they all possess. And this original ac-
cumulation (whatever its nature) is the beginning of all — the
capital in iron.
The more central and despotic the government the less does
it take account, generally speaking, of these differences of
original capital in individuals and groups or communities
within the same nation. Not only have governments
usually declined to consider the value of mental capital which
is alien or unfamiliar, they have ignored peculiarly pain-
ful aspects of mental poverty when these presented themselves
as stumbling-blocks in their way. " Give up all those foolish
stories and customs," cried the alien who had no Gaelic, to
the Highlanders ; " they are remnants of superstition and
barbarism or worse ! " and the folk-lore and customs that were
the mental food and expression of a vigorous race began to be
told and practised, almost shamefacedly and in secret. Thus
was original wealth ignored. " The catechism and the three
R's must be learned," said the statesman and cleric, and so we
gathered together half-fed neglected children into great classes,
and made them form pot-hooks, and pray in a foul atmosphere
and on empty stomachs. Thus was original poverty forgotten.
Such forgetfulness is a denial of all the teachings of
the great psychologists and teachers who have spent their
energies and lives in discovering and making clear to us the
great facts on which the whole fabric of pedagogical science
now securely rests.
The Unchanging Problem 5
Briefly those essential facts are as follows : — The new-born
child is (to quote Virchow) "a spinal creature" pure and
simple. His activities consist in reflex movements, simple
transformations of excitation. This spinal being cries, moves
his limbs, his fingers, all his muscles. The ceaseless and
innumerable movements which he makes during his waking
hours are doubtless a series of aimless experiments. At about
the age of three months or thereabout it is easy to distinguish
from among them certain movements that are acquired and
that have an aim.
There is a long apprenticeship for sounds as well as for
movement. For months a child experiments with his vocal
muscles, trying new sounds and repeating them for hours with
extraordinary energy and perseverance. As he grows older he
varies his self-educative efforts and extends his interests. From
the fifth to the sixth month children begin, as Taine observes,
to be ardent physicists and continue to carry on their in-
vestigations in this field with unabated zeal for about two
years. Every cat, dog, and other animal becomes the object
of their attention and experiments, and nurses during this
epoch have a trying time. For the little one wants to touch
and handle everything he sees. Physical investigation more
than anything else, we are told, helps to teach us the actual
value and right of the Imagination, so this period is one of
rapid preparation. The child pursues his investigation all
day long without interruption. In this way, out of the dim
world of obscure general impressions, groups of perceptions
emerge which will become by-and-bye the starting point of
new efforts and achievements.
^'The contents of the soul," says Lange, " assert themselves
in the act of perception." The acquired perceptions
represent the power of referring new things to the old.
All that is within is taxed to find a point of contact, of union.
Thus a little girl in a Board school looking for the first time at a
6 The Unchaii(!'ino' Problem
fern called it a "pot of green feathers," and a younger child on
seeing a Christmas tree for the first time, looked in amazement
at the presents and ornaments in the branches and called them
" birds ! " In one of his books Daudet tells us of a little wood-
savage reared in a charcoal burner's cabin who made collections
of miscellaneous booty, — birds, moles, beetroot, potatoes.
All these things were represented in his mind by the vague
term " denraie." His little head " full of the rustling swarming
nature around him like the whorl of the shell filled by the
roar of the sea," his heart full of the emotion which every new
form of booty could engender, he did not linger to make fine
distinctions. Yet in such wide generalization there is the germ
of abstraction. In the creation of names — and some children
will go far towards creating a language which they use for a
time, and then outgrow and cast aside — there is evidence of a
tendency present already to which we own all the higher
powers of the mind.
Later we shall have occasion to see that this urgent desire,
or impulse to find expression is absent, or at least very languid,
in some children. There is something worse than want of
grammar, and that is the lack of energy, the overflowing
energy which, during a short period, makes it necessary for
'some children to supplement the language which is too
restricted for them. Meantime let us look for a moment at
the same process of naming as it is carried on by older people.
" If we examine what is going on in us when we abstract one
general idea from a sum of sensations and perceptions we find
only a tendency, which provokes expression. The expressions
may vary with the temperament and development. The artist
acts what he feels — The dumb give us strange illustrations of
primitive expression. But usually the tendency to expression
is met by symbols or words. Every name is a dessicated and
abbreviated relic of a primitive drama." Properly speaking
we have no general ideas. We have tendencies to name — and
The Uiichangiiig Pi^od/cni 7
names. "A name which we understand is a name linked to
all the individual things which we can imagine or perceive, of
a certain class, and linked only to things of that class. It cor-
responds then to the common and distinctive quality which
constitutes the class and separates it from all others, and it
corresponds only to this quality. In this way the word is its
mental representative. It is the substitute of an experience
whicli we cannot have. It takes the place of this experience.
It is its equivalent.
We cannot perceive and maintain isolated in our minds
general qualities. Nevertheless, in order to get beyond mere
experience and seize the order and internal structure of the
world, we must conceive general qualities. We go back, or
rather take a roundabout path. We associate with every ab-
stract and general quality one particular and complex little
event, a sound, a figure easily imagined and reproduced. We
make the association so exact and complete that henceforward
the quality cannot be present or absent in things, without the
name being present or absent also, and vice versa. In this
way the general character of things comes within range of our
experience; for the names which express them are themselves
little experiences of sight, eyes and hearing, or vocal muscles
or of internal images — that is to say, they are resurrections
more or less clear of these experiences. A great difficulty is
thus done away with. In a being whose life is only a diversified
and continuous experience one can only find impressions —
simple and complex, nothing more. With simple and com-
plex impressions nature has simulated impressions which are
neither the one nor the other, and which, being neither the one
nor the other, appeared of necessity to be beyond the range of
our mind as it is constituted."
Here we have the history of language. It takes its rise in
the organism. After having experience through the senses of
various things, a tendency is finally experienced which cor-
8 The Unchanging Problejn
responds to what these things hold in common, to some
general or abstract quality, and this tendency leads to the
creation of a sign or substitute. Henceforward the intelligence
is free from the slavery of dependence on mere sensation.
*^ If we cannot transcend experience," said Tyndall, " we
can at least carry it a long way from its origin." We get a
considerable way from its origin even in the elementary schools,
for there we find charts, maps, as well as pictures. Arithmetic is
taught only for a little while by means of objects. Figures take
the place of objects; and by-and-bye letters take the place of
figures, in short, substitutes for experiences are found which
enable us to deal with them in quite a new way. ^'VVhen you
wish to learn Geography," said a Russian lady to her little son
" the servant will take you w^here you wish to go." Progress
consists in this — that in time the pupil is able to do without
the servant — to do without the journey even.
To be sure the journey back to experience is taken often and
openly. More especially by the young. The child reveals
naively the origin of all his thoughts, as for example did
Ceeile the child heroine of Daudet's book *Jack,' who
driving home one evening through the woodlands, looked
down on her native village and exclaimed softly, " That is
Nazareth." Any lonely scene bathed in sunset light recalled
to her the * pious stories ' she had heard. But the pious stories
themselves were made intelligible only by experience. Nazareth
was her own village touched with mystery.
Progress then is a journeying beyond " brute sensation," as
the French call it. If good instruction has followed deep and
rich experience the new does not awaken too much astonish-
ment or too little interest — it is neither wondered at blankly,
nor left unconsidered. But perhaps the greatest change
effected by development and education is that witnessed in the
realm of feeling. At first even the outermost limit of the
child's moral consciousness is bounded by sensuous feeling.
The Ujtchanging Problem 9
He sees not only in things but also in persons only their uses
or attractiveness — mainly their uses to himself. " The water,"
said one young child, *' is a thing for me to swim in." *' A
day," cried another, *' is a thing for me to play in." And if
questioned very closely about their feelings, to the persons
dearest and nearest to him, a child could make no other answer
than this. '^ I love them because they are good to me." But
later, standing no longer in complete dependence on others he
finds other motives than that of self-interest for attaching
himself even to strangers. He judges the actions and character
of men he has never seen and that do not touch, even indirectly,
his personal life. Self is withdrawn somewhat from the arena,
or at least it figures no longer so constantly in the foreground.
Once he beheld order slowly rising out of the chaos of impres-
sions that besieged him from without, and now out of the
chaos of the inner world a new order is disclosed.
Briefly this is the natural course of human education con-
ditioned by the nature and law of the human mind.
Now as experience is the basis of all it is plain that we
cannot ignore the child's own wealth or poverty of impressions
when he arrives in school. If he possesses something of
value, that something must not be ignored or cast aside. If
his experience is all sordid the source of this impurity must
be cleansed. To proceed in haste, to teach without considering
the being who is to receive the teaching, is to lose time and
pains.
Nor must we say, " Because this child is poor he must
learn certain things that will help him in earning a living at a
very early age. This is the practical course to take with
him." Just as if a poor child's mind developed in a different
order from that of other children ! At a very early stage
embryo of the most various orders are indistinguishable.
lo The Unchanoinor Problem
They vary greatly at a later stage. So in childhood the human
mind progresses along the same path.
At first the child accepts all that is offered, food, stimuli,
certain orders of experience.
Progress represents a growing independence (which never
becomes complete) of " brute sensation." Mobile images take
the place of experience. These become clearer with educa-
tion. With education, too, they become more manageable
and subject to the will. They may be shifted, selected,
suppressed. Then higher orders of substitution come into
existence, and may be possessed so completely that the image
itself is in the way.
Education th^n, and even human progress itself, is largely
if not mainly_ a development and discipline of the Imagination.
This faculty, whose exercise is so often regarded as a kind of
weakness, a yielding to temptation, is the most reliable of all as
an indicator of the whole sum and progress of mental activities.
Its nature, its discipline, its power, represents the growth, the
discipline, the power of the whole mind. Thus we can learn
little of anyone by asking " How much does he remember?"
But if w^e knew what he has initiated, and in what degree and
manner he can create and discover, and adapt, then all
is told.
It is this last test which the children and youth of to-day
are failing to pass satisfactorily. They learn to read, to
write, to cipher, to sew, but not to initiate, to adapt, to use
their resources freely. What can be the cause of this falling
off?— for a falling off it is. No one can glance at the
history and literature of England and doubt that at certain
stages, if not at every stage, the creative imagination of
the people was very far beyond the average of the most
favoured nations. Her greatest men were unique in their
The Unckanoiiior Problem \ i
<b
sovereign possession of this foculty. Of Shakespeare it is said,
" He had a complete imagination. His whole genius is in that
word." — Bunyan's hell was more realistic than Dante's. And
the industrial history of Britain certainly reveals no lack of
creative minds, of inventive faculty !
It might seem that the very character of the race had
changed ! And yet there has been no fundamental change
and in all human probability no serious loss. True, the more
ordinary and mediocre types to-day may seem to gain a sudden
prominence, while others, of more originality and initiative
have gone under a cloud. The most vigorous natures have
to consider the demand of the hour, the tide of public opinion.
For years it has seemed as if England said to her artizans,
" Now wx have machinery, be as like machines yourselves a3
possible." But that hour has passed. Those words will be
heard no more. We realize that the artizans of England must still
be more than machinery. Only the old spirit lingers in the
school — which is always well behind the social and industrial
movement. Many a child still passes through his school
life, using only a minimum of his powers, and expressing only
a fraction of his personality. Nor is the case of the teacher
always very different. He or she also has to conform too much.
Until very recent days teachers had (not to create !) but to
accept systems, and methods, as well as text-books, and
reports almost without criticism ! It is therefore very
probable that if many to-day appear to have little imagina-
tion or adaptivity as compared with their fathers, this is not
because of any depreciation and sudden bankruptcy in the
race, but because of a temporary suspension of their most
characteristic powers induced by routine methods of education
and thought.
We are warned however that it is time to avoid mechanical
methods in schools. Otherwise the great results of educa-
tion will be sacrificed. Already the fuiger of the wise is
or THE
12 The Unchanging Problem
pointed to the place where modern popular elementary educa-
tion seems to break down.
It breaks down in the cultivation of the faculty which child-
hood is often said to possess in excess — Imagination.
Mind images, or memories are the re-presentation in us of
absent things, or bye-gone experiences — the echoes of sensa-
tions of colour, odour, form, muscular impression, etc., in the
organism. These may vary greatly in energy and precision in
different persons. Such as they are they form the raw
material of the creative faculty — the original material (if we
may be permitted to speak of origins in connection with such
a high development of physical energy as is implied in mind
images) of all ideas and conceptions.
They are the material. But how are they used ? By what
are they used ? Primarily by feeling, emotion, desire. It is
emotion which puts into movement the resources of the
human mind. Under the word Imagination we include then
many factors. We pre-suppose the existence of sensations, of
emotion, of images and their associations, the possibility of
certain mental operations. In short. Imagination is not an
elementary formation. It is not even a secondary one. It is
called by Ribot a " tertiary formation/' Yet this tells us little.
What is Imagination? How is it distinguished from other
faculties ? Its salient characteristic is that it is motor in its origin
and function. " Imagination," says Ribot, " is in the Intellectual
order, what Will is in order of Movement. There is identity
of development in the two cases. The establishment of will-
power is slow, progressive, traversed by many slips and falls.
The individual first becomes master of his muscles, and extends
through them his empire over other things. The reflexes,
the instinctive movements, are the material of higher move-
ment. The Will has no patrimony of special movements
The Unchanginf^ Problem 13
proper to itself. It must associate and co-ordinate, since it
dissociates in order to form new associations. It reigns by
right of conquest, not by right of birth. In the same way,
creative imagination does not spring into existence full-armed.
Its materials are the i?nages which are here the equivalents of
muscular movements : it goes through a period of trials and
essays : it is always, in the beginning, an imitation : it attains
only gradually its complex forms. But there are still deeper
analogies. The Imagination is subjective, personal, an-
thropocentric : its movement is from within outward towards
an objectivation. Knowledge (that is to say intelligence
in the restricted sense) has an inverse character, it is objective,
impersonal, receives from without. For the creative imagina-
tion the inner world is the regulator. For the intelligence
the outer world is the regulator. The world of my imagina-
tion is tny world as opposed to the world of intelligence which
is that of my fellows. . . . And what has been said of
the Imagination may be repeated word for word in regard
to the Will.
Futhermore Imagination and Will have a teleological char-
acter, are active in view of an end to be attained. One wills
something with an end in view — it may be a frivolous or a great
end. One invents always with an object in view, whether it
be Napoleon who imagines a plan of campaign or a kitchen-
maid who thinks of a new dish. Finally, there is an analogy
between abortive imagination and abortive will. Under
normal condition the will is expressed in an act. But in the
case of the undecided, the vacillating, the act is not accom-
plished. The resolution cannot affirm itself in practice. The
creative imagination also, in its complete form, tends towards
exteriorisation — it affirms itself in a work which exists not only
for the creator, but for everybody. But in the case of the
mere dreamer, the imagination remains an internal thing only
^t is not embodied in external action. Reveries correspond
14 The Uiicha^iging P7'oblem
more or Isss to irresolution '^Dreamers are the impotent
members of the creative world."
The Imagination is trained and developed through exercise —
as is the Will through the muscles. It is not most powerful
where it seems to run riot. Its intensity and strength are
greatest perhaps where it subjects itself to rules, even dis-
appears, like a river flowing underground for awhile but
emerging again into the light. The wild dreams and fantasies
of early childhood do not proclaim the existence of great
imaginative powers any more than do the restlessness of a
little child proclaim him the possessor of immense muscular
strength. Nevertheless in the earlier stages there must be
freedom, simply because there is little power of subservience,
direction and obedience. The early hymns of the Saxon
barbarians were a concrete of exclamations. They thought
of God, as of Odin, in a string of short passionate images.
*' They do not speak," writes Taine of them, "they sing, or
rather cry out, each little verse of their poets breaks forth like
a growl." There is no art, no natural talent for describing in
order the different parts of an event or an object. ' The bar-
barians are in short like very }oung children. By uncouth
movements and cries they advanced. They strove to express
all in a cry — and the force of the internal impression, did not
quickly unfold itself. Yet it began to unfold itself at last
and was expressed in rude poems. Progress depends on this
yielding to the initial and individual impulse whether the
learner be a child at play, a barbarian making rude experi-
ments, or a scientist engagedin original research.
The importance of free play as a factor in education lies
also in this — that it is experimental. Pleasure in motion is
not enough, the quickening sense of power must be there also.
When this is felt children often become ambitious, bold, stern
with themselves. Long ago the game of Kettles was popular
among the girls and boys of the Highlands of Scotland. It
The Unchanging Problem 15
was usually played with great rigour. " Everything is a fault,"
said the children beginning the game, " to push the stone
twice, to touch the line, to hold the arms spread, to hop twice
— everything is a fault." This rigour is not confined to move-
ment plays. " The playful exercise of the recollective faculty "
is, as Groos observes, *' common in children." They perform
mental feats unachievable by adults, such as learning by heart
books of nursery rhymes, long poems, interminable stories.
They will often burden their minds with lists of unconnected
and meaningless words. Otto Pochler, at four, knew the birth
and death of every German Kaiser from Charles the Great
as well as of many poets and philosophers. There was no
trace of vanity, no desire to show off in all this. We must
explain these accomplishments and the rigour of kettle-players
as the result of the desire to experiment playfully with one's
own powers.
It is in this way (through exercise) that the mental as well
as the physical powers develop. Children, and indeed all
healthy adults, enjoy exercise, whether it be romping or the
m.aking of the multiplication table, golfing or the solving of a
problem in mathematics. '^ Within the limits of the gym-
nasium," writes Mrs. Boole, " every position is permitted and
encouraged which would be considered indecorous and dis-
orderly in class." So it should he ineiitally. " Every mental
faculty which a human being is to exercise at all, should be
used, alternately, in ^work' : — that is to say, in subservience
to necessities or rules imposed from without, and in ^ re-crea-
tion ' — that is by evolving its own laws from within. If this is
not done the mental faculty flags: and ^work,' which should
be truly mental, is done (ill or well) as a mere trick of brain
and nerves, without any full or true mental action. . . . If you
wanted a boy to become a merely stupid, mechanical bank-
clerk, sure of never making a mistake, and also sure not to
understand enough of what he is about to find out when his
1 6 The Unchanging Problem
superiors are cheating the public and the shareholders, you
should make him do his sums always one way and forbid him
to experiment on any day of the year. If, on the contrary, you
wished him to become a mere busy-body, clever at detecting
errors in other people's sums, but incapable of keeping accounts
properly, let him always do his sums by roundabout and
" natural " methods. But if you want a capable arithmetican,
able both to do the business he is paid for, and also to under-
stand what is going on around him, and find out for himself
how to do things which he was never shown, insist on rigid
method during hours of work and encourage very free and
lawless experime7itation occasionally P
Free experiment by children is troublesome to parents —
more troublesome to teachers, but abhorrent to official ad-
ministrators.^ The child who plays in fantastic ways with his
own power, chooses his own subjects in drawing ; improvises
in defiance of all rules of time, melody, counter-point and
fingering runs certainly the risk of becoming very troublesome.
And yet without free experiment there is little to be done.
The great genius — such as Mozart — persisted in taking his
lessons merely as a guide and sometimes as a kind of in-
terruption. Precocious artizans — such as Poncelet — experi-
mented freely in their play hours, as indeed England's future
artizans must be doing to-day if the Manual training centres
and Technical colleges are ever to be of great value. What
is learned at school comes in as material. Doubtless it was
a deep consciousness of the possibilities of play that led Froe-
bel to emphasize it, to engage the sympathies of teachers in it,
to take part in games himself, and wistfully try to direct the
young mind in its most important moments. And yet it is
doubtful whether any extraneous help can help one in crucial
moments — whether we had not better recognise at once that
not assistance but freedom is wanted in play-time. A young
child knows verv well what movements rest him when he has
The Unchanging Problem 17
been trying to sit still at table for a time, or hold, his chalk
firmly. Just in the same way he will learn what movements
and occupations rest him in the intervals of manual training,
or geometry.
The only way to assist him appears to be to make the
geometry or manual lesson as thorough, as little of a mere
game or play as possible. This does not mean however, that
the Imagination is to have no place in class. It means just the
opposite. There is no real test or trial involved in any train-
ing where the creative faculty is allowed to remain dormant.
In drawing, in arithmetic, in languages, the moment of integrat-
ing effort which means growth, is the moment when the child
is obliged to fall back on his own resources, to discover his own
method, to write his own original composition, to draw from
his own memory.
Unfortunately we show tendencies now to interfere much in
the *' play," without making sufficient demands in the "work."
The consequence is that the Imagination is crippled at both
ends of the system. There is much surveillance in the playing
ground — there is a great deal of surveillance too in the class-
room. In neither place is any very serious effort made to
develop very completely the highest power of the human
mind. Some of the causes of this neglect are deep-rooted and
cannot be discussed here. Others are obvious enough. In
our large class-rooms and small playing grounds thousands of
children are massed. In order to keep order there must be
rules and surveillance. The situation is in some respects a
^new one, it is certainly fraught with new risks. Uniformity
has become an ideal. In accepting it we are simply following
the line of the least resistance.
Yet such languid acquiescence (for it is nothing more) is
bound in the long run to have serious results. The motive
power of the moral life is Will. The motive power of the
intellectual world is luiagination. In virtue of his power to
1 8 The Unchanging Problem
imagine or re-create through mental images, man sees the past,
forecasts the future, and has made whatever advance has been
ever made into the fields of the Unknown. We cannot give
Imagination to another, but we may arrest its development ;
and where it is ignored or suppressed, all intellectual life must
quickly decline and perish. Now, as of old, wherever for one
reason or another there is no vision the people perish.
This book represents an effort, however inadequate, first —
to define the nature of creative energy, secondly — to indicate
the various forms in which it finds its manifestations at the earlier
periods of life (subject, of course, to the differences of vocation
and nature, and the precocity and persistence of genius in
dealing with specific orders of images), and thirdly — to deter-
mine its place and function in primary education.
CHAPTER II
ORIGIN OF IMAGINATION
Every mental image or representation contains certain motor
elements. The thought of a peach, or of any other pleasant
fruit makes the mouth water. The remembrance of a catching
air impels us to sing. The recollection of a beautiful scene,
makes us gaze fixedly into the distance. Such movements are
mere repetitions. They are organic. Yet in them we have
an incipient form of imagination. What hinders the images
from becoming creative in the fullest sense that is to say —
not merely re-productive but productive ? Nothing hinders this
except lack of persistence and energy on the part of the image.
When we are ill and enfeebled, and our power of resistance
' lowered, an image may easily become creative in a high degree.
By thinking of a pain we may begin to feel it ! Listening for
robbers we may hear them — that is, we may have illusions,
become the victims of our own active mind images. But the
creative power of mind images does not reach its highest de-
velopment in mere illusion. The school of Charcot has estab-
lished the fact that profound changes may take place in the
organism, as the result of a mind picture or image. The once
" miraculous " stories of Stigmata — the mark of nails in the
flesh, and the presence of bleeding wounds in the bodies of
saints are now well authenticated. Indeed the creative power
20 Origin of Imagination
of the Saints is allied in one respect to that of every great
genius — moral and otherwise — inasmuch as they furnish an
illustration of the power of mental images, the motor elements
of which have become creative.
To leave the world of the miraculous and return to the
peach, the recollection of which makes the mouth water ! Here
we have reproduction pure and simple — that is, memory plus
a reflex movement. This is an inferior form of imagination
and is found, as Romanes has pointed out, very low in the
scale of animal life. He calls it provoked or directly suggested
reproduction.
Higher in the scale of mind-activity is spo?itaneous repro-
duction, which is still suggested of course, but involves a freer
movement. The eating of a peach may awaken, for example,
some thought of the orchard where it grew, of the man who
planted it. Nevertheless this as well as the former case of
memory and movement represents only reproductive not pro-
ductive imagination. /
Higher than either is the faculty of associating mental
pictures, without direct suggestion from without, but by an
inward activity. This takes place in sleep when we dream,
for then the inner world is not corrected or modified by the
outer world as in waking hours. But reverie too and solitary
musing falls under this category — flitting mind pictures — un-
stable associations of images grouped languidly, and without
intervention or design — castles in the air, impossible romances
even (though these show more energy on the part of the
dreamer) may fall into the same group. A great part of the
life of many persons, old and young, is spent in day-dreaming.
The tendency to discourage reverie in young persons has, in
the opinion of some educationalists, gone too far. Just as we
may meddle too much with a child's play, we may meddle far
too much with a girl's or a boy's day-dreaming. Stanley Hall
V actually affirms that at a certain age " idleness should be
Origin of Imagination 2 1
cultivated and reverie should be provided for in every way."
Without going quite so far as this we may admit the need for
respecting every natural and healthy mental state. The state
of reverie seems to lie like a river between the bright world of
strenuous mental life and the dark world of the unconscious,
and subconscious. On that stream many seeds are borne from
the dark shore to the bright one. We must not try to dry it
up, to cause the waves to cease flowing.
Finally, the fourth and highest form of imagination is that
in which the thinker marshals his mind images with intention
or design in order to form new combinations. This is con-
structive imagination proper. Its triumphs are seen in every
invention of industry, every creation in art, every discovery
in science.
Childhood is often said to be the age of imagmation. This is
true only in a very limited sense. The distinguishing mark of
a high order of constructive imagination is power of control
and selection accompanied by power of creation. But this
implies a development of reason and of will to which the
most intelligent child can not attain. The importance of the
intellectual and moral factors in the higher orders of creative
work will appear later. The function of the higher faculties
is largely inhibitory.
Memory is necessary for creation. Yet memory may become
tyrannical. It is necessary to know how to forget, otherwise
the door is closed to all initiative and freedom. If to recall any
incident, we have to recall every event that intervened between
the time of its taking place and now remembrance would be im-
possible. A cetrain Member of Parliament had such a very reten-
tive memory that he could repeat correcllya long actor document
after having once read it. This how^ever was not a great advantage.
It was a great inconvenience. For whenever he wanted to remem-
berany particular point he had to begin at the beginning, and read
on till he came to the point he wished to recall. Children are
2 2 Origin of Imaoination
more subject to the tyranny of memory than older persons.
A child of nine, of good intelligence learned to repeat the
questions and answers of the Shorter Cetechism quite correctly,
yet stopped always at the wrong places having little or no idea
of the sense. The whole performance was barren in so far as
the reason or imagination were concerned. School-girls learn to
play pieces of music from beginning to end by heart, but fear
interruption as they cannot begin safely anywhere save at the
beginning. Reason breaks up memories. Its office is in-
hibitory too as regards the Imagination. In childhood this
inhibitory power is but little exercised. As the mind develops
it comes more and more into prominence. And yet memory
and imagination are not weakened but strengthened in the
process which brings Reason more and more into evidence.
What is marvellous in scientific genius is as Hoffding has
.pointed out, precisely this mental freedom which is able to
detach, and abstract from experience. Reason does indeed then
resemble those climatiq influences that break down the solm
rock and hard soil and prepare it for the activity of the
creative principle.
But if the creative power is, in its higher forms at least,
dependent on the intellectual, still more obviously is it
dependent on the emotional life. The emotions are the great
winds of the mental and moral world. They penetrate every-
where and they are always potentially at least creative. Love
is of course the most prolific. It has a vast progeny — In
literature it is the mother of lyrics, poems, romances, etc., etc.
, That joy is productive even the most practical employers of
labour attest. They find it pays very often to give their men
more holidays, better security and better wages. Fear, the most
\ depressive emotion is the mother of phantoms, demons,
hobgoblins, and of primitive religion. Anger is destructive
apparently, but fertile. Byron wrote his " English Bards, and
Scotch reviewers,'' in a passion, or rather after a fit of rage.
Origin of Imagination 23
Through strong emotion he was enabled to pass quickly from
the tentativeness of childhood to the vigour of manhood.
Victor Hugo offers a striking example of the fruitfulness of
grief — and also of indignation. *' Instead of allowing himself
to be tortured by the forces (for nervous energy is force par
excellence) that invaded him, instead of keeping them, or
enjoying them (there is a luxury, and even a temptation to
play with grief) he realized them all in work. Twice did
fate cruelly strike him. He lost a dearly loved son. Later
he became an exile. These two events did not draw many
tears from him. But they were responsible for the creation of
two prodigious works, viz. the Co?ttempkitio?is, over which many
generations of tender souls will weep, and the fierce Chati-
ments the reading of which made so many hearts burn to
avenge him." Writers, in particular, seem to illustrate re-
markably the productiveness even of the most depressing
emotions.
/ Children are very susceptible to emotion. And this taken in
conjunction with the fact that memory is retentive in the
early years seems to supply the conditions of a certain order
of creative activity. In some respects indeed children appear
to be not inferior, but superior in creative energy to grown-up
persons. Just as a little child will perform a hundred move-
ments in a short time, and will run about all day long in a way
impossible to an adult, so he will create illusions for himself,
and invent fantastic tales to explain everything with surprising
persistence and energy. .But all this does not prove that the
child has greater muscular power or creative energy than the
adult. It only proves that he uses his muscular power and
imagination in ways that do not tax or try him — that is to
say involuntarily, and without draining any deep source
of energy. He moves as a child, imagines like a child.
This excessive activity is necessary. Just as movements
represent at a certain epoch the will, so the imagination
24 Origin of Imagination
represents at a certain epoch the reason. Imagination is,
as Goethe said, the fore-runner of reason. In the beginning
imagination and memory are one (the former being locked up
as it were in the latter) : at a later stage reason and imagination
are still one. Only by free experimentation of the already
self-declared faculty can all that is still latent be finally
liberated. /
Thus in the end the tyranny of memory is broken, the
undisciplined imagination curbed, not by the interference of an
arbitrary will from without, but mainly through the emancipation
of a faculty which was latent in both from the beginning.
Imagination in Animals and Infancy
The two subjects are not so closely allied as may at first
appear. Wonderful is the animal world that is close to us
— the cattle that roam about our fields, the domestic animals
that share our life. Between these and ourselves the missing
links may be conceived, and the evolution imagined. It is
when we are face to face with the insect world that the tracks
seem to be lost. For it seems as if those small creatures —
bees, ants, wasps, spiders, etc., had never pursued the track
of which human evolution was the goal and that what we
call emotion, reason, memory, imagination, have found in
them, not parallels but substitutes. Substitutes that baffle us
— not like the words of a strange language, but like the language
of another sphere. For example, we are familiar with a faculty
called Memory, and recognize it in the horse, the dog, the cat,
etc., as essentially the same as in ourselves. But what is the
memory of an ant ? Lord Avebury once divided a nest full
of larvae. Many months later he took the ants that had been
reared in one nest and put them into the other. The old
ants had certainly never seen those strangers before yet they
recognized them, and without any communication. What is
such 'memory' as this? We do not know. It is as Lord
Origm of Imagination 25
Avebury states ^'a wholly unintelligible faculty to which we
can give what name we please." Or take the faculty of
Reason. Huber tells us that he once saw the shaft of an
ant dwelling fall. Instantly all the ants began, not merely to
restore the shaft, but to strengthen the whole frame-work of
the dwelling. Huber and Forel have described the armies of
ants, have shown that they are agriculturists, that^* they keep
cattle and slaves, that they nurse and educate the young, and yet
it has been proved also through careful experiments that intro-
duced to certain new circumstances they make not the smallest
deduction from obvious facts. They will walk sixty times
round an object which they could cross in a moment by
the exercise of the very smallest ingenuity. If they have
reason then it is a faculty which seems to be neither an ex-
tension nor an embryo of ours ! But it is when we come to
examine their social instincts that all our canons are useless.
Maeterlinck was quite right when he said that man can never
understand the social and moral attitude of an insect. A bee
will never turn her head while her sister is being cruelly
mutilated at her side — yet she and her myriad companions will
sacrifice their lives for the race. We begin by loving our
parents, our brethren and neighbours — and later, in the case
of some, though not of all, evolve wider social sympathies.
The bee and the ant begin with the race — and never arrive at
the individual. Where the paths of progress diverge so
utterly we find ourselves at a loss. The life of insects is a
mystery to us. Swammerdam, the inventor of the microscope,
catching a first glimpse of it, was overwhelmed. Those mailed,
unresting, merciless, self-immolating communities of the dust
could not be related to anything he had learned or experienced.
We have become familiar with it but it remains inexplicable,
and so the most numerous communities of life have to be left
out of account when we begin to trace the progress of human
evolution,
26 Origin of hnagination
Passing over various orders of mammalia that appear to
stand close to ourselves on the ladder of life, passing over such
architects as the beaver and others from whom we have taken
some lessons, there is an order of creature that suggests
itself as being highly endowed with some of the requisites
of creative power. I refer to birds. Many birds have a keen
sense of vision, of hearing, and of general touch. In some
memory is highly developed. A swallow will return year after
year to the same house having made a prodigious journey.
And the emotional life of many birds is so keen, that they may
die of fear — or grief for the loss of a mate, while a very little
bird will hurl itself literally into the mouth of the big devourer
of her offspring. Here, then, we appear to have all the re-
quisites for creative power. — (Keen senses, memory and capa-
city for emotion), unless we happen to take into account the
power of abstraction or disassociation.
It is precisely this power of abstraction however which de-
termines the measure of freedom in dealing with images and
ideas. Without language — it can hardly be greatly developed.
Birds and other animals are not quite destitute of something
which we may call language. Yet the language of even birds
does not fulfil the requirements, or make possible the develop-
ment of the power of abstraction. Placed face to face with
the alternative of either modifying the form of their nests, or
doing without a nest altogether, some birds will modify the
original plan — introduce small innovations. Such capacity as
this does not of course take them beyond the threshold of
abstract reasoning."^
Nevertheless the comparative absence of a faculty necessary
for the highest order of creative Imagination need not blind us
" * The condition of birds and other animals guided by instinct," said
Cuvier, *' resembles in many respects that of the somnambulists. They
imagine — see in advance the plan of the work. But the series of images
which guides them is constant. Circumstances bring changes, but their
rr.ind does not follow these changes, or break with the circle of ideas
that absorbs them."
Origin of Imagination 27
to the beauty and variety of the manifestations which answer
to the ebb and flow of animal emotion and life. These
consist of course mainly of movements. Lambs skip
about in the fields, foals throw up their heels and gallop.
Kittens climb on the mother, chase one another, or spin round
after their tails. The dolphins scour through the sea following
the steamers, turn somersaults, and perform capers in the
w^ater. So do even whales at certain periods. As for birds
there is practically no end to the variety of their move-
ments. Some float, skim, describe curves and indulge in
every kind of fancy flight. Their songs at pairing-time have a
new range and variety. Other animals, at pairing time become
noisy (like the frog) indulging not only in solos but in deafen-
ing concerts. But song and movement do not exhaust the
resources of the animal w^orld at its flood-tide. The Syrian
nuthatch adorns its nest with the bright wings of insects. The
Baya bird of Africa models its nest fantastically, ornamenting
it with lumps of clay on each of which the cock-bird arranges
the wings of the fire-fly ! The hammer head of Africa adorns
the ground about his nest w^ith pieces of glass, bits of broken
earthenware, bright stones, feathers, etc. And the bower bird
builds a large play-house in the shape of a tunnel — three feet
long in some cases — lined with grasses whose heads almost
touch above, and adorned with shells of five, or perhaps more
species, and with berries, blue, red, and black, as well as leaves
and young shoots. Thus it appears that at certain moments
in their lives these little creatures are floated upward almost
to the threshold of objective art.
Infancy. — The brain of a very young child is rich in water.
The associative fibres are not yet developed, and the system
of reflex movements is not yet completed.
Nevertheless, these are precocious. They precede the
development of any mental life. Even the disorders of infancy
point to the pre-dominance of the motor system. An insane
28 Origin of hnagination
haby does not behave like an insane man. He has no
hallucinations. The mad baby strikes, bites, kicks, and
expresses himself in movement. Convulsions are called *' a
madness," and chorea a " deUrium " of the muscles.
In early childhood, too, the Imagination expresses itself largely
in movement, in climbing, running, hopping, springing, skip-
ping, etc. Not content with these larger exercises little children
invent or imitate smaller movements — making a church, a
bridge, etc., etc., of their fingers, practising the difficult third
finger movements, etc. Taking all this into account, there is
certainly good ground for assuming that Imagination is of
motor origin^ and that its most elementary expression is in
mere movement of the organs and limbs.
And if this be so the question of movement assumes a great
importance in primary education. Hitherto we have thought
of physical training as something which concerns the child as a
future citizen-soldier. Some have thought of it in connection
with health. It is now believed by many thinkers that the
whole question of mind development is concerned in the various
kinds of movements natural to, or imposed upon, children.
The great fact that the various centres of the brain develop in
a certain sequence — that the development of motor control is
subject to certain laws, and depends not on ^' the taste and
fancy of the teacher" — and that it stands in close relationship
to the mental evolution that follows, is now beginning to be ac-
knowledged. Thus we no longer compel little children all over
the land to execute intricate small movements for which they are
manifestly unprepared. We acknowledge that infants should
draw and write not in small ruled copy-books but on large
surfaces. And only now is it possible to watch the gradual
process of acquired motor control. At first the child draws
his line almost with the whole body (just as he began to walk
with four limbs instead of two). He bends forward, the face is
agitated, the tongue is often protruded. Then as time goes
Origin of Imagination 29
on the immense area of movement once brought into requisi-
tion in the drawing of a line or circle is restricted more and
more. The child writes a large hand, without much movement
of the body draws a large figure. Later he will reduce these
without effort. Some day he may even choose his own move-
ments in writing to the joy of the graphiologists, who must be
puzzled to-day lo find any original character left in the trained
school-board clerks and scholars, y^
The drill-hall or assembling-room is not the only place where
the motor training should be prosecuted. At every hour, and
in every lesson, movement is a great factor in determining the
growth or arrest of mental activity.
CHAPTER III
IMAGINATION AND MOVEMENT
Every visible movement corresponds to an unseen one. It is
the result of action in a nerve centre of the brain.
To arrest a visible movement — (as when an infant's limbs are
swathed tightly, or when an older child is compelled to hold
his hands clasped behind him) is in reahty to arrest the course
of a movement.
The healthy infant when awake moves all his limbs and
especially the extremities, and this general aimless, feeble order
of movement is necessary to brain development. Later it be-
comes less general. The force is concentrated as it were into
one limb and its movements as when the baby kicks or lifts
one limb to its mouth. Later still we see associated moveme/its
as when he takes something from one hand with the other, and
also arrest of spontaneous movement, as when he stares at a
bright object or fixes his eyes for a moment on a stranger. All
this happens usually before the end of the fifth month or even
earlier.
The child is of school age in England at four or it may be five
years old. At that age the control of movements through the
senses is usually well established. The child not only tries to
possess himself of the things that attract him, he becomes
Imagination and Movement 31
absorbed by these, and so well do mothers know this by ex-
perience that they often become alarmed and suspicious if a
child remains '*good" and quiet for hours in a neighbouring
room. The four years older not only runs, chatters, plays, but
is capable of comparatively long spells of attention in presence
of forbidden and attractive objects.
Yet, what we may call the period of " spontaneous move-
ment" is not over at four or ^\^, i\t that age a healthy
child not only feels, but shows that he feels his life in every
limb. Spontaneous movement, sHghtly under control, is the
characteristic of healthy brain action at this age. The control
is smallest over the smaller and finer nerves and muscles. The
aim of much, if not all the training in the infant school to-day
is to increase control. There is another side of the question
that is not emphasized, and that is : — the neccessity for the
freedom which is the first condition of experiments.
The young child, like the animal, experiments mainly
through the muscular system.
He is liable to interruption and interference at home — much
more is he curbed and cabined at school. To climb on chairs
and tables gives a little child the joy that a bigger boy has in
climbing trees. There are no chairs in the class-room, no
trees in the play ground. The big class-room does not lend
itself to experiment. When out of doors the desire to throw
takes possession of all, or nearly all. And Groos, and others,
would like to give a free field to the small experimentors.
" We should rejoice," he says, " with the children, when a
stone goes a long way or bounds into the water with the
splash." But stone-throwing is not allowed to our school-
children, even to the little ones, on account of the danger
to the windows.
On the whole, we must admit that the school system is
largely, suppressive. This fact meets us again and again, but
it is most obvious, perhaps, when we are thinking of younger
32 Imagination and Movement
children — that is, of little people who are bound to express
themselves, mainly, in movement.
As children grow older the imagination embodies itself in
new forms, but the origifial form (for we may call it thus)
still holds its ground. A study of the plays and games of
man makes this very obvious. " We can distinguish," says
Groos, "six different groups of movement-plays resulting simply
from the impulse to gain control of objects. These six are as
follows: — I. Mere hustling things about. 2. Destructive or
analytic play. 3. Constructive or synthetic play. 4. Plays of
endurance. 5. Throwing plays. 6. Catching plays." There-
after follow numerous examples of these various movement-
plays, examples taken from different countries and ages. Some
of them, such as football, increase the leg radius ; others, such
as golf, cricket, tennis, croquet, etc., develop the arm radius.
But among them may be included innumerable caprices, from
the pitching of crockery out of window (an amusement in
which Goethe indulged) to the difficult and delicate catching
games of the Gilbert islanders.
The restlessness of the normal child offers an illustration
of the creative instinct active in the simplest, the most elemen-
tary form. The idiot, or imbecile child, is often sluggish,
immobile. Seguin began the education of such children by
movement. He exercised, mechanically, the limbs, moved the
arm upward and downward — spent hours in giving physical
training, which was, in reality, a kind of imitation of the
^ normal child's spontaneous activities. And not without result,
r Though scientists are agreed that the children who profit least
^ by education are the child of genius, at one end of the scale,
and the imbecile child at the other, yet an exception must be
made as regards mere physical training in the case of the
imbecile. By diligent training Seguin contrived, at last, to
waken the slumbering intelligence of many unfortunates. As
the result of mere movement — regular, long continued— blank
Imagination and Movement
^^
eyes were lighted up with a ray of inteUigence and the creative
power was stimulated, so that, at last, a pupil would spontane-
ously exchange one movement for another. Happily, the
average child does not require such strenuous drilling. He
is very creative and inventive in movement — turns somer-
saults, performs feats, in the way of jumping through bars
and over fences, dares the ascent of all forbidden but invit-
ing walls, and taxes the inventive powers of his elders, who
strew broken glass, and fix barbed wire in vain. Even girls
are inventive in movement — and would be more inventive but
for restraint and discouragement. In a slum school I have
seen a girl climb on another's back and try to balance herself
on her shoulders. " I am surprised," said an indignant teacher;
" I shouldn't have believed that even a boy would do such a
thing ! " But girls, as well as boys, are inventive at a certain
age in all that concerns movement."^
MoxQOY^r, freedom of movement appears to be during child-
hood a necessary condition of mental development. The
limits of the drill hall are beginning to be defined. Bene-
ficial and even necessary the formal exercises may be, and
yet, for the average child, and indeed for all children above
the stage of imbecility, the formal exercise is to free play what
recitation is to creation. The former can never take the place
of the latter. A few years ago the School Board of a northern
city requested its Medical Superintendent to draw up a report
on the children attending a certain school situated in an over-
crowded slum area. The Report was drawn up accordingly.
It furnished details on the condition of the children so far as
it could be determined by the observation of the movements,
appearance, throat, eyes, teeth, etc. Many valuable facts were
given, but the attention of the Committee was more especially
'' They probably suffer as much mentally as physically through not being
allowed to romp. Spencer's horror of the quiet ladies' school was well-
founded.
3
34' Imagmatioii and Movement
arrested by an observation to the effect that all the children
were in need of free physical exercise ! It was known that
many of the children were newspaper vendors, and spent
many hours of the day in running about the streets. It was
also known that drill was a feature of the school, and that the
pupils had a good deal of marching and exercise. But all
this was beside the mark. The drill, was, for certain purposes,
worse than useless. " Free, massive movement is wanted —
such as running round the playing-ground " were the words
of the Report.
No one can teach a child all the movements which are
necessary for health. The most important are those which he
finds for himself. These spontaneous movements are not
merely a form of exercise — they are a condition of rest. All
formal work or specialized movement implies a certain degree
of local rest. There is a storage of energy going on in quies-
cent parts of the body when the energy is concentrated at a
certain point — in special areas of the brain. But the effect of
this storage is not declared till the tension is removed entirely,
till the child is free. Only then are the currents of energy
diffused. Only then can they course like loosened streams
through the whole system.
Thus free exercise is a taking possession of the energy laid
up in work as well as in rest.
This is natural recreation.
And it is sad to refxect that the children whose store is small
are not allowed to enter into their little possessions.
Innumerable are the movements which children make when
left in peace and freedom. Innumerable too are the kinds of
movement which even adults invent for their own pleasure.
The boy loves to rush down hill in his sledge. His elders love
to drive, ride, skate, cycle, and motor, at a furious rate.
They are even now spt-aking longingly of flying machines. The
delight in such exercise depends largely on sensory experiences
Iinagiiiation and Movement 35
of a novel kind. ^'Gliding through the air in a slanting direc-
tion," says a German writer, " affords a new and delightful sen-
sation." There can be little doubt that opportunity for nezv
seniory experiences as well as freedom in movement is necessary
for the free development of the creative faculty in childhood.
The bath affords varied experiences. — Among others it
offers delightful sensations of touch which have drawn en-
raptured praises from the poets."^
Groos quotes Moricke's beautiful verses : —
*' O Fluss ! Mein FIuss im Morgeenstrahl
Empfange nun, empfange
Den sehnsuchtvollen Leib einmal
Und Kiisse Brust und Wange !
Er fiihlt mir schon her auf die Brust,
Er kl'ihlt mit Liebesschauerlust
Und jauchzendem Gesange.
Es schllipft der goldne Sonnenschein
In Tropfen an mir wider
Die Woge wieget aus und ein
Die hingegebnen Glieder,
Die Arme hah 'ich ausgespannt
Sie kommt auf mich herzugerannt
Sie fasst und lasst mich wilder."
The rain of new and delightful touch sensations, the strange,
filtered light below the surface, the undulating movement of
the water, its softness and yet strength as a resting-place, f
all make the sea and the swi«-iming l)ath a new theatre
of experience, a new field for the harvesting of memories.
* The tactical sensibility of the criminal has been found by Du Bois,
Raymond, and others to be much less than that of the normal person.
With this incapacity for pleasure there is, of course, a corresponding im-
munity from pain. Some children of criminal type show extraordinary
in5:ensibility in the skin.
+ "There is no herl," said Captain Webb, "so soft as the ocean."
36 Imagination and Movement
But the bath is also a theatre of new action. New movements
are necessary in ihe water. They are quickly learned by the
young bather and swimmer. Movements which are taught form-
ally in the drill-hall are learned and executed in the water intui-
tively or with little effort. Once the first terror is conquered the
teacher's task is easy. Indeed, he has no task. The children
go into the water and practise the new movements with even
greater zest than they show in scaling walls or trees. They
learn to inhale and (what is more difficult for town-bred chil-
dren) to exhale perfectly, to completely fill and also to empty
the lungs. They are eager to practice the side strokes, to dive,
to turn somersaults, to swim under water ; and over and above
all these movements how many gambols and feats they learn
almost without effort. '' If they showed the same eagerness
about other lessons that they show about the swimming," said
one head-master, wistfully, ^' teaching would be an easy matter
for us."
Doubtless he was right. It is not in the power, however, of
even the most conscientious child to determ.iLe the direction
in which all his creative energy shall find expression.
The great scientist who sat for da) s motionless in his chair,
while he elaborated his system of thought had Imagination and
was using it in his own way. Rousseau and many others could
think only when they were stretched prone on their beds — and
even hidden under the coverlets.
But we must be content to see the creative energy of children
express itself in simpler forms — largely indeed, in the simplest
form of all — to wit, movement.
If the young human creature is nstless, however, as restless as
the young animal, he does not expend all his surplus energies in
muscular movement. One of his most prominent character-
istics as distinguished from the animal is his ca;;acity for auto-
suggestion. Auto-suggestion is, it is true, not quite unknown in
Imagination and Movement 37
the brute creation. We have all seen a dog play with a piece
of paper, as though it were a living thing, and a kitten make
believe a ball or rag was alive. But we find no parallel in the
animal world to the child's impulse to animate all, to find
something alive — something akin to himself in everything.
The primitive man, however, sees life in everything and
creates myths and legends to explain the phenomena of life.
This period of animism appears to be a necessary phase which
the mind of the individual as well as the race must traverse.
The period of animism endures long for the race. It is cut
short for the child, always under the influence as he is of
persons who do not share, and are in haste to correct his
illusions. Perhaps the grown-up people are in too much haste.
Children learn to reason not by suppression but by rectification.
The two great steps of every mental process are affirmation and
rectification. The child emphasizes the first, is weak in the
second. He seeks for analogies and resemblances, and is often
the victim of his own suggestions. But a child who never
looked for analogies or accepted them readily would not
learn very quickly to reason by analogy. Nor would the moral
nature be developed by the repression of the instinct that leads
him to see in everything a life analogous to his own. Sully tells
how as a child he used to feel very sorry for the stones lying
at the foot of the hill, because they never had any change of
air or scene. He carried some of them to the top of the hill
at last, in order that they might have a little pleasure. A little
girl pitied a rose-tree growing alone, and tried to remove it to
the rose garden, where all its relations lived. Even letters and
symbols recall living forins to children.
Now creatures who can easily believe that everything is
alive are, as compared with others who are content to believe
that most things are dead, in a very responsive condition.
The whole world is plastic —the whole world is indeed human,
up to a certain point for the little child. It does not follow
^S imagination and Movement
of course that the child will view this living world sympa-
thetically. But as the first condition of sympathy is the con-
sciousness that other beings, or supposed beings, are alive and
can feel the illusions of the child must be held to play a part
in the evolution of the moral life."^
The child is not the only person who sees life, and even
human life in everything. " Our Soul," said Joly, '' desires to
find itself anew in everything. All pleasure in art pre-
supposes a clear consciousness of self, and of the essential
laws of our own activities, and then a constant inclination to
imagine in all other creatures a life analogous to our own.''
This desire to find the living inspires all arts. But the fine
arts exist only in order that the seeker may find the ear, the
soul of another. The scale, in music, adds nothing to the
human voice. It only reveals its possibilities. The " Psych-
ology of Instruments" is the title of a book written by one
musician. But the psychology of instruments is only a page
borrowed from the psychology of Man. Lines,! as well as
letters are a language, but a more intimate language than
letters— a language more intimately expressive of human
feeling.' All art, as Joly declares, pre-supposes a clear
consciousness of self and the assumption in all other creatures
of a life analogous to our own — a kinship.
It is then through art that the dumb, blind animism of
early childhood is transformed into the conscious love of
beauty and of humanity,
* That illusions play a part in the development of mental power is un-
deniable even in the case of the most advanced thinker. "The illusions
of the experimentor," said Pascal, " are a part of his force.'"' In the case of
the child the illusion is the postulate — the affirmation, that is to say, the
first step without which the second step, rectification, is impossible.
t Thus the perpendicular line, wherever we see it, signifies austerity,
strength. In tall trees, towering walls, etc., always the same. The
horizontal, in broad boughs, in level seas, low horizons, signifies always
calm. The waving line is the line of weakness, of youth, of the un-
finished, etc., etc.
Imagination and Movement 39
To art childhood holds out its hands eagerly. It is true
that the love of beauty, the conception of beauty in the higher
sense does not belong to childhood. It is true that the child
does not yet regard art as a means of expression for the
highest feelings. Nevertheless the child hunger for art is
real and obvious. He draws, or rather writes pictures — he
loves tales of wonder, and adventure. He reaches forth
eagerly after something which, alas ! is often denied, examples
of movement, and models which he can imitate. He constructs
houses, boats, arranges toy-soldiers in ranks, plays the part ot
soldier, shopman, pirate, king, coachman, and preacher. This
period of eagerness has its parallel in the history of the Saxon
race. In the twelfth century, says Taine, the mental energy
of the people was admirable. No suffering repulsed them.
There is a story of a young boy who, though beaten by his
master was wholly bent on remaining with him that he might
learn. Yet all this youthful zeal and energy was quenched by
the dry abstractions of the schools. Even Chaucer was
weighed down by fetters of dead learning, by memories, not
of living experience, but of treatises on definitions and syl-
logisms, translations, copies, crudities, and absurdities of the
schools. Where he has experience he invents. For an
instant, with a sudden leap, he enters upon the observation,
and the genuine study of man. But no one follows him.
There is no fruit in the literature of that age — only useless
branches. And why ? Because a heavy instrument to wit
Scholastic Philosophy — cut the roots of the life-tree under
ground.
More than once in its history has the Saxon genius
recoiled from the methods of her primary and primitive
instructors. During the past thirty or forty years, many an
eager child and student has doubtless felt the weight of a
heavy instrument, that crushed the impulse to invention and
discounted experience. Scholasticism, routine, and mere lip-
40 Imagination and Movement
learning has done for the individual what Scholastic Philosophy
did for the race. How should the young imagination free
itself? Who were its deliverers in by gone days, when the
people were still savages or half savages, warriors ot the
Heptarchy or knights of the middle ages ? When they had
strange emotions, tender at times, which they expressed each
according to his gift, some by short cries, others by con-
tinuous babble— exactly like children. Theirs was a state
resembling madness, a state in which affirmation becomes
hallucination. Affirmation the first step in mental activity —
is everything for the primitive person as for the child. The
second (rectification) is nothing. But the tyranny of the mind-
images which crowd upon one another and almost overwhelm
must be broken. That is the first step in elementary education.
The artist takes it. He can pause in the moment almost of
conception, and bring order out of the chaos. Chaucer's
poem was a painting — his tales were portraits. In drawing
and presenting them he went far beyond all his contemporaries.
He is not overwhelmed by the affirmations or suggestions of
his own fancy. He rectified. In him for the first time appears
a superiority of intellect, which at the instant of conception
suddenly halts, rises above itself, passes judgment, and says
to itself, "This phrase tells the same thing as the last —
remove it — these two ideas are disjointed, reconsider it. . .
He can extract from every object, landscape, situation,
character, the special and significant marks, so as to group
and arrange them, to compose on artificial work which sur-
passes the natural work in its purity and completeness."
What a relief for the headlong reader or learner is implied
in this clearing of a path, this winning of successive victories
over the tyranny of mind images !
This is art, but this is also primitive education — a training
for thinking — the beginning already of clear consecutive
thought.
Imagination and Movement 41
Here too is the antidote for the over activity of the inner
world which brings forth dreadful shapes, monstrous forms,
as of uneasy sleepers. The objective arts, are the arts in
which the imagination projects itself. In them we deal not
with the residues of sentiment but of sensation. Images
occupy a position between the concrete and the abstract.
The plastic image descends to the point of origin. It deals
with the concrete, the external. The general character of the
plastic imagination is easily determinable. Its material
consists of visual, motor, and tactual images. These are the
raw material of painting, drawing, modelling, architecture, and
of all the minor decorative arts. Another form of the same
Order of imagination employs words to evoke impressions of
vision, contact and movement — as in the word portraits of
Chaucer, the tales of the romancer and above all, of the realist.
But the most complete form of the plastic imagination is to
be found in mechanical invention where the worker is dealing
continually with representations of the qualities and relations
of external things, and dependent for success on the fidelity
of the image to reality. In this form it is drawing near to
the imagination of the scientist who discounts personal im-
pression, and finds the ' personal equation ' merely an incon-
venience and a trouble. In plastic art "temperament" is
still much. Nevertheless even the material of the child who
deals with clay, colour, etc., consists of images which are a
revival of perception. The objective arts, however we view
them, lead ouhvard towards the attainment of images ' im-
pregnated with reality.'
The subjective imagination finds its material in images that
owe comparatively little to objective reality. Moreover it uses
its materials freely — its working is illustrated in reverie, in .
myths, hallucinations, in symbolism for a subjective use of
words, etc) and in a certain way of dealing with number (the
series of number is indefinite in either direction, and therefore
4^ Imagination and Movement
opens the way to certain forms of untrammelled speculation.)
In all these forms of subjective imagination the creative power
appears to be untrammelled in its movement. But the great
subjective art is music. The musician lives in an inner world
but not in a world of mere chaos or unregulated movement.
He evolves a system of coherent tone-images where
every element has its place and value. He attains to a know-
ledge of the relationship, of intervals, accords, rhythms, etc.,
and these constitute for him an expressive and accurate
language, in comparison with which speech itself is obscure
and unintelligible. Subjective art then is the regulator, as
objective art is the corrective of the inner world. The Greeks
appreciated the value and function of either order of art.
They recognised in music one of the most important instru-
ments of social and ethical culture. The extraordinary
development of this art in modern days seems to have
carried it beyond the pale of the elementary teacher, and
yet its office and function is unchanged."^ It is still the great
art of the interior or subjective imagination, and as such
must be regarded as of potentially great use in education.
Children betray their subjection to the inner imagination in
their capacity for illusion, in animism. But the development
of music (the art of the inner world) is the most precocious of
all. The average child, has undoubtedly a great suscepti-
bility to voices, and inflections, and a great power of inter-
preting these, even while he is still in his cradle. On the
other hand, children strive to express themselves objectively^
* As the Art of Music developes its moral function is ohscured. *' Greek
Music," says Mahaffy, " had a much greater national importance than ours,
because it was far ruder and less developed . . . The moral effects of
music are everywhere felt until it becomes developed and complicated.
Then the pursuit of perfection and the overcoming of technical difficulties
become ends in themselves." The singing of children is unimpassioned,
but strangely touching. Even in singing complicated or unsuitable things
choirs of child-voices have an emotional quahty that is very infectious and
peculiar to them.
imagination and Movement 43
inventing plays, or acting characters, covering their books and
even the walls with drawings, etc.
In short the creative energy of childhood seeks to express
itself in forays which represent the inner and the outer world,
and in this double effort the animism of early childhood is
transformed. Sanity and health depend on the regular alterna-
tion of these two movements — the regulating inner movement
and the corrective outer movement. Artists appear to lose
this alternation at times — as for example, Charlotte Bronte,
who wrote certain chapters of "Jane Eyre," with complete
abandonment to the impulses of the inner woild— and then
retired to a bed of sickness for some days. In cases of in-
sanity there is no return—that is to say, no alternation.
The madman lives permanently in the inner world of illusion
which he has created, and which for him is invested with
objective reality. Even in the average man, and in the race
alternation is not always regular — indeed it may be doubted
whether it is ever even and balanced. We cannot look back on
the history of our own race without perceiving that men were
once under the influence of their subjective life to a greater
degree than now. Witches were burned, having confessed their
guilt before martyrdom. Epidemics of superstition were
common and every pleasant phantasy was open to be em-
braced as truth. This inner tumult was followed by a sudden
development of Art. To-day the whole movement of the
imagination is outward — even the impulse given by educa-
tion to young children is (if not always very conscious,
or sure in method) towards the objectification, the
materialization even of the creative power. A voice is raised
now and again in protest. Stanley Hall, as we have already
remarked, declares that at a certain age "reverie should be
provided for.'' This is but a voice in the wilderness however.
The minds of even little ones are kept busy with objective
elements— elements concerned, that is to say, not with scnti-
44 Imagination and Alovenient
ment, but with sensation. The object-lesson has become
important. The eye, the outward looking organ is taxed.
Finally, in laboratories and work-shops the whole mind is
occupied with objective realities. If alternation was broken in
favour of the inner world in bye-gone days, it is obvious that the
process is now reversed. Formerly men were continually ap-
proaching a condition which resembled madness. Now — they
are in danger of drying up the very well-springs of the intel-
lectual life, of projecting all, and recognizing no point or place
for return.
Nevertheless the normal child still strives to express through
arts that are largely complimentary the double movement of
the mind. The inner world has still power over him. The
outer world' calls him continually. He has sense-perception^
he accumulates memories — he experiences emotion — and with
these requisites of creative energy he begins to work, that
is to say, with these he is capable of education.
But before going any farther it is necessary to say a
few words about what we may call the raw material of creative
energy. Without more or less keen sense-perception, memory,
and emotion, there can be no imagination. As a preliminary
we must devote a little attention to eyes, ears, memory, and
emotion.
Eyes
The eye does not see. < It is only the organ of vision. In
its retina are contained the rods and cones which are the
essential sight elements. The light entering the eyeball
through the pupils impinges on the cones, and is transmitted
to the optic nerve and thence on to the large area of the
brain which is known as the visual centre. It is there that
vision takes place.
The eye then is an instrument, an instrument which is
Imagination and Movement 45
perfected gradually — it has been said that it is far from
perfect at the best— and which its possessor learns to use but
slowly. It is, indeed, par excellence the instrument of adapta-
tion, and its proper use is a matter of training. The training
does not necessarily take place in schools. Schools are not
ideal places for eye-training. The more important kinds of
eye-training are carried on in the fields. The eye requires
not only light but vista.
How important this natural eye-training is, we may gather
from the condition of those who, from eye disease, are obliged
to remain a long time in the dark. To take a single in-
stance. Professor Harvey injured his eyes through work with
the microscope. He had to spend nine months in a dark
room, and then seventeen months in a partially darkened
place, which was made a little brighter every day towards
the end so as to avoid too rapid transition into ordinary
daylight. But when at last the eyes were cured, and Professor
Harvey came back to live in the light he found that he had
'forgotten hozv to see. He could no longer measure distances.
Objects that were far off appeared to him close, and vice versa.
And he could not distinguish colours. In short, he had to
learn to see all over again.
Natural eye-training begins almost from the first day. For
from the first a child makes instinctive eye-movements —
opens the eyes and closes them — and these automatic move-
ments are indispensable for the development of the visual
sense. Blind at first, he begins to distinguish light from
darkness, to follow bright moving objects, to judge distances.
Many infants at school turn the head in order to follow move-
ments without moving the eyes at all. The child's sight at
this period of life — that is to say during early childhood — is
hypermetropic, or adapted for seeing distant objects. It is what
we call long sight. In this the young child's eye resembles
that of the savage.
46 Imaginalioii and Movement
In hypermetropia (long sight) rays are brought to a focus
not on the return, but behind it. This condition is natural in
childhood, since the eye, which was quite flat in ihe embryo,
is still short from before backwards — is still, in fact, a little
flattened. But this narrow eye, suitable for seeing distant
objects, is not adapted to modern requirements. In bye-
gone days books were rare, and people learned and com-
municated largely by word of mouth or through public speech
and announcement. To-day all that is changed. We live under
a rain of periodicals, and learn mainly through the exercise
of the visual sense. Children share these altered conditions
with us. They, too, have periodicals, and a literature conse-
crated to them, and in schools much eye work is required of
them. And as a consequence of all this. Nature appears, to
quote an eminent oculist, to be evolving a new type of human
eye to suit altered conditions.
To be sure there are places in Britain where the new type
of eye is little known, or where it is unnecessary to engage
specialists for the safety of the visual organ of the average
child. In the western islands, for example, you may walk
with striplings whose keen far-glancing eyes look into the blue
vista of sea and sky detecting the far-off" sail, and watching
the movements of groups of persons to you invisible ! "^ Reared
in the out-posts of civilization, on bare islands which from
every hill and ridge command the blue shining horizons of
the sea these young islanders have still the primitive eye of
less studious generations with whom the question of over-
crowding was never very much to the front. These, however,
form but a small minority of our school-going children.
That which we may be allowed to call the " modern " eye,
is an eye adapted for close range rather than for distance. It
*" Probably this keen perception is not eniircly due to the superiority of the
eye. The young islanders interpret signs nnd movements that the stranger
does not look for, and thus sees what appears to he invisible to the stranger,
but is in reality unnoticed.
Imagination and Movement 47
has been evolved — as every other organ has been evolved — by
exercise, by the particular stimulus supplied by environment.
If we look at a distant object, and then at a book at about
ten inches distance, we instinctively accommodate our vision
to see the type, which means that we exercise the ciliary
muscle. This exercise of the ciliary muscle for the vision of a
close object stretches the eye, which becomes longer from before
backwards. If it is carried on long, we get the modern eye —
the long myopic eye, adapted for the vision of things at close
range.
In between these two extremes — the hypermetropic (long-
sighted) eye and the myopic (short-sighted) — we get what we
may call the normal or ideal eye. Nearly all children are
approaching this during the whole of their school life. But
they do not all reach it. Many miss it, and progress
through the '' turnstile of defect," as one doctor puts it, from
hypermetropia into high myopia ! Unfortunately, nearly all
eyes in highly civilised communities, irrespective of their
length, are in some degree defective. The focus, whether it
be in front of the retina, as in the " modern " eye, or behind
the retina, as in the flattened short eye, is unequal for the
various parts, so that there is no harmony in vision — the sight
is irregular. Thus by defect and misfortune a child may
develop myopia without reaching normal vision in the pro-
cess. There are short cuts enough to every calamity.
Here is a table, drawn up by Erisman, of St. Petersburg,
who was the first to point out that a large proportion of
hypermetropic (long sighted) school children become myopic
(short-sighted) : — ■
Classes.
Per cent. I.
Hypermetropic 68
Normal 19
Myopic , 14
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
56 .
• 50 •
. 41 .
• 35 .
. 34 .
• 32
28 .
. 26 .
. 27 .
. 26 .
. 24 .
• 25
16 .
. 22 .
. 21 .
. 38 .
. 41 .
. 42
48 Imagination and Movement
You see, in looking at this table, that the sight of the
children improves as you rise from class to class. It looks,
at first, as if school-life improved the vision. As a matter of
fact the eye develops because the child is at the period of
growth and development. Most children are born hyperme-
tropic, but as they grow older they approach nearer and
nearer to normal vision. As already stated a considerable
number, however, pass the line and become slightly myopic,
and from these the myopic class of the future is recruited.
The investigations of more recent experts give practically
the same results as those found in Erisman's table. Once
every year in Bradford schools, when the light is fairly
constant during the day, the vision of the children is tested by
the copying of letters of a standard type. These block types
are arranged to be suitable for any distance from ten to twenty
feet. The test card is hung in a fair light, and the nearest
horizontal distance in feet from the card to each row of desks
is measured by the teachers. Paper sheets are distributed to
the children, who are then told to fill in on the sheet all the
letters on the card, and where they cannot distinguish a letter
to make a cross. Before beginning, however, each child
writes at the top of his paper his name in full, and also his
age, standard, school, and the distance (as told him by his
teacher) of his desk from the test-card. Thus, when the
papers are collected, the medical superintendent obtains a
record of name, age, sex, standard, school, etc., as well as
evidence of the acuity (sharpness) of vision.
Age Last Birthday.
Percentage with^j Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen.
visual acuity I47 '8.. 35 7.. .28 -3... 24 -6... 24-5... 19*9 19-3 i8-8. ...
defective. )
This table shows, like Erisman's, the improvement which is
in reality only natural development. At the age of ten or
Imagination and Movement 49
eleven the majority of children attain to normal vision. But
a large number develop slight myopia, which in the case of
students, at least, tends to develop rapidly. Mr. Priestley
Smith's examination shows that 20 per cent, of the Birming-
ham teachers are myopic, and this result agrees very well with
that obtained by Dr. Kerr, formerly of Bradford, who found
that myopia increased steadily between the ages of fifteen and
nineteen, so that the percentage of myopia among pupil
teachers at nineteen in Bradford was 21 per cent.
We are not here concerned with the vision of young people
of ninteen except in so far as it is the result of habits induced
in childhood. We are here dealing wdth children. And well
may we ask ourselves. What is the cause — not of their de-
fective vision, for their defects are natural — but of their de-
teriorating vision? Does it lie in the schools? Not entirely.
The effects of school life on vision are probably exaggerated
— serious as those effects are. For we have evidence to show
that, though country children attend schools, which are inferior
to town schools in the matters of lighting, seating accom-
modation, etc., yet country children suffer less from eye defects
than town children of the same age."^ This points to the true,
or rather the great cause of deteriorating vision. It is first of all
banishment from the wide horizon of the open country or sea,
the lack of eye-space. It is alarming to find how quickly and
fatally the narrow horizon tells on the vision. Cohn, who
has made such extensive investigations, assures us that the
narrower the street the larger the number of myopes you will
find therein. Dr. Seggell found among soldiers recruited
from the country only 2 per cent, myopic (short-sighted).
*Percentagk with Defective Vision in Town and Suburban
Schools, Bradford.
ir.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
Percenlage wilh^l Town . .
36 .
• Z'^ •
. 24 .
. 21 .
. 16
Defective Vision j Counlry.
26 .
• 23 .
. 16 .
. 15-
• IS
4
50 Imagination and Movement
Among soldiers recruited from the towns he found from 4 per
cent, myopic up to 9 per cent, in the more croivded areas of
big cities."^
All this is very serious, particularly when we remember
that myopia is transmitted by heredity, and also that the
myopic eye is exposed to many dangers and evils from which
the normal eye is exempt.
Educational authorities cannot remove all the causes, cannot
remove even the main causes of eye deterioration. For the
main causes are narrow streets, bad air, the want of good
food (no organ is more dependent on the general health than
the eye), overcrowded and unwholesome sleeping-rooms.
Nevertheless, there are many things which educational
authorities can do, and a few of these we may now enumerate.
To begin with, town schools should be built, if possible, in the
midst of a large open space, or, if that is impossible, in a wide
street, where some vista of sky at least is visible. The windows
should be large. In the ideal school the window area should
equal one fourth of the floor space. That is much, but it is
not too much, and no inch of this window space should be
wasted. Much window space is wasted or ineffective to-day,
because, in making additions to buildings, walls are placed
over against windows. There are other ways, too, of wasting
window space. In Germany, Cohn found that from 30 to 50
per cent, of the window area in schools was lost through
architectural embellishments. The manager built beautiful
Gothic windows. English clerks-of-works are too practical to
fall into this error.
* It is worthy of mention too, that girls (though more exempt from
diseases of the eye than boys) suffer more from defective vision. This may
be partly because of the lack of outdoor games and the long vision exercise
implied in this. But there is no doubt that sewing in infant schools and
early standards is still responsible for mischief. True, the code now insists
on large stitches, large stitches however must still be made at a close range.
It is not the size of the stitches, but the closeness of the range which is now
the evil factor.
Lnaginatioii and Movement 51
Skylights furnish admirable diffused light, but up to the
present the Board of Education has prohibited them. The
objection to them is, of course, that in summer they make a
room uncomfortably hot, but this can be met partly, by simple
arrangements of blinds, etc. An occasional inconvenience of
this kind is not to be weighed against the evil of keeping
children in semi-dark rooms, where the vitaHty is lowered
through lack of the powerful stimulus of sunlight. In former
days — when sun-baths and light-cures were not known — and
when health was believed to reside in medicine chests, dim
and even dingy schoolrooms were permissible. We have
these dingy rooms still — a heritage of the past. But all the
schools of the past were in so far as we are concerned, experi-
mental. There is no need to copy their defects.
Light from the front should be avoided, as there is no more
exhausting eye-ordeal than the facing of this continual dazzle.
Light from the back or from the right produces annoying
shadows. The desks and seats should be so arranged that
the light comes from the left of the pupils at work. The wall
surfaces, furniture, and curtains should be all of light colour,
without glaze, so as to diffuse light about the room. The
terra-cotta, which is preferred by many as a *' warm " colour,
absorbs too much light, and should be deposed in favour of
soft, light grays, etc. ; and the place of the dark fittings might
be taken by light-coloured woods even in towns, where smuts
abound. For after all everything betrays, even if it does not
show, the dirt that rests on it. Dirty light wood is preferable
in a school to dirty dark wood. Indeed, there is nothing more
depressing than the dirt upon dinginess of some rooms where
children have to pass their days.
Passing now to the question of seating accommodation, we
have to remark that the ideal system of seats is single chairs.
Every child in a class should be treated as an individual and
have his own seat, a seat moreover which fits him, and is not
Iinao-ination and Movement
"%?>
intended for a person of twice his years. Sometimes you may
see a class of children with their feet dangling many inches
from the floor. When they lean forward to the desks in
order to write, they have to raise the elbow, get the balance
of the body out of gear, and bring the work closer to one eye
as compared with the other. The evil effects of this practice
were evident to teachers even in the dark days of *• payment
by results." And more than one head master brought out a
scheme of vertical, or almost vertical, handwriting. These
efforts were praiseworthy, and the need for reform of one
kind or another urgent enough. Eulenburg says that 90 per
cent, of the cases of spine curvatures, not induced by local
disease, are developed during school life. More important,
however, than any system of vertical handwriting is the
introduction of seats and desks w^hich make right posture
inevitable.
The desk and seat should lit the child w^ho uses it. It is
because his desk does not fit him that he raises his elbows,
pushes up one shoulder, looks sideways at his work and gets
into extraordinary attitudes. The teachers observing the
attitude, laid the blame on the sloping handwriting. But the
sloping handwriting itself was an effect rather than a cause.
Vertical handwriting at a badly constructed desk is just as
injurious an exercise as sloping writing at the same desk.
What is wanted i§ a desk where the pupil may write without
raising the elbow. The desk should be broad enough to hold
the book or slate, not broad enough to allow of the child's
tilting it on one side. The slope should be about 14". The
edge of the seat and desk should overlap about an inch. The
height of the seat should, of course, be such that the child's
feet should rest on the floor. On such a seat, and at such a
desk, vertical writing and upright posture would follow as a
matter of course.
In Bradford, the children are divided into three height
Imagination and Movement 53
groups, and certain actual dimensions in seats and desks are
recommended for these, and answer very well. They might
not answer so well in other districts, for children of like age
vary a great deal in various parts of the country.
Infants. Standards.
Standard Standard Standard
Babies. Infants. I. & II. III. & IV. V. & VI.
Inches. Inches. Inches. Inches. Inches.
Height of children . . 38 .. 42 .... 45 . . 50 • • 55
Height of desk edge
above seats .... 6 . . 7^ . . • . 8 . . 8^ . . 9^
Height of seat from
floor 9 .. II .... 12.J ..14 ..16
Size of seats iix8 . ...11x9.. 11x9. .iixio
Size of back rests . . 8x5 .... 8x5!.. 8x5^
And now to recapitulate.
All fine work such as is involved in embossing, needle
threading, pricking, etc., should be banished from the infant
school. Ruled paper and slates, copy and drawing-books
ruled in fine squares should be abolished. If needles (however
large) can go along with them so much the better. As for
reading, the teaching of this subject may be made a means of
training the vision. But this cannot be done if books are in
use, for children cannot hold a book at the right distance ;
involuntarily they will bring it near the eyes, and even rest it
on the chest when they are weary. Reading should be learned,
therefore, with the aid of frames and boards set at a distance^
and the only writing permitted should be done at arm's length
— sometimes out before the class. Early childhood is a time
of opportunities, of opportunities that do not recur — a vital
and momentous period in human education. But it is not
the period of fine movements, of accuracy, letters, and books.
The question of the lighting of schools, and the form and
size of desks should have an important place in school hygiene.
54 hnagination and Movement
and the question of vista., or room for eye exercise also. And
yet the percentage of defect of vision appears to vary more with
the social conditions of the children than with any school
conditions. School life, where it makes demands on the
eye through fine work, throws a strain on the nervous system.
But home conditions are after all mainly responsible for eye
disease, and largely for eye defects. This last fact is made
very clear in a table contained in Dr. Kerr's last Report of
the London Schools. The general figures from a number
of schools in different neighbourhoods, representing various
home conditions, are given. The Higher Grade schools, repre-
senting the best home conditions in their localities, have the
smallest percentage of defective vision. The crowded neigh-
bourhoods, with no wide thoroughfares, and peopled by a poor
class of people have the highest. The individual, in every one
of his members (and particularly in the higher organs), feels the
stress and strain of existence. On the integrity of these
higher organs his future largely depends. On the eye we
depend largely for the correction of the inner life. But this
natural discipline is prevented in the case of at least ten per
cent, of the child population to a more or less serious extent,
largely, through poverty, and the influences of an unfavourable
environment. Disease is always ready to attack the body, as
madness is always at the door of the mind. And the higher
the organ the more numerous the favourable conditions that
must be united to ensure its victory — that is to say, its health.
The strength and sanity of human beings has been compared
to the prize of freedom gained by the slave who had to
traverse the arena carrying aloft an egg, and marching between
glutted lions. The prize was granted if he arrived safely. But
how many chances were against him ! We must admit that
man arrives, however, at reason, and intelligence, and health
in an amazing number of cases. Victory, or comparative
victory, is achieved by so many that we are apt to over-look the
Imagination and Movement 55
enemies and destroyers altogether. When we glance at the poor
of our big cities we are reminded of them. It appears that
the beguining of the journey is the most critical part of it. Go
among the children of poverty, and you will see many that
promised well — who had a fair heritage to begin with. And
yet it is lost. Bad feeding, wrong feeding during the first nine
months ruins thousands. Many infants are done to death by
wrong foods ; others survive, but become a burden to them-
selves and to others. Later, the question of food settles many
other questions — decides not only whether there will be sound
teeth and bones, but whether memory, imagination, and will,
can ever be cultivated. Poverty, ignorance, anxiety, fatigue —
all these, like lions, threaten the advancing steps of thousands
of little ones. Many fall. For many more the whole march is
a struggle and the victor arrives at manhood, mauled and
weakened, rescuing but half of the prize.
The Ear
We have now to consider another sense-organ — one which
has been, perhaps, more neglected than the eye, and in which
disease and weakness often progress rapidly without attracting
much attention. Even the most careless parents take some
account of the eye — go out of their way to declare, for example,
that "they don't believe in spectacles," or perhaps announce
(if the case is a bad one) that they are " clean agin' operations."
But the deaf child's infirmity is too often regarded as a
purely mental and moral one, and the parent will often seek
to counteract it by remonstrance and shouting. The visual
sufferer is the more bereft : the aural the more unhappy.
In many animals the outer ear is large, and acts as an ear-
trumpet, gathering the sound waves. It is mobile, too, as
you may see from observing the ears of horses and dogs. But
the human external ear is small. The muscles once concerned
56 Imagination and Movement
ill its movements have fallen into disuse. And the outer ear
itself is quite unimportant, from the utilitarian point of view,
for its total loss would not affect the hearing. It has its uses
still to be sure. There is perhaps no other organ, not except-
ing the eye, which gives clearer indications of the character of
hidden structures. Nevertheless, even the small regularly-
. formed human ear of the highest type of human creature is
simply an ornament. Like a shell, which the tides of life have
modelled and left, it is a thing of wonder and joy for the artist
and lover of beauty and it is nothing more.
Some creatures have wonderful ears without the ornament.
"If you blow gently," said a correspondent to Ruskin, *'on
the feathers of the side of a bird's head a little below and
behind the eye, the parted feathers will show the listening
place, a little hole with convolutions of delicate skin turning
inwards. No one who looks at the little hole could fail to see
that it is an ear highly organised — an ear for music." Well,
behind the small human ''ornament" there is an even more
highly organised ear — a marvellous series of fine structures
and air galleries, of vestibules and labyrinths, so involved, so
exposed, and so interdependent that we may safely say there
is no other organ which runs so many risks as the ear.
In the last chapter we saw that the eye is an organ of light
and space, that where vista of sky and wide horizon is denied,
it becomes a semi-atrophied thing. But if the eye is the organ
of space, the ear is, par excellence, the organ of air. Where-
ever living creatures are penned in a close atmosphere there
the ear suffers, and the hearing fails. Wherever they are free
in a pure atmosphere and furnished with good breathing
apparatus, there we find sound and song and all the joys of
hearing. The bird, disposing of air as he wills, breathing it
through air passages below the skin (which are as supplementary
lungs to him), emptying himself of it as he dives into the
water, swelling to the breeze as he mounts, the air currents
Imagination and Movement 57
flowing within as well as around him, has been such a perfect
symbol of joy and freedom to us that we have given the angels
wings, and assumed their chief occupation to be singing !
Persons who have enjoyed the education that can be had only
from Nature — are bound to connect sweet sounds with a pure
atmosphere : whisper of w^ind in the ferns, flowing of water and
warbling of birds — all Nature's symphonies are played out-
under the free, blue sky.
But not only are the joys of hearing associated with purity of
atmosphere.
The quality and range of hearing depends largely on the
quality and amount of air any given creature can breathe, and
also on his power over the air — his power to control, and to
expel it. But this very power to control and expel depends
very largely on the integrity of the organ of hearing — the
freedom of all vents and openings.
To take an example. Just at the point where throat and
nose meet is the trumpet-mouth of the eustachian tube, the
drainage canal and ventilator of the middle ear. Now any
swelling or enlargement in that region will mean pressure
against and closure of the trumpet-mouth. And then the
sufferer will be deaf, not through the ear, but through the
throat.
Or now let us suppose that the nasal passages are stopped
up or inflamed. Then you will again have interruption and
failure, such as you might expect if some of the vents of any
wind instruments were blocked up.
The ear, we see is not an isolated organ. It is a very
dependent organ— dependent on all the others — but more
especially dependent on those that have anything immediately
to do with the air. Any swelling, inflammation, or disease in
the breathing organs will stop up the ear-openings, silence all
the music. And what is even more serious, the ear does not
recover so quickly and entirely as do many other organs. In
58 Imagination and Movement
its delicate labyrinths and vestibules the traces of disease linger
like a trail in the wood. Typhoid, scarlatina, diphtheria, mumps,
tuberculosis, measles — these, as many mothers know to their
cost, will not allow the ears to escape. Even the simple *'cold
in the head" departs not without leaving its trace. Many
people are deaf for months as the result of a cold. And we
all seem to realise this in a sub-conscious kind of way. *' I
was glad to escape with my ears," said a girl in the tram
yesterday. If she was alluding to an illness, she had indeed
good cause to congratulate herself on escaping '* with her ears,"
for very few ever do that. One third of all adults are deaf to a
considerable degree in one or both ears. There is a disability of
one ear in 10 per cent, of young children. And a large pro-
portion of town children are collar-bone breathers — many, as
we shall see presently, being mouth breathers.
Glance round any large class and you will probably see one
or two children with the mouth open. Why do they keep the
mouth open? In order to breathe. But the mouth is not
the natural organ for breathing, nor is it furnished with the
necessary appliances. For example, the nose is lined with
fine hairs which prevent the passage of many deadly germs
into the throat. But the mouth has no cilia. It lets the
germs pass through unimpeded. Yes, but the mouth-breather's
nose is stopped up. What is the child to do if one necessary
vent is closed ? He must, of course, open another. It is of
no use to say to such a child *'keep your mouth closed." He
must breathe as he can. To be sure he is liable to catch
many diseases — much more liable to catch any infectious
illness than his brother, who breathes in the normal way.
Then the breathing itself is badly done. He cannot breathe
in freely, he is still more powerless to breathe out again. And
as for his ears^-well, we know that one vent will not take
the place of another where they are concerned. Sound
is a matter of vents in the right place; that is to say, of
Imagination and Movement 59
form. The mouth-breather is deaf, still he must breathe as
he can.
He is deaf, also troublesome (as a rule) and stupid. The
dullness is induced, not natural. But it is real. The deafest
children in a school are the stupidest. With their pinched
noses, open mouths, dull eyes, and distressed foreheads, the
mouth-breathers look stupid, and the teacher has trouble with
them. Nor need we wonder. The fewer our impressions,
the narrower the range of our life, and the smaller means
have we for interpreting aright the impressions we do receive.
However, apart Irom all this, the mouth-breather is in no
condition for mental work. The power of thought, as well as
the power of flight, depends on air and breathing. For by
deep breathing the brain in supplied with oxygenated blood.
But this child's brain is impoverished. He sinks, when left
to himself, into stupor. You may see him asleep, sometimes,
with his head on his arm, and his arm on the desk — a sorrow-
ful enough example of modern *' child-culture."
It would be pleasant to think that in our island home, with
its wind-swept moors, its coasts ^'gay with dancing flocks
of sea-birds on the foam," this distressed little mouth-breather
was a rarity. But his name is Legion. Sometimes he manages
to keep his mouth fairly well shut, and you don't discover
him, even though you are looking for him. Here are two
tables showing the percentage of mouth-breathers in two
Bradford schools. The examination was made on fine sunny
days in June, when the number of temporary colds was at its
lowest : —
6o
Imagination and Movement
Total
Numbers
Seen.
Age
last
Birthday.
Obvious Mouth- Breathers.
Number
selected as
Obvious
Mouth-
Breathers.
Both
Nostrils
Blocked.
One
Nostril
Blocked.
Enlarged
Glands.
189
137
126
6
8
10
31
9
9
9
2
I
6
3
2
17
I
6
452
49
12
11
24
So much for the victims discovered at the first glance, as it
were. There were others who appeared normal, btit more
careful examination showed that they were suffering from
obstructions.
Total
Children
Seen.
Age
last
Birthday.
Apparently Normal Children.
Number
Selected.
Both
Nostrils
Blocked.
One
Nostril
Blocked.
Habitual
Mouth-
Breathers.
189
137
126
6
8
10
158
128
117
5
2
7
I
19
22
452
403
7
8
24
From these tables we see that mouth-breathing is not a
rare thing, but very common. It is so common that we have
reason to fear that few escape entirely. Few "with their
ears," with quick, keen sense of hearing. As for the mouth-
breather, the first thing to be done for him is to remove the
growths that impede the air passage. A simple treatment
will do this. And it is very interesting to see how, with their
Iinaoination and Movement 6i
^^^
disappearance the child gets a new lease of life and develops
rrpidly. Like a bird with a broken wing he was perhaps for
years. And now, like the same bird with the pinion healed,
he begins a new life in the open, is no longer behind the
others. The teacher often says, " Formerly he was stupid, now
he is opening out wonJerfuUy." Without the treatment he will
pass through his school days as a weakling, and probably
become very deaf in later Hfe.
The larger question is, of course, how to prevent such
painful and humiliating ailments. And the answer is "Live
in good air." Breathe it well, and exhale it well also, for in
this, as in other things, much depends upon exercise. And as
people breathe deeply when they are moving freely — when
they are jumping, running, fencing, swimming, climbing, play-
ing — we should see that children romp in the open air, if
possible, play polo in the water, etc. If necessary, breathing
drill should be given in the schools. Only the air must be pure.
Otherwise the better the children breathe it the worse for them.
For, of courst?, it is folly to open a door wide only in order
to admit an enemy. The collar-bone breathing, or breathing
with the top of the chest, so common with town children, was
in the first instance preventive. Nature closed the door on
the enemy- -bad air. But the doors of the ears cannot be
closed with impunity. For they are the doors of life, and the
entrance of power is through them. What weakness — and
also what violence and discord— attends their partial closing !
Our schools, full of young girls and children, should be real
nests of music. They are not nests of music. Side by side
with deafness there are shouting and discordant voices. But
the habit of real restraint is not formed. Susceptibility is there
— for children will appreciate keenly any new voice, and turn
quickly to listen to its inflections even when they have quite
ceased to be fastidious about the voices of the people around
them. They listen with pleasure to sweet singing — perhaps to
62 Imagination and Movement
their own sweet singing. But they do not connect their own
vocal powers and aural susceptibilities wdth the discordant
speech of the home or the playing-ground to the disparage-
ment of the latter. They slip, apparently, into the belief
that fine speech, like fine clothes, is for a few people, and
that the sweetness of their own voices in singing is just a part
of the mystery that enwraps all the processes of school w^ork.
It is difficult to provide a good aural environment in school.
The first condition of all is a back-ground of silence — and in
the schools of northern cities the rumble of traffic, the ring of
hoofs and wheels on stone cobbles, made any attempt at ear
training, on a large scale, almost impossible. On the other
hand the finer stimuli are lacking. The teacher is tempted to
shout — that is to say, the children are not tempted to liste7i.
And the sweetest natural sounds, such as the rushing of w^ater,
the whisper of leaves, the keen, sweet warbling of birds can
hardly be brought into the schoolroom. We may bring pictures
of meadow, hills and sea and hang them on the walls, but the
voices of Nature cannot be re-produced so easily. The whole
question bristles with difficulties, and authorities show some
tendency to run away from it.
Yet we are recalled by the knowledge that the human voice
stands as the expression of the inner life, and appeals directly
to the emotions. All that concerns it then has a special
bearing on questions of morality and conduct. The Greeks
were perfectly aware of this fact and recognized it. We are
aware of it, but puzzled how to act on our knowledge. We
feel that the beautiful singing voice of the northerner is the
natural voice. That the harsh, rude speaking voice is the
artificial, and the false voice. • That the former, not the latter,
contains the prophecy of the race, that it contains a suggestion
of varied and lovely human powders and feelings which are
to-day divorced from the every day life.
We can change the aural environment without changing
Iniagination and Movement 63
the locality — since the richest element in it after all is the
human element. This human element carries the direct
moral influence, and through speech more than song. The
aural environment of even the most unhappy child is always
changing within certain limits, for it is influenced by every
wave of feeling that stirs the people around him. The beauti-
ful flexible voice offers the stimulus of continual fine change,
the charm of fine variety. The inferior voice is inferior
mainly because it is dull. And it is dull mainly because it ex-
presses only a few states or feelings. Obviously the training
of the ear is a subject which carries us far. It is impossible
to separate it from the general education — to consider it as a
thing apart — as impossible as it would be to take a separate
part of the ear, which is a series of orifices, labyrinths and
complex structures, and attempt to deal with it as an inde-
pendent organ. Ear training is dependent on voice training,
and both are dependent on the emotional life, on nutrition
(a specialist informed the writer, that quite apart from the
question of energy or want of energy, he could judge of the
quality of the food on which children lived, by listening to
their singing) on social conditions, in short, on the whole life
and training of the school and the home.
But now for a few words on the range of hearing in children.
The testing of hearing in schools presents great difficulties.
The time and trouble required prevent a general examination,
as in the case of vision. Nevertheless, it is probable that
deafness interferes to some extent with the educational progress
of 15 per cent, of the children in schools.
Children, however, have certain privileges in the matter of
hearing. They have the power of hearing high notes to which
adults have become deaf. Tested by a whistle, which the
school doctor keeps in his room, they show a susceptibiHty to
sounds too shrill to be audible to older people. Dalton
64
Imagination and Movement
mentions a Dorsetshire proverb which says, that no labourer
over forty can hear a bat squeak.
Beyond the hmit at which shrill sounds are audible to
children, the effect of vibrations may be observed on sensitive
flames. And such observations are proving useful in the
education of the deaf. Pupils incapable of hearing ordinary
sounds, watch the effect of their own speech on the flame-scale
before which they practise, and in this way learn to regulate
the amount and force of the breath, that is to say, they
learn to modulate the voice— a difficult task for them as
everyone knows, who has had to do with the instruction
of the deaf.
But to return to the child of the elementary school. Though
possessing a certain advantage with regard to shrill sounds,
it is clear that the sharpest child is deaf as compared with the
average adult. The power of hearing shrill sounds has nothing
to do — as Dalton points out — with sharpness of hearing, any
more than a wide range of the key-board of a piano has to do
with the timbre of the individual strings.
Testing with a watch, Dr. Kerr got the following results : —
Number of children to whom
watch becomes
audible at a distance of
Number
of
Age.
Children
Exam-
ined.
For the
right car
For the left ear
less
less
than
5 to 10
10 to
over
than
5 to 10
ID to
over
5 in.
in.
20 in.
20 in.
5 in.
in.
20 in.
20 in.
5 years
94
12
<3
38
31
12
22
33
27
6 ,,
88
9
30
32
12
18
31
27
7 ..
41
4
9
8
20
6
9
II
15
B ,,
58
6
8
21
23
8
12
22
16
9 ,,
37
6
2
14
15
6
9
9
13
loor more
12
—
3
4
5
3
2
4
3
Totals. .
330
37
46
121
126
47
72
no
lOI
TVT?^'.— Adults hear watch at 36 inches.
This table sets before us the unfortunate fate of the left
Imagination and Movement 65
side. It brings home to us also the fact that the learning to
hear, as well as the learning to see, is quite a long process.
Ears and eyes are organs — no more. They may be perfect
and yet hearing and vision may be small. Among idiots de-
fects of the ear are rare, and yet idiots are often deaf. They are
deaf not through the ear but through the brain. Young children
are deaf as compared with older persons, because they have
not learned as yet to distinguish and interpret sensations so
well as adults. For the same reason doubtless the sensitivity
of women appears to be inferior to that of men. One of
the aims of education is to develop power of sense dis-
crimination. This power depends, partly of course, on the
integrity of the organs, but largely on the organization and
growth of the brain.
CHAPTER IV
MEMORY AND EMOTION
Memory. — If we knew what kind of things a man or a child
remembers wx shall know something about the kind of imagina-
tion he possesses. A painter, a sportsman, a merchant, a little
child do not see a horse in the same way, or remember the
same things about him. The qualities which interest one are
quite neglected by another.
The great painter has, we say, great imagination. Memory
is the basis of this imagination. There are many specific
orders of memory. — Every sense, every order of perception,
every emotion has its own. The painter's is largely a visual
memory.* How much he forgets, how much he ignores in
order to remember, to awaken at will a certain order of mmd
image. Ghirlando could paint the portrait of any person
whom he had seen passing in the street. Holbein, on coming
to London, forgot the name of a patron, but remembered his
* The organic limitations of the artist, or at least of the young 2iX\\^\.^
may be overcome by a certain order of teacher. Of late years it is becom-
ing common to engage one order of teacher for gifted children, who are
learning to draw, not for his artistic power, bat for other powers altogether,
For example : — A talented boy, who draws horses well, is st-nt to live with
an expert judge of horse-flesh. The latter " lends his eyes" to his young
pupil, points out things for which the artist never looks and which he seldom
sees, and thus helps him, as it were, to a double supply of mind images
to work with, viz. : these of the artist and these of the expert and jockey.
Memory and Emotion 67
face so well that he painted a portrait of him. While Horace
Vernet painted portraits from memory after a single sitting.
Mozart's tone-memory was so great that he could play a w^hole
opera after having listened to it only once. Such specialization
involves sacrifice. Every faculty or order of memory which
enchains or suspends the action of the rest is a despot. Mozart
could not cut- up his own food, and of Turner it was said that
"he had holes in his brain."
"Equilibrium of the faculties, is in human intelligence what
equilibrium of forces is in the physical world." Yet all the
memories are not equal in any person — even in the well-
balanced. Taine observed that in his own case colour
memory was rather better than memory of form, but that his
memory for feelings or sentiments once experienced, was keener
than either. ''If I look back," he wiites, "I can see without
difficulty, after several years, five or six fragments of the out-
line of a scene, but not the precise and complete outline. I
can recall more easily than the outline, the whiteness of a
sandy path at Fountainebleau, the hundred little spots and
stripes made by the sprigs of wood strewed on it, its winding
carves, the faintly rose coloured tints of the heather by the
side of the path .... but I cannot trace the winding of the
path. Above, below, all is vague. In my case, all that is re-
produced uninjured and whole is the precise shade of emotion
I experienced." Thanks to this fine memory of sentiments,
Taine, and others of similar organisation, can renew pains and
pleasures. Other men, accustomed to pay less attention to
sentiments and more to sensations, might be able to bring the
colours before the consciousness with a clearness that would
almost equal that of the original experience.
The memories of any individual, then, are unequal : never-
theless, they have all something in common, viz. : — That they
represent the conservation of certain states of the organism, and
their reproduction. " Every impression leaves a certain inefface-
68 MeiJiory and Emotion
able trace ; that is to say, molecules disarranged and forced to
vibrate in a different way cannot return exactly to their primitive
state. If I brush the surface of water, at rest, with a feather, the
liquid will not take again the form which it had before ; it may
again present a smooth surface, but molecules will have changed
places, and an eye of sufficient power would see traces of the
passage, of a feather. Organic molecules acquire a greater or
less degree of aptitude for submitting to disarrangement. No
doubt, if this same exterior force did not again act upon the
same molecules, they would tend to return to their natural
form ; but it is far otherwise if the action is several times
repeated. In this case they lose, little by little, the power of
returning to their original form, and become more and more
.closely identified with that which is forced upon them, until
this becomes natural in its turn, but they still respond to the
least influence that will set them in vibration "
It appears at the first blush as if the nervous system was for
a long time a passive instrument. And yet this is not the
case. — Infancy is a period of constant experiment. Acts which
seem easy to us were acquired with difficulty. Thus, "when
light first strikes the eyes of a new-born child, an incoherent
fluctuation of movements is observed. At the expiration of a
few weeks the movements are co-ordinated, the eyes have the
power of accommodation, and, being fixed upon a luminous
point, are able to follow it with precision." Thus we see that
organic memory implies *' 7iot only a modification of 7ie7'V0iis
elements, but the formation among these elements of determinate
associations for each particular act." Determinate associations
are formed gradually by repetition, and even after they
are formed they have to be maintained by exercise. Let
us take, for example, the case of the learned professor,
who became blind, and forgot how to see. A certain
organic memory, which, under normal conditions would have
been so stable as to be ignored, was partly lost, and had to
Metnory and Emotion 69
be recovered. A great many nervous elements, differing from
each other greatly in structure and functions, in form and ar-
rangement, had to recover certain affinities, or power of work-
ing in certain definite relations, before the professor could
learn again one of the lessons of infancy. He had to return
and undergo part of the training of infancy. Memory de-
pends not merely in a particular modification impressed on the
nervous elements : it depends also on the establishment of
a certain living relationship between elements. If we turn
now from the consideration of the organic to the conscious
memory, the movement of life appears to be almost bewilder-
ing. What constitutes the highest, the most complex and un-
stable form of memory? Briefly, conscious memory implies first,
of course, all that has been already indicated, viz. : — The modifi-
cation of certain cells by repeated impression, the establishment
of certain dynamic associations ; but further, the association of
states of consciousness evolved through these, and finally the
connexion of all this by a chain of associations to the present.
The last of these conditions may alone be absent, while all the
rest is well established. For example, the poet, Wycherley, had
an admirable memory up to a certain point. If anything was
read to him at night, he awoke the next morning with a mind
overflowing with the thoughts and expressions heard the night
before! Only he had forgotten entirely that the thoughts were
not his own. The modification impressed upon the cerebral
cells was persistent : the dynamical associations of the nervous
elements were stable: the state of consciousness connected
with each was evolved : the states of consciousness were reas-
sociated and constituted a series. 7 heft the mental operation
was suddenly arrested. The series aroused no secondary state :
they remained isolated with nothing to connect them with the
present. They remained in the condition of illusions.
The localization in time appears to be a late, and very
gradually acquired power of memory. Only after an ap-
70 Memory and Bviolion
preciable interval can we sometimes fix things in time.
In order to do it at all we require a certain power of dealing
with mind images, of forgetting as w^ell as remembering, of
sacrificing as well as gaining, of having but not holding
— that is to say, the fixing of things in time involves
great mental activity. Even the plastic artist's memory,
which is a vision, not in time but in space, implies
prodigious movement with loss — a movement inducing very
often sudden fatigue. '' If I wish to see the Moors again,"
wrote Gilbert Ballet the painter, ''I will only have to close
my eyes and then — fellahs, granite columns, white marble
elephants, plains of gold and diamond cites ! O what mad-
ness ! What delight ... I will be drunken with marvels,
until completely under the power of hallucination, I at last
fall back into the world of mediocrity." ^' O I have a strange
memory," wrote Fromentin, " I never take notes. Sometimes
in travelling I grow weary. I shut my eyes. I say to myself.
* You are losing all that.' But no. Two or three years after-
wards I can see it clearly." The vision in space does not
involve the same order or chain of activities as the vision
in time. It is largely an hallucination. But every higher
form of memory involves prodigious activity a?id 7?ioveme?it.
Impression's are not registered in inert matter but in living
matter. They are not printed on the cells like a seal on
wax. The cells in continuous vibration catch the new
message and fix it in perpetual change and response.
The conservation of impressions depends then on change.
Stability of impressions depends on constant change — that is
to say, on nutritive changes. In some children the rapid regis-
tration and restoration does not take place. We say of them,
not " They have a bad memory " (that goes without saying),
but "The nutrition is poor." In old age, also, nutrition is
often poor, and incapacity for rapid change in the brain cells
is accompanied by a corresponding slowness and faintness of
Memory and Emotion 71
memory — more especially for recent events and things. The
cells in many cases still guarding traces of the time when
nutrition was rapid — replacing these earlier traces w^ith what
energy is left in them. Innumerable facts show that there is
between nutrition and conservation the relation of cause and
effect.
These facts throw a great deal of light on many others.
Go into any slum school and ask such questions as these.
"What is your name?" ^'How old are you?'' "How
many brothers and sisters have you?" ''When did your
father die — and your mother ? "
The answer to such questions fall rapidly — instantaneously
from the lips of the well-nourished child. Unforgettable to
him seems his own name and the names of his brothers and
sisters. And very well he remembers that he is five and a
half or six and a half years old. But the girl of double that
age often looks troubled at your question. She has to recollect
with an effort even the most familiar things. She keeps
but a small hold on the past — or rather it keeps slipping from
her grasp, even though she may desire to hold it. " Where
is your mother?^' said a teacher one day to a bright-eyed
girl of twelve. The girl looked startled for a moment, then
collected herself and answered quickly ''She drowned herself
last year in the dam." It was plain that the remembrance
was a sorrowful one, and that the child, too, was not un-
conscious of the tragic element in her own forgetfulness. She,
like many others perhaps, realized dimly, that in forgetfulness
there is a kind of second death, that while the image lingers,
the beloved is not altogether lost. But the very poor are
literally not in a position to cherish the memory of the dead.
Take for example the case of a family in the slums, who had
a series of terrible misfortunes. The father fell off a ladder
and was killed. A few weeks later one of the daughters
caught smallpox and died in the hospital, and a brother was
72 Memory and Emotion
injured in a street accident. A year later there were new
events. The mother married again, then separated from her
husband, a daughter too married, and one of the sons had a
sudden ri^e in wages. It was impossible to speak to any
member of this family about the series of sorrowful events
that had happened in the previous year, without seeing that
he or she was puzzled to recollect their order and nature,
everything concerning them had become dim and confused.
Periods of semi-starvation had intervened between the sad
events, and during these periods the springs of sorrow and
remembrance had been dried up. Doubtless urgent cares -
about to-morrow's supplies had made the sweeping away of
the past all the more rapid. Like people in a boat, breasting
a great storm, they did not turn back to see the billow^s, now
far behind them.
" If we want to get an idea of what the intellectual machine
"^ is, w^e must lay aside literary metaphors," said Taine. " We
must lay aside such words as Imagination, Will, Intelligence,
\ even Memory." These are but abbreviations, signs that
express a great sum of things. Below all else, and condition-
ing it, the physiologist sees myriads of cells, capable of
spontaneous development, modifiable through impression,
nutrition, association, and antagonism. The psychologist
sees only the immediate result of the activity of the diverse
cells, to wit mental images of various orders^ primitive or
consecutive^ gifted ivith certain tendencies^ modified in their
development by the aid or the a?itagonism of other images.
Both find in the cell and its varying condition the material
for all the higher structures of mind and the ''faculties."
How plastic it is, how susceptible, how charged with potential
energies we may devine from the events of our inner life.
Sometimes memories that have lain dormant for years, and
were apparently vanished for ever, will revive suddenly under
the influence of emotion. During illnesses in which the
Meinoiy and Emotion J^)
circulation undergoes great changes, the mind will suddenly
turn over as it were the lost memories of childhood and
infancy. A servant girl who had heard Hebrew phrases in
childhood and forgotten them apparently for ever, displayed
her learning in an attack of fever, to the astonishment of all.
Another girl who completely lost the sense of hearing in early
childhood, recollected after many years, the rhythm of a
song she had heard in infancy. These sudden revivals prove
the persistence of long submerged images. Every sensation,
feeble or strong, every experience great or small, tends to be
Te-born through an interior image which fades and yet seems
to be capable of extraordinary resurrections. Thus the
human memory is like a great river that rolls along, catching
every reflection and holding it for ever. Everything that falls
on it is henceforth capable of revivification and re- birth, all
the debris of its gulf and shores have potentialities, that
await only the right conditions to reveal themselves. And
yet this river may become a mere channel of sluggish pools
and grey water tracks. A change in the cerebral substance,
fatigue, hunger, may prevent the awakening of images. Sir
Henry Holland relates how one day he lost, or appeared to
lose, all his past and its acquisitions. *' I descended," he
writes, " in one day two very deep mines in the Hartz moun-
tains, remaining some hours underground in each. While in
the second mine and exhausted both from fatigue and inanition
I felt the utter impossibility of talking longer with the German
Inspector who accompanied me. Every German word and
phrase deserted my . recollection, and it was not until I had
taken food and wine and had been some time at rest, that I
regained them again." - Here is a case in which the river
suddenly runs dr}^ In the case of many half-famished children,
the river is always kept shallow. Bad feeding in infancy
drains it at its source. Insufficient food at a later age, fatigue,
continual restraint — one or all of these causes may be
\
74 Memo7y and Emolion
active, and the effects are to be seen in the general failure
of all mental activities — but particularly in the poverty or
rather the paralysis of the Imagination. We see this illus-
trated tragically in the poor. We see it illustrated sometimes
even among the well-to-do.
The testimony of all those who attempt the training of the
Imagination is unanimous as to the great variability of even
the most promising pupils. " If I want my children to compose,
to do memory work on any free scale on any particular day,"
said one teacher, " I must take precautions. Or I must ask
the parents to take precautions. If the children are not
quite ^fit' little is to be expected. We must fall back on
routine lessons — that is all." If all this precaution is necessary
for the favoured child, what is possible for the famishing?
Alas 1 the routine lesson is all that can be attempted in many
class-rooms. And even this, little as it taxes the powers, as
compared with the other, seems to be a burden to some. The
same lessons have to be repeated, the same explanations gone
over again and again ere the desired impression can be
effected. — Teachers wearied by the effort required to do even
so little make no attempt at a higher order of exercise.
Emotion — " Emotion is the ferment without which there is no
creation." Man, possessed only of intelligence, the power of
remembering, associating, distinguishing and reasoning, would
produce nothing. At most he would be but a very fine order
of automaton.
So far are we from being mere automatons in childhood that
most of us can look back to some day in early childhood when
we received a new initiation into life, through emotion, " After
thirty years," said Taine, " I can remember every detail of the
theatre where I was taken for the first time. The pit seemed
to me like a monstrous pit, all red and flaming, with myriad
dark heads surging above its depths ; below, to the left, was a
Memory and Einotion 75
narrow platform, where tw^o men and a woman entered, gesticu-
lated, w^ent out and returned again. ... I was seven years
old — I understood nothing ; but the crimson velvet pit was so
crowded, so gilt, so illuminated, that in a quarter of an hour T
was quite intoxicated by the sight of it, and fell fast asleep."
Most of us have some such bright-tinted picture on the horizon
of memory — brighter than recent mind images, and more en-
during because of the emotion which stirred us on the long-
past day when we made them our own. It was emotion —
wonder, curiosity, astonishment, etc., which fixed our attention,
in the first place, and the emotion we now feel in remem-
bering the object or event helps to keep its colours bright
and permanent. Nor is it hard to trace the creative impulse
in such emotion. The painter and the romancer find
in such memories the material for much of their work.
Those not specially gifted in the arts re-create the whole
epoch of childhood in the light of them. And where does
childhood get the subject-matter of all invention save in
memories made clear and arresting through emotion ?
Without emotion, then, no development of imagination is
possible. Mental and moral development depends, not
merely on the learning of the right things at the right
time, but also on the experiencing of the right emotions. How
can we know that these emotions have been experienced ?
Only by the fruits of them, present and obvious in creative
work. Spontaneous child-inventions, such as child-words,
drawings, games, etc., are reassuring. They are all so much
evidence of the activity of creative imagination, of e??iotional
life, as well as mental life. Joy is the mother of many of
these creations — also, wonder and admiration. The germ of
human sympathy, as well as of intellectual activity is hidden
in that spontaneous creativeness — like the fruit in the flower.
Unfortunately, there are a great many children who, through
misfortune, have Httle impulse to create anything. They need
76 Memory and Emotion
no new vocabulary. They invent few or no new games, and
have not the smallest desire to draw anything. When the school
door opens for these a great many new tools are provided."^
There are books, pictures, colours — a new vocabulary even.
But all these things are mere husks ; for the natural emotions
have not yet been experienced that would stir the imagination
and give meaning to them. We may bring pictures of
of woodland and meadow, hills and sea into the school-room,
but what does the child who has never seen the hills or the
sea care for these things ? We may try to describe trees, sky,
waterfalls, etc., but we cannot give anything that will even
appear to take the place of an original sense-impression. Who
can describe a sound to one who has never heard the rushing
of water, the whisper of trees, the warbling of birds ? Nothing
avails here but experience.
But the deepest human emotions are those which have
their origin in human relationships. The little child learns
to know his mother's or nurse's face well, to recognise her
quickly and, in this recognition, emotion plays so great a
part that the familiar face becomes a kind of starting-point of
all the widening sympathy and interest of life. The law of
interest is acknowledged to be of the first importance in the
revival of images. *' Doubtless," said Ribot, "the law of the
affective life, the law of interest is less precise than is the in-
tellectual law of contiguity and of resemblance." And yet
it is more intimately concerned with the revival of memories.
* In many of our infant schools teachers play games with the children.
Froebel, we are told, also played games with children in the open air.
And perhaps, if he confined his own office very strictly to that of suggestion,
and did not interfere with the others, the grown-up playmate may have been
useful. But even this is not certain. The value of the game to the child,
as well as its " interest " lies here — that it is his own creation. Perez tells
how he spent much time in cutting a channel, filling it with water and sail-
ing boats for his three-year-old nephew, who resented the whole business,
nevertheless, and cried impatiently, " It isn't amusing ! " Our infants do
not, perhaps, expect the school-games to be amusing. They are an inven-
tion of grown-up people.
Memory and Emotion yy
AVe remember a multitude of things in connection with the face
of the person who first cared for and tended us, any one of which
would call up the others in a more or less complete reintegra-
tion. x\nd why ? Because the emotion of love animates
all these, and binds them in a unity that could not otherwise
be realised. ,
If early life gives little opportunity for the experience of
preserving and stimulating emotions, a remarkable mental
apathy is the result. ^' Unhappy the heart," said Tourgeniefif,
"that has not loved in youth."
The head mistress of a large school in Bradford found her
girls strangely lacking in observation. The school had good
reports always, earned full grant, and the girls sang, read, and
even worked sums quite satisfactorily. They made excellent
garments, and the discipline was excellent. Nevertheless the
teacher — a little puzzled, as many have been before her, at
the extraordinary mental apathy that may persist in children
who learn their three R's very creditably — made some new
tests.
The girls were questioned only about things they had seen
often. The school door is painted red and surrounded by a
coat of arms. Of thirty-eight girls only three had noticed
that there was anything over the door Some said the door
was painted yellow, others said it was black. All had seen
cows passing daily up the street to the slaughter-house.
Questioned as to the shape of a cow's foot, some said it was
" long," others that it was '' flat." Only two out of thirty-eight
noticed that it was cloven. Children do not often observe the
sky. It seems to be almost the last thing even grown-up people
look at carefully, unless they are afraid of a wetting. So it is
not surprising the class has little notion of the shape of clouds,
or even of the colour of the sky on fair and stormy days. It
was startling to hear from one girl, however, that " the rainbow
is mostly white and brown." Street boys are quick in finding
78 Memory mid Emotion
their way about. But it appears that this faculty is not de-
veloped in all city children in congested areas. Several girls
of twelve and thirteen, of average ability, who had not followed
the various callings of the street, knew very little of the
buildings within a few minutes' walk of their own homes.
They could not tell where the Town Hall is, or the Post
Office, or the Parish Church, though these important buildings
are within a short distance actually of the side streets in which
they live.
Forty-five children from Standard IV. were examined.
These have all seen ducks very often, but only twenty-eight
have noted that the feet are webbed. Questioned as to the
colour of the sparrows that hop about the yard, two said that
they are *' yellow." A great many looked puzzled and could
give no answer. Of the thirty-five children in Standard II.
who were questioned, four said the sparrow has four legs,
one said it has six. One said the common house fly has four
wings — being obviously confused rather than enlightened by
the object-lessons from dead insects in school. Many, indeed,
forgot the names of the specimens in various boxes, or con-
fused them, so that nine out of thirty-five said the bee was
much bigger than the very large butterflies, which were the
only specimens in school. Six declared that the sparrow is
yellow, five said that it is red. One said the sparrow is white,
and another that it has six legs (another case of intruding
insects). Lessons in Kindergarten, though recent for these
scholars, were not applied Sixteen said that their play-
ground, which is oblong, was a square. Some children
affirmed that a man's arms are fastened to his neck. Ques-
tioned as to the position of the eyes of a horse, nine girls out of
forty five professed ignorance. The majority looked puzzled.
It may, of course, be argued that children profess ignorance
and express themselves inaccurately at times about things of
which they are in reality quite cognisant. But, generally
Memory and Emotion
79
speaking, the drawings of the girls corresponded very closely
to their statements. Below is a memory drawing of a cow
by a girl of eleven. It is obvious that she had no idea of
position, even with regard to so conspicuous a feature as
the eyes.
vt Jy(y^
The teacher realizing that the emotional life of her pupils
was languid, questioned them one day about the animal they
were to draw. " Where does the cow live ? " she asked with
animation. But the children who had seen cows only on their
way to the killing shed, and were not interested in their doings
or habits, replied that " the cow lived in the slaughter house."
Clearly it is not by animation on the part of a questioner that
an emotional background may be provided.
Neither do mere object lessons in class provide it. In every
school emotional life has to be more or less assumed. The
class room is not the place where all can be done, and
experienced. It is the place where what has been lived
through can be put in order. If the emotional experi-
ence is quite wanting, or of a depressing order, the teaching
and explanations, though never so well done, appear to be
8o
Memory and Emotion
singularly futile. The writer has a number of memory
drawings of objects seen in school by children who have
never been in the country — or hardly ever. The drawings
reveal a great deal, and perhaps the fact of least importance
which they make plain is — that the children never had any
drawing lessons.
In some of the drawings there is evidence of confusion —
powerlessness to arrange even the few natural objects which
have fallen within the scope of the child's observation. Not
only do the contents of the insect boxes come forth in an
unwarranted manner. — The plants also behave in the same
way. The curves and tangents of stem and leaf begin to
appear in the memory drawings of animals, as in the case of
the girl, aged thirteen, who sends in the next illustration.
The horns between the ears are plainly a reminiscence of the
school plants, or, perhaps, of the brush drawing lesson.
Such a drawing, and others of a like nature (as, for ex-
Memory and Emotion 8i
ample, that of a girl who draws the head of one animal on
the body of another), remind us that the class-room has its
limitations. It had its limitations in the days when it con-
tained only books, slates, ink, and paper. And it has its
limitations now, when it is furnished with bird-forms, butter-
flies, plants, and herbariums. In the mind of the child, on
whom new forms are thrust without preparation and under
artificial conditions, '* the elements," to use Herbart's phrase,
*• still commingle with one another." There is no " clear
antithesis of single things" to prevent this confusion, and
pave the way for true association. But above all the deep
emotional stimulus is lacking, which, wherever it exists moves
like a living thing, through even the faultiest, clumsiest work.
Some teachers, realizing the hopelessness of labouring with
those who have neither experienced the emotions, nor accumu-
lated the mind-images necessary for any kind of integrating effort
escape from the class-room with their pupils, and give them
a holiday time with opportunities. Pestalozzi was not long in
finding his way into the woods with his little flock. Salzman
and many other German teachers took the road with their
scholars. Bartholomai organized regular school journeys in
the streets of Berlin, undeterred by the laughter and jeers of
the crowd and the bitter complaints of the Philistines that
" the children's clothes and shoes were being ruined." Herbart,
being a private tutor, did not take flight with a large number
of children to the annoyance of the populace. But he remarks
that for every boy, the best companions are peasants, shepherds,
hunters of every kind and their sons.
These poor drawings are residues of confused experiences.
They, Hke the poverty of vocabulary, the lack of games, the
general want of interest can be traced to the same cause —
Dearth of clear and suitable mind-images and healthy emo-
tions. The invention by grown-up persons of suitable plays, a
stimulating manner on the part of the teacher, even a chance
6
82 Memory and Emotion
visit to the country will not make the loss good. The teaching of
drawing and colour-work on rational lines will effect very little.
The school lesson as we saw already always pre-supposes
a great silent preparation on the part of every child —
the preparation of the mind — not by the learning of lessons —
but by experience, and even freedom in experiment or play.
The formal lesson cannot feed the sources of the creative powers.
The sources of creative energy are the country, with its life,
its human relationships in labour, its occupations and its
beauty. Tolstoi puts into a child's mouth the words, *'Art is
the expression of an inner force." And these words are true.
The drawings of the slum children are saddening, not because
they show a lack of manipulative skill, but because they betray
all the languor and weakness of the inner life — the dimness of
the original perception of which they are only the residue.
CHAPTER V
tup: higher hungers
There is no doubt that we are often ashamed of them. Just
as the Highlander of old, scorned to show that he was famish-
ing when he sat down at a rich man's table, so many people
to-day scorn to show — or are afraid to show — that they love
bright and pure colour, even when it is within their reach.
The colour called " London smoke " was very fashionable for
a long time. Black is said to be always " safe," and so are
various neutral shades, all bearing depressing names such as
" Feuille morte " (dead leaf). Whence came this extraordinary
timidity or shame — this desire to take refuge in neutrality?
Did the Quakers initiate it, or the Puritans? Or did it show
itself most effectually in ultra-refined circles? The Quakers
are not to blame, surely. They loved grey, which is on the
road to white. The Puritans are more suspect, loving brown,
which is well towards blackness. As for the ultra-refined,
modern colourists, theirs was the tendency to that dirty-yellow-
ish-green, which Ruskin likened to a decaying heap of vege-
tables. Be the blame whose it may it is certain that the fear
of colour is now wid^ spread, and that those who show daring
in the matter of hues in everyday life, in clothes, decorations,
etc., run some risk of being decried as uncultured beings.
And yet colour is the joy of the eyes— the flame of Life's
84 The Higher Htingers
fire. Tlie child loves it."^ Through it he learns something of
the outer world. By it he expresses, too, something of the
inner. It constitutes a kind of intimate life language. It is
therefore one of the free forms in which the imagination early
finds exercise.
The colour-sense develops early. At the age of nine months
the child of Baldwin showed pleasure in blue, red and green
papers. Comparatively slow as is the process of learning to
see, Preyer, Perez and many other observers all agree that long
before the end of the first year the gratification of the colour
sense is attended with real pleasure. A baby will clap its
hands on seeing a bright-coloured flower. By the time he
reaches school-age the colour-sense is well developed. If
his sight is normal he already sees and recognises, not only
the six spectrum colours — red, orange, yellow, green, blue
and violet — but darker and lighter shades (as he calls them)
of these. Already, too, the mere desire or appetite sweeps into
something like a capacity for joy. Children love the bright
colour of their own raiment, and enjoy the stimulus offered
by it everywhere. The hue of the walls, the wood stainings,
the colour of common objects are not matters of indifference.
But the living colour is, of course, the most thrilling of all. " My
heart leaps up," writes Wordsworth, "when I behold a rainbow
in the sky ! " And in this the poet was a child : keeping
something intact of the time when there was a glory on the
grass and a splendour in the flower that passed away later,
for we can safely afhrm that the heart of almost every little
child in the infant schools leaps up when he sees, for the first
* This does not mean that he is already artistic, or that he places colours
so as to be lovely ! Though exceptional children become artists almost as
soon as they can speak, yet such children are exceptions. The average
child is not sensitive to very fine colour distinctions and harmonies. He
will make an ugly tartan of yellow and red with his papers, when he comes
first to school, just as the ancient Highlanders made an ugly tartan of the
-same colours with wool.
The Higher H7mgers 85
time, that wonderful band of living colours which is folded up
in a beam of light.
Well, the children of dark alleys and crowded side areas
arrive in school with a colour sense that has not yet met its
natural gratification. Fortunately it is possible to go a
long way in gratifying it. In the class-room there is space —
the first essential for colour schemes. Then flowers can
be brought into the school and window gardens kept
gay throughout the year. There seems to be a kind
of annual evolution in colour. The prevailing colour of
spring \^ yellow. As soon as the snow is gone, and* the snow-
drops and pale Christmas roses have faded, this colour of
youth springs up everywhere. Most of the spring flowers are
yellow. The foliage even is yellow in early spring, and
children are very fond of this colour and delight as do older
people in the primroses, buttercups, daffodils, and marsh
marigolds that come in *' the sweet o' the year." Later appear
the fruit blossoms, tipped with pink (another colour of youth)
and still later the June roses. Finally in July nature opens
her paint box wide and shows us what she can do. Some of
her flowers run through a kind of evolution — are born pink
and pass into blue. Some are blue from the first — born in
the purple. All these can be spread like a feast before the
eyes of city children. Beautiful examples too of graduated
colour can be shown in butterflies of various kinds, in shells,
etc., and the spectrum colours may be thrown on the walls for
the joy of those youthful eyes that have never seen the bow
in the cloud.
The hunger for colour can be satisfied then, without much
difficulty in school. That it is keen we may see by observing
the looks of the colour-starved children as they pass the small
bunch of flowers on the teacher's desk, or the few bulbs in the
window. A teacher relates how once she watched a pro-
cession of poor children march past a table where stood a
86 The Higher Hungers
blue vase filled with daffodils. All the children turned their
eyes as they passed to look at this spot of colour. The country
child would probably not have glanced at it — living in a
plethora of flowers. But the gutter children gazed at it
hungrily.
Perhaps they gazed at it keenly— but that is not so certain.
For even colour-famished children do not always obsen'e colour
clearly — which is equivalent to saying, that even they do not
enjoy it long. They in their sparely furnished city school
room are as subject to the dangers of mere habit as are their
country cousins.
It is possible to look at even a little carelessly, so that
impressions may never become clearer or more definite,
and in this case the vague love for colour may be put away
by-and-bye as a childish thing — a thing unworthy the dignity
of persons who have to pass their lives in the dingy streets.
The mere looking at flowers on a desk then, or colour
on the wall is not enough. The mere looking at flowers
in a field or garden even is not enough. We would be
wrong in supposing that we have only to remove our
city-bred child to the country in order to see him develop
a keen and fine instinct for colour. We have seen how the
country child often goes to sleep in the country, and our city-
bred child set down in the green lanes and left there, might
behave in the same way after a little while. For nothing is
more striking about children than the readiness with which they
adapt themselves to new surroundings. They visit a new
place, and for a little while their life is a series of surprises.
They gaze, ejaculate, wonder at everything — and then all is
common-place again. They tumble into the new^ language,
country, and life, like water into a worn channel. The
scientists express this by saying " The nervous system tends
to adapt itself to repeated stimuli."
It is well that the nervous system adjusts itself rapidly.
The Higher Hungers 87
Otherwise life would be difficult and progress slow. At the
same time this very adaptivity constitutes a danger. " Why
do you change the pictures so often ? " the writer said one
day to a Board school master. " Why ? Because after a
little while the children do not see the??ij^ was the answer.
Children note changes — change on the walls, as well as on
the face of the teacher. Monotony sends them to sleep, as it
sends bigger people to sleep. The Savoyard does not see
that his valley is an enchanting place. The tourist — the
guest of a night — sees that it is lovely. And in the native glen of
this same tourist, strangers are perhaps finding beauties which
he has never discovered.
Even change does not always arrest. To change itself we
may become insensible. And of this we are reminded when
we come to think of colour. For what else is so changeful
and various — so living ? It moves and drifts around us con-
tinually, so that the measureless spaces of the sky are trans-
formed hour by hour, and the hills of morning are not as the
hills of evening. And it moves in the tiny petals of a half-blown
flower, as well as through every handbreadth of the sunset
sky. But few are conscious of all this movement, few see the
tide of colour sweeping everywhere with its changing tones
and hues. Some are colour famished. — Most people are
colour blind, not through the eye but through the mind.
The first thing to be done is to make the pupils " at home
with colour." At home so that they may never be timid
with it, keeping to black " because it is safe," never over bold
either as are many well-to-do persons — but at home with it,
and ready to learn new things about it and to love its
harmonies.
We cannot get Nature's resplendent scales into our paper-
boxes, any more than the painter can get them into his colour
box. Scales, however, we must have, that is tO say, colours
following in order. Just as there is a key note for every
88 The Higher Hungers
sound-scale, there is a key note for every colour-scale. The
key tone of a colour-scale is the standard colour or hue.
When we arrange one of the spectrum colours with its tints
on one side and its shades on the other, in regular order from
lightest tint to darkest shade, a colour-scale is formed. Thus
we may speak of the orange scale, the red scale, or the orange-
red scale.
There is an American firm which has taken the trouble to
draw up colour scales in kindergarten papers, and to name,
or rather to number the tints and shades,"^ (Milton Bradley,
Springfield, Masschusetts). In doing this they have
illustrated, among other things, the fact that colour is always
moving, that pure colour is a goal but never a resting-
place. Take for example the end colour in the spectrum —
violet. Leaving it, you advance on blue ; first you get a hue
of blue, then the colour blue itself with violet hue, finally
blue, and so forward into a new colour. And in drawing up
their charts of spectrum colours, the makers give not merely
scales of colours but also of hues. Thus there is a scale
of blue, a scale of green, and also a blue-green scale.
The colour chart is pretty, and children like to play with it
from the first, just as they like to strum notes on the piano
from the first. But it is not from the colour-chart, useful and
necessary as it is, that they will receive their most interesting
lessons. The chart is there, it will be referred to constantly,
and used in other ways But there is another instrument
of colour training which may now be introduced, an
instrument which appeals to little children as well as to
grown-up science students, and which is quite as useful and
necessary in the babies' room as in the laboratory. And this
instrument is the colour-wheel.
* Much of this Chapter has heen taken from Bradley Martin's Book,
■■Colours in the Kindergarten,"
The Higher Htmgei's 89
Every schoolboy knows that if he sets the end of a stick on
fire and wheels it rapidly he will see what appears to be a
circle of light. And the reason of this is that the eye remem-
bers any impression for a while — remembers the light, in this
case, at a given point till the light comes round again. Thus
the vision of the blazing circle is formed. It is on this power
of retaining impressions that the training given though the
wheel is based.
Colours may be produced and analysed on the wheels by
means of discs spun at a high rate of speed. Formerly,
separate discs were used for every colour, but some years ago
J. Clerk Maxwell conceived the happy idea of cutting slits
in the colour discs, so that by joining two slitted discs of
different colours they could be made to show any desired pro-
portion of each. One of the results of this is that the kinder-
garten teacher can not only show her children the colours
that go to make up any given colour, but can measure the
proportions accurately. Suppose, for example, that the
children have learned to know the standard red and the
standard orange, and that the teacher now wishes them to
learn that there are a great many colours betiveen red and
orange. She has only to combine the red and orange discs in
various proportions in order to make the class familiar with
all those new colours.
For example, suppose you have four sizes of colour discs,
I, 2, 3, and 4. Show a red disc of No. 3 size, and ask what
colour it is ; also an orange disc of No. 2 size. Combine them
on the spindle, but showing only a very small part of the
orange. Then gradually add more and more orange, showing
orange reds, till the amounts of the two colours are nearly equal.
Finally substitute No. 3 size orange disc for No. 3 red disc,
and begin to work through the red orange hues in the same
manner. Or suppose now you want to show the tints and
shades of a colour. Every colour in nature is modified by
90 The Higher Hitiigers
light. Bright sunlight reduces the colour, forming a tint.
Shadow obscures it, or makes it a shade. Of course, you can
never get the real effect of sunlight in pigments or on the
wheels. Yet tints are produced on the wheel by white discs,
and shades by black ones. The teacher, in showing progres-
sion of tint, adds more white, or illustrating the meaning of
a shade, gives a wide and wider section of black every time.
Does she wish to show greys? She puts black and white
discs on the wheel, with a certain quantity of blue, or red,
according as she chooses to show a warm grey, a cool grey,
or a neutral grey. The broken colours, the loveliest of all and
the most general, can be made familiar in this way to young
children. They see them on the hill-side, but their love and
appreciations is won very often, for this as for other things,
only when they can see " how they are made.""^
Some of the more obvious advantages of using the wheel
will occur to anyone who knows something about the ordinary
infant-school. The large classes are a continual problem.
How to reach every child, and to cultivate the observation of
each, is a puzzle. The wheel solves this puzzle in some
degree for at least one lesson. Children are attracted by the
* A small percentaqje of children are more or less colour-blind. Some
can never have the sensation of red, others are incapable of seeing green,
and a very few are unable to distinguish violet. Cases have been known in
which two colour-sensations, the red and the violet, have been quite absent.
Both the red and the green blind person is unable to distingish between
the cherries an 1 the leaves of a cherry-tree. The red-blind person would
see the cherry as green and also the leaves. And the green-blind would
see them both as red. It is of course impossible to give colour vision by
training, but it would be a good thing for the colour-blind if their defect
were discovered when they were little, so that they need not always strive
to see as others see, and take posts for which they are unfitted. It is un-
fortunate when such people become drapers, or house decorators, but the
case may still be worse. It has happened more than once that colour-blind
people have taken the post of seaman or signalman with awful results.
The danger light was not seen, and the ship went down. Red was mis-
taken for green, and the train shot into the place of death. A little care
and observation would enable even the infant mistress to discover the
colour-blind children.
The Higher' Hungers - qt
movement. They see at once that they can take colours to
pieces and put them together, just as they can take forms to
pieces and build them up. And very soon they may begin to
introduce into their paper work, the aims which are essentially
those of all great artists. For the great artist differs from the
little child not in belonging to another world and another race,
but in having new power in the same world, and new vision
of the same order.
At the threshold of the subject, however, a difficulty presents
itself. We must have a new colour language, definite and
accurate. We have a colour language, but it is not accurate.
We all begin our existence by feeling an interest only in self,
and by taking the mouth as our centre. And even when,
grown older, we show an interest in the doings of our neigh-
bours and the aspect of things near us, we still give evidence
that our own fiiouth is our starting point of interest and com-
parison. Take up a book of sample papers, and observe the
names you give to the colours. " This is lemon colour," you
say ; " and here is cream colour, and blue, and crushed
strawberry. And that is biscuit colour, and here are
orange, cherry colour, and chocolate." You may not
mention *^ salmon colour '' or '^ oatmeal," or " applegreen," &c.,
yet, almost certainly, many of your colour names will be
taken from the orchard and the larder. We note this tendency
even in Chaucer, who said that one thing was ** as white as
Maine bread," and another " as green as a leek." The sim.ple
woman, then, and the great poet make colour names by
comparison, and very good and forcible names they are.
But we do not stop here. Fashionable dressmakers have
given us a new vocabulary, and many of their namiCS appear
to have their origin in mere caprice. They change so rapidly,
too, that we cannot be sure very long of their meaning.
" Reseda '' was once green. Now it is a kind of blue. Ecru
92 The Higher Httngers
may mean one thing to one person — another thing to other
persons. It would be just as reasonable to teach a perishing
dialect, instead of the English language, as to teach this new
colour vocabulary of an hour.
Must we then get a new set of difficult names— a new
colour vocabulary, and teach it to all children ? No, indeed,
there are but six standard colours, and even little children
know them and know their names. " Red — orange — yellow
— green — blue — violet." These, with black and white, make
up all the hues one sees. '•' Sometimes," says Ruskin, '' you
see in a good picture a colour which you cannot name." But
it is certain that even this cunningly mixed colour is a com-
bination of some of the tints or shades of the standards. The
difficulty lies not in names but in quantities. To know how
much of one colour and another will give the desired effect —
that is the question. And the larder and orchard colour
names will not answer it.
But the wheel will answer it. With the aid of a white disc
graduated into loo parts, the teacher can measure the amount
of the different colours she spins. With a little practise she
may learn how various hues are made up. She will learn to
analyse even the most capriciously named colour — to fix it
on the wheel — and give it a definite if temporary name.
For example, take the colour known as '' Ecru." It is a broken
orange yellow — that is to say, a yellow with an orange hue,
and a mixture of black and white or grey in it. The actual
quantities are — O. (orange) 12, Y. (yellow) 15, W. (white) 15,
N. (niger or black), 56. '^Styx" is a broken red, R. 10, W. 21,
N. 69, and " Empire '^ a broken green-blue. Any teacher
can find this out by experiments with the wheel. And one
of the first benefits she will reap by learning about colour
combination will be that of being able to communicate with
the furnisher — to order what she wants, instead of having to
describe what she wants. (It is true that in England teachers
The Higher Hungers 93
do not feel the urgent need of an accurate colour language,
but this is only because no very methodical training in
colour has yet been attempted.)
"But surely," you cry, ^-you are not going to puzzle our
little children with colour formulae. You don't want us to
burden their memories with so many figures." No, the
children need not learn the figures. Yet they cannot see the
wheel used without learning a good deal about the proportion
of colours in various combinations. At first, as for instance,
when they are learning the meaning of tints and shades, it is
not necessary to change the proportion of the main colours at
all. Suppose a teacher is showing the tints and shades of
orange red. The proportion of orange to red may be the
same throughout the lessons. Only the amount of white or
black is changed at every step. Accuracy can come only as
a final result. It is enough if the children learn, to begin
with, that the more white they use the lighter the tint, the
more black the deeper the shade.
Gradually the exercises may be made a little more difficult.
Indeed the range and variety of them is limited only by the
ingenuity and resource of the teacher. Such an exercise as
the following is introduced as a recreation in some American
schools when the children have made some progress. Make
a combination of two discs, holding them so that the pupils
cannot see them. Then when the discs have been arranged
on the spindle and a good speed has been secured, ask the
class what colours are mixed to produce this effect. When
several have answered, and the interest of all is roused, stop
the wheel and let the children see the discs which have been
combined to produce the colour. By merely observing the
discs they will get some notion of the proportions of the several
colours used. And this is enough — indeed, this is the end for
which the wheel is used in the infant and first standard rooms.
As for names, children use the right ones if no others are
94 The Higher Hungers
suggested to them. Having learned, for example, that a
certain fabric is of an orange-red colour — that is, red with a
lesser quantity of orange in it — it will not occur to them
(though it occurs to some grown-up people) to call it
" mahogany-coloured." They accept the vocabulary of the
people around them, using the good or the inferior word-coin
indifferently. This is why the more observant teachers are
disowning the superstition of. the need of " baby-talk." They
have discovered that the child can as easily learn the scientific
name of a part of a plant as some other word that means
nothing. And what is true of child-language in nature study
is obviously true in the colour lesson. But in the colour
lesson the real name is the simplest and the most familiar.
It is natural for the child to call a primrose yellow, and a
rose red. And keeping to the simple colour-name, he can
supplement it later by indicating tint, shade, or hue.
But as impressions are vague and wavering until they are
acted upon, the child will not be at home with colour unless
he works with it. And with what colours should he be set to
work first of all ? " With the pure spectrum colours,"
everyone must answer unhesitatingly " for these form Nature's
chart." And in what arrangement ?
With that which gives from the purely sensory stand-point
the greatest pleasure ! The elementary law of agree ableness
for pairs of colours is shown by Scripture in the following
diagram.
CURVE OF AGREEABLENESS FOR PAIRS OF COLOURS.
The Higher Hunger's 95
" If the colours be arranged in a circle with complement-
aries (pairs of colours that in certain proportions produce
white) at the ends of diameters, a combination of two
colours increases in agreeableness as the colours are chosen
further apart, the maximum agreeableness appearing for
complementary colours. This is expressed in this Fig. in which
the circumference of the circle is supposed to be rolled out
to a straight line.
One of the colours is supposed to be stationary at 0° : the
curve of agreeableness rises as the other colour changes to
more distant hues ; reaches a maximum at 180°, and sinks as
the second colour again approaches the hue of the first.
Secondary factors come in and modify the colour choice of
highly cultivated persons. But even these new factors arise out
of the elementary ones indicated in the simple primitive love of
strong opposition or contrast. The oldest tartan is probably
the shepherd tartan which shows the supreme opposition of
black and white. Another tartan, said to be almost as old
consists of red and yellow.
The young child will at first prefer then to work with
complementaries, or perhaps to put red beside yellow ! And
he should work at first with wide colour contrasts.
Very soon, however, he may begin to introduce not only
opposition in colour but also in tone. This he may be led to
do without formal instruction, but simply by suggestion. It is
incredible how much a child can learn unconsciously through
the guidance of a teacher far in advance of her pupil, and by
no means concerned to make him conscious of all his
achievements. By and by having made himself familiar with
the complementaries and with some contrasts in tone he may
begin to enjoy the putting of active colours against passive
weaving his red with white, his blue with grey, etc. And
finally, provided with full scales of colour, and capable now of
appreciating smaller colour distances he may begin to pro-
96 The Higher Hungers
duce colour harmonies which illustrate all the great under-
lying principles of art. At this point he will generally begin
to love not only the opposition of colour, but the movement of
colour — the subtle change which is everywhere — in the
harmonies of fading leaves, in the graduated flow on the
flower petals and through the wide expanse of the summer
sky.
At no point however is it right to sacrifice enjoyment
or gratification in order to secure a precocious refienment.
Susceptibility is largely a question of education — but pleasure
in colour itself is a stimulus which puts new energy at our
disposal."^
The education of the colour memory need not be deferred.
No sooner is a tint learned than it may be learned by heart.
Lecoq deferred the teaching of painting until his little pupils
were well advanced in form. But no sooner was the paint box
introduced than the training of the colour memory was begun.
Details on memory training will be given in a later chapter.
Joy in colour is not for the painter and buyer of pictures
alone. Every one loves colour and may learn to love and enjoy it
more and more. Even to-day the least sensitive enjoy the
blue sky, the green parks and woods; and there is a growing
desire on the part of town dwellers to provide such relief and
pleasure as these afford for every eye.
Yet we are able to put up with an amazing amount of ugli-
ness — to do without relief and pleasure in an amazing degree.
Long lines of houses unrelieved — drab streets covered with
smoke pall we can endure.
"The eftecl of colour on the organism has been studied by Ferre and Binet.
The amount of stimulus of the various colours correspond to their place in
the spectrum. Red being the strongest stimulant, orange and yellow fol-
lowing ; violet is depresssing. The rooms of maniacs are therefore hung
with violet or blue hangings, and the light if made to pass through violet
glas>. It is clear tliat wc recognize red as an exciting colour. Few of us
care to go into a field where a bull is, with red clothing on.
The Higher Hungers 97
Few even dream of colour schemes in streets such as Mr.
Ricardo suggests, " turquoise tiles in a street where the houses .
were fully clothed in vines and ampelopsis, and bright-coloured
boxes and blinds which would count as brilliant climaxes in a
symphony of green, their influences sinking and diffusing itself
in the general mass of colour as the rays of a star-sapphire
seem to pulse all through the jewel though they start from a
focus no larger than a point." Few dream of such colour
schemes for the street. The first condition towards securing
colour symphonies is of course that all should need or desire
them : and the second that all should agree as to the subject
each considering the whole. There is no great art possible
without renunciation.
The imagination of the masses does not demand colour
so imperiously, or use it so freely, as to make sacrifice or even
co-operation possible on a large scale to-day.
Only when the eyes have been gratified by colour the demand
for it becomes urgent and sacrifice becomes possible. ... In
this as in other things, progress is largely through pleasure, then
through observation — and the laying up of clear mind images.
The vSound Hunger.
*'John," shouted a school-caretaker's wife at the top of a
flight of steps. "John! Do you hear me? Are you there,
John ? John ! John ! There is someone for you. Is John
there? John-nie ! ! "
The woman spoke loudly and monotonously — returning with
obvious pleasure to the word " John " (which was the chorus^
so to speak, of her speech) and accenting the last syllable in a
triumphant finale. Her face betrayed no anxiety for the ap-
pearance of John, but showed unmistakeable pleasure in the
act of calling him. And John too, found some pleasure in
listening. He made no haste though his mother's voice was
audible to him from the first, but moved about in the cellar
7
98 The Higher Hungers
among his pails and brushes. Finally he came up the steps,
listening, with a beaming face, answering the summons in
person — and without a word. To answer by calling back
would be obviously enough in John's opinion, an interruption.
It is not necessary to look for the cause of such pleasure as
this in the associations called up by a mother's voice, still less
the sweetness of its timbre, etc. Wherever a few simple people
are gathered together we may hear a tumult of voices which is
not harmonious but which gives pleasure. Nay, simple people
and children find pleasure in listening to the voices of geese,
crows, or peacocks — and why do they take pleasure in a tumult
of voices, in croaking of crows, or screaming of peacocks.
There is only one answer, viz : " Because they love noise ! "
The healthy child of school age loves noise for its own sake.
Does he love music for its own sake ? "^ Before answering
this question let us listen attentively to a piece of music, and
see what it consists of. And first of all we shall notice that the
loudest notes will be repeated at regular mtervals. " If the
piece is in quick time,'' writes Lussy, "we instinctively move
head or foot in time to the loud notes, in other words, the
tegular recurrence of these loud or accented notes at the be-
ginning of each bar will give us an irresistible impulse to beat
time. . . We may have but little musical instinct, and yet
possess a feeling for metrical accent — the accent which makes
and gives the feeling of ti^ne — makes soldiers march in time,
collects the admiring crowed round the drummers, and directs
the movements of sailors, rowers," etc.
It is hardly necessary to say that nearly all children have the
feeling for metrical accent. Not only do they march in time ;
they show unmistakable evidence of a desire to stainp time
* We are not here dealing with the exceptional child — the child of genius.
The musical genius as we shall have occasion to note later, is very pre-
cocious, Mozart, Handel as composers, and Rubenstein, etc., as performers
showed extraordinary powers in early childhood. According to Donaldson,
ability to execute is dependent from the physical standpoint on the early
basal arrangement of the nerve cells.
The Higher Hungers 99
now and again, and if a quick movement is played to them
they have some difficulty in keeping the feet still. Of all
nursery rhymes, that in which the accent is most emphatic, is
probably the greatest favourite.
"Jack and Jill
Went up the hill
To fetch a pail of water."
The mere instinct for emphatic and simple metrical accent
may indeed carry not only children but older people away, so
that they will not only stamp time exultingly on any and every
occasion, but find pleasure in jingling verse, in writing, they
may sacrifice sense completely for the sake of sound. The
Germans call such poetry ^' Klingelyric.''
But to return to our piece of music. We hear loud notes
recurring periodically which even children can distinguish
and which mark the time. These correspond to accented
syllables in verse, and give us but little notion of the sense or
meaning of the piece. But if we listen more closely we notice
also that the sounds are separated not only into beats and
bars, but into groups; and that these groups — like the lines of
a poem — are heralded by accented notes or syllables, and end
with a falling inflexion of the voice or sound, which is gener-
ally confirmed by a rest These are musical phrases, con-
taining a more or less perfect musical idea. The accented
notes which announce them do not always coincide with the
accented notes which mark the bar, " but they coincide," to
quote Lussy again, " with the beginning of lines or half-lines
in poetry, and stand in the place of punctuation." Their object
is to separate or isolate the groups of sounds. Where the
separation of groups is false, the music has no meaning. Bad I
phrasing, like bad punctuation in reading, betrays the fact;
that the performer does not grasp the sense of what he is
saying or singing. Metrical accent appeals to the instinct. '
Rhythmical accent appeals to the intelligence.
>^\ B « A /T?^
lOO
The Higher Hungers
But in every musical composition, as in every poem, there
is something more than this double appeal to instinct and
intellect. Besides the metrical and rhythmic accents, there is
the expressive or poetic accent which demands a souL"^ Its
essential characteristics are freedom and unexpectedness. It
can take possession of one note or of several, and can fall
anywhere, on accented or unaccented beats, at the end or at
the beginning of phrases or groups of phrases. The artist
literally chooses the notes to be accented and concentrates his
energy on them, destjoying it may be in so doing both the
metrical and the rhythmical accents. When many of these
^'elected" notes follow one another, the performer has to
spend much energy in expressing them, imposing them at
first like unwilling guests on the ear, breaking up the metrical
accents, distributing the rhythms, changing the key perhaps,
as when Beethoven in his Sonate Pathetique modulates from
A|7 minor to E major
* It is at this point that the Imagination, having certain elements at its
disposition begins to assert itself.
Sonate Pathetique.
^
^
M^
ig
• d
^ta^ttfSfl^
sf accel. s/
L^ -W m '^ -m^m 'M. M M M M M M
The Higher Hungers
lOI
or introducing discords as in the Adagio of the Moonhght
Sonata.
A Bold and Beautiful Discord from tee Moonlight
Sonata.
#
^
t
±
^^^^^^W
M
4=^
i^
^
^^^
i
^
t
m
T-r
^^
^
-f«
*
The ear rebels as it were against the great changes intro-
duced in such passages. For the auditory nerves, Hke all
the other nerves of the body, show a marked tendency to fall
back or rather to rest in mechanism. As soon as the ear
becomes aware of a succession of sounds subject to the laws
of metre, and rhythms, it expects the same succession in the
following groups. It will not accept any new or foreign
notes without a kind of struggle, and the less the note is
desired the stronger or more violent even must be the intro-
duction. The expressive notes are often violent. In the
passage from the Sonata Pathetique the crescendo begins in
the first bar. There already is preparation — a getting ready
I02 The Hioher Himp-ers
for the battle. In the first chord of the second bar we pass
from the sofest key {A\) minor) to the fiercest (E major),
and this event is marked by sf. and followed by a hastening
of the time (accel.) the increase of sound and quickening of
tempo reaching its climax in bar three, where the opening
chord is marked ff. After this outburst there is a slackening
of time (indicated by rallentando) as though the performer
sank exhausted, but again at the close of the bar an accented
chord rings a new alarum. In the passage from the " Moon-
light," new discordant elements are introduced into the chords
which the ear would refuse but that they are forced and
pressed upon it. Yielding, it is carried away with the new
movement which broke the old order, that it might reveal the
new. Time may be quickened. Metrical accent (which is
of course not time, but the marking of time) may be dispensed
with altogether. Rhythms may be disturbed. All must
give way to expressive accent, which is the creative energy,
or soul of the music.
Expressive accent is, also, the creative power in speech. In
oratory it may destroy the balance of sentences ; in animated
conversation it breaks up the conventional phrases or even
invents new and strange words. Slang is not only a necessary
evil. It is a symptom of exuberant vitality and mental energy,
that cannot be imprisoned in any form of words, however
perfect, that have lost meaning or colour through languid use.
In the same way the poet's true licence is born of strength.
His finest songs are marked by intervals and changes in the
measure expressive of emotion breaking up the rhythm. In-
deed, in clauses of metre greatly affected by passion the time
itself is left more or less to the reader's own temper and will.
Here then we have three accents :
The metrical accent belonging to the instinct.
The rhythmical accent belonging to the intelligence.
And the expressive accent revealing the soul.
The Hioher HitnQ^ers
lO^
The child, or the adult, is capable of enjoying music only in
proportion as he feels and appreciates these.
Few favoured individuals grasp them all by intuitive force,
and discover without thought or training the most subtle
irregularities of metre and rhythm. As for the average child,
his musical perception keeps pace with his intellectual and
moral training. He beats time and sings rhyme almost in
infancy. His appreciation of rhythm on the other hand
depends almost entirely on his understanding of the sense of
what he reads or sings. As for his appreciation of expression,
Rousseau was right in saying that it is small, (" Children," he
writes, "sing with little feeling.") So monotonous is the voice
of the average elementary school child even in reading, when
left to himself, that teachers have hastened to impose on him
a great number of inflections which he imitates for the most
pa.rt without intelligence or feeling.
The introduction of a false expressive accent disturbs the
rhythm, and in doing so destroys, or at least blurs the sense.
The true expressive accent may break the regularity of
the metre or of the rhythm, but does not destroy the sense.
It deepens the sense, and the disorder into which it throws
every line is more lovely than the normal order, as wind-blown
leaves are lovelier than the conventional leaf-ornament.
Here is the opening verse of a great poem by Campbell,
which Ruskin has punctuated in verse and music in his
"Elements of English prosody."
y
h—
— f^
f f fc
X
%
9-
■—J — J —
Y« A\ar .
— f —
J J J
i . ners of
^ ^ V-
— m J-
En^ . land
1 ^
±
^
—J J
J J J
— J 2
Who ^uard
our na . ttve
Seas
I04 The Higher Hungers
The time is partly left to the reader's will, so that if we
added rnelody to the words some passages might be given in
quick time, and some in slow.
It is impossible to say how any educated and patriotic man
would read it. But it is easy to state, very precisely, how an
average elementary school child would render it.
Instead of reading simply :
"' Ye mariners of England "
he would begin :
of
Ye ers En
in g-
mar land !
The voice would rise and fall in artificial inflections.
The rhythm would be broken up, but not through force of
feeling. There would probably be no feeling whatever behind
metre, rhythm or pace.
Such reading is of little value from any point of view. The
semblance of animation is — only a semblance. Impression
and expression are determined by forces acting on us. We
do not yield to caprice in yielding to them. How, and to
what extent they affect us depends not on our fancies or desires,
but upon our susceptibility. And if a child reads naturally
we learn something about him. But if we impose false tones,
inflections, and an appearance of vivacity we are simply teach-
ing him to conceal himself. In the elementary schools there is
indeed but little play for the individuality of the various children.
The pupils write the same hand, recite in the same manner.
But there is this difference between writing the same hand
and reading aloud in the same false manner. Letters are
conventional signs. They may be copied slavishly without
great harm following. But the voice, the tone, are not con-
ventional things. They are the true medium of expression.
When the voice is not true, it is false.
The Highe7^ Hungers 105
What we may call " emotion drill/' or artificial inflection of
the voice in reading is quite vicious.
Instead of insisting on the semblance of feeling we must
make possible the reality. But how are we to do this ?
Hoiv are we to offer a full and fine range of experience
to all? This is such large question that I cannot attempt
to answer it fuller here. The minor question of how to give
voice and ear training is not to be put aside entirely, however,
in any book on elementary education, and on this subject we
must now touch, however briefly.
"Children," said Froebel, "learn by doing — that is by
movement." In no subject is his great principle illustrated
more forcibly than in the teaching of singing and music.
Children love to keep time by movements of the hand (or it
may be even of the foot). Various kinds of time or metrical
figures suggest various kinds of movement. For example, if an
air is played legato, slow, swinging movements are suggested.
If the same air or arrangements of notes are played staccato,
light quick movements impose themselves, and are yielded to
involuntarily. A third metrical figure may express energy. The
character and expression depends on the beat or time, not on
the notes. Many songs are written with the intent that they
shall fit themselves to any sentiment. The merry and the
melancholy parts may be sung to the same melody — the
character depending altogether on the time or mode. No
one can fail to note how quickly a young child learns the
language of expression. The tone of a spoken word tells him
all.— And this susceptibility is not confined to spoken words
The musical modes of expression may be learned in the
Infant-room. Yielding to the impulse to express the feelings
they awaken suitably the child soon comes to recognize them.
Later he will wan tto name them. The need for written
signs will be ft It. Just in the same way that a child
io6 The Higher HM7igei^s
learns to speak a language before he learns reading, and speaks
correctly before he begins the study of grammar, so he should
be made familiar with ihe language of music, and at home with
its various modes or metrical figures long before he comes to
study the staff notation.
Even when the notation is introduced it is not necessary to
depend on it alone ! Formal ear-tests do not exhaust all the
possiblHties of ear-training. Progress in music is a matter
largely of growing susceptibility, and wihingness (gained by
experience) lo break awey from mere automatism and habit.
There is no reason why the instrumental music of the elementary
school should be confined to the mere strumming of a march.
I have already heard accompaniments played beautifully by
young teachers. If these young teachers wi^e allowed to go a
little further and play, not strum, at times to the children, the
results would probably be a new sensitiveness. And with the
new sensitiveness, a new demand. In spite of all our musical
training in schools to-day how dreadful is the use to which many
people put their pianos. How cruel is the fate of the sensitive
l)erson who has to listen to the strumming of the ordinary
working class girl or lad. And how is such insensibility possible
in the latter. Simply through the ear-indolence, induced by
monotonous voices, and jingling tunes !
Clear and strong musical impressions are conveyed in the
folk music of many countries. And there is no better means
of preserving the musicial susceptibilities, and preventing
what we may be allowed to call the lethargy of the ear, than to
introduce at times the clear, strong, and awake ning/^//(' music
of other lands.
But it is not only while she is singing or playing that the
teacher is giving vocal suggestions and illustration. The
quality of her own voice offers itself continually for their
example. Nothing perhaps has more influence than the speaking '
voice of the teacher, unless it be the speaking voice of the mother.
The Higher Hungers 107
Alas ! We have given little attention to it ! Of late
years there has been a stirring, an agitation in the primary
education world as if managers, etc., were at last becoming
aware that the voice-boxes of the tens of thousands of teachers
under their authority were in a too lamentable state. The
managers did not dream in bygone days, perhaps they do not
even now dream of providing a good musical environment for the
children. But they have realized that a great number of
teachers are troubled with sore throats, and that the voices of
many of those who came before them differed in an unpleasant
way from that of other persons. So they have opened classes
for voice-production — and this is certainly a step in the right
direction. But voice-production cannot be taught to large
classes. Nor even very effectually to small ones. As we pass
from childhood to youth the teaching must become, as far as
the voice is concerned an mdividual thing. If the voice is 1
spoiled then only individual teaching can do anything. Few
people realize how difficult it is to overcome bad vocal habits.
Acquired when the speaker is young they are fixed by daily
and hourly practise. They can be overcome — but only by
very vigorous measures, by ifidividual teachings and long con-
tinued effort and practise. It is certain that the girls and
women who take a few lessons in voice-production never attain
freedom from old bad habits much less do they gain that control
of which clear, sweet utterance is the result. While hailing
with joy the tentative efforts made by the authorities in
elementary education to improve the voice production of
teachers who have injured their health through wTong
methods, it is well to insist that only teachers trained in right
methods from the beginning should have charge of the reading
or singing lesson.
If children are permitted to come under the influence of fine
io8 The Higher Hungers
and flexible speaking voices, if they are allowed to hear simple airs
and melodies from their cradles, and are introduced also
through instrumental music, to simple, beautiful creations
they are prepared by such privileges for other studies
than that of music. They will come, for example, more
quickly under the formative influences of poetry and be pre-
pared for the great teachers' message. A voice sings for them
at the door of the great hall of literature. Of course it must
not long remain a mere voice. The good of poetry is not
really got ijnless the sense of the words is thoroughly learnt and
known. '\And yet feeling precedes knowledge, and prepares the
way for it. )
Thus it is necessary to begin with poems which express feel-
ings appropriate to boyhood. Herbart read the Odyssey with
his seven and nine-years-old pupils, enjoying the interest they
showed in the doings of men in the adolescent period of the
race — the heroes of a young civilization with whom boys are
more in touch than is the matured man of modern days. And
there is no doubt that boys will read the heroic poem with feel-,
ing, who yet show profound indifference in reading the finest
lyric. *'The ode to the skylark" does not touch the ave age
boy very deeply. Yet there are poems which stir him. The
writer knew a boy — a pupil in Wellington's — of distinctly
predatory instincts and tastes who used to recite the
Lays of Ancient Rome with great feeling and unction
while he mended his fishing tackle, or cleaned his gun in
the holidays.
The writer remembers also the " Poetry-book " from which
she and her school-fellows (boys and girls between nine and
twelve years old) read aloud in a school in the Highlands of
Scotland. Many of the poems were beautiful — but few were
appropriate. One^the lam.ent of a father over his first-born
child — was very badly rendered as a rule, particularly by the
boys, who show^ed complete indifference to the trials of a
The Higher Hungers 109
parent."^ A poem on the death of a young girl made some of the
girl pupils sad when they read it at home. In class it had no
effect whatever. And the master once read " Cato on the Immor-
tality of the soul " — on which occasion he became so excited,
and roared so loudly that the whole class was impressed. But
when at last he arrived safely at " the crash of wur-relds " and
resumed his ordinary expression, shaking himself a little as if
stepping out of this bath of emotion, the children appeared to
be relieved that the performance was over but quite indifferent
with respect to Cato's feelings about the soul.
Now take one of Campbell's poems :
** It was ten of April morn by the chime,
' As they drifted on their path,
There was silence deep as death,
And the boldest held their breath
For a time."
Here is a piece that would appeal to all. It is full of move-
ment — calm, imposing, yet dramatic. The equal time of the
metres "as of vessels moving at commanded pace under per-
fectly steady wind," seems to ban exaggeration. The pupils
listening to this might not admire the genius that chose the
right metre, which recalled the actual movement of the vessels.
Yet something of the music of the great poem would sing in
their ears many a time as they watched the sea, calm in the
morning sunlight, and the flagged ships crowding the harbour,
of the seaport Highland town. On every bright April morning,
when they heard the chimes they would feel something of the
poet's emotion. This work of art would belong to them for ever.
Given suitability or timeliness in choice of sentiment, a well-
read poem is more formative even than a well rendered song.
\ Aytoun's "Lays," and Macaulay's, the poems of "Campbell,"
' (the master of trimetre verse,) Scott, and Tennyson's Idyll's
* A like indifference to suitability is often seen in *.he choice of songs. The
writer has heard a big class of boys singing " Juaniter," a Spanish love
song. The effect was grotesque.
iio The Higher Hungers
may be cited as appropriate for the boys of the elementary
schools of England.
Beyond all this there is the sublime poetry of the Psalms —
too little known in our schools^not included even in our
schemes for Scriptural instruction. In vain, Matthew Arnold
tried to induce managers of all shades of belief to give the
formative influences of Biblical eloquence and poetry to the
children of the people. " Make the getting by heart a selection
of the finest Psalms ... a part of the school work, to be
submitted to inspection and to be seen in its strength or weak-
ness like any other. Some will say that what we propose is
but a small use to put the Bible to : yet it is that on which all
higher use of the Bible is to be built, and its adoption is the
only chance to save the one elevating and inspiring element in
the scanty instruction of our primary schools from being sacri-
ficed to a politico-religious difficulty. There was no Greek
School in which Homer was not read. Cannot our popular
schools, with their narrow range in secular literature, do as
much for the Bible as the Greek schools did for Homer."
Never, perhaps, were we so inclined as a nation to discuss
the effect of Bible teaching on the young. Of discussion and
controversy there is literally no end. A few words we may
say here to those who still condemn Matthew Arnold's sug-
gestion as a disparagement of the Scriptures.
We have seen that sound is no empty thing. That the
very rhythm of words is full of the spirit that gave them
utterance. To feel and appreciate the^ound of a great psalm/
is to have some kinship with the singer; and just as children]
will often use and enjoy a word before they have any definite
idea of its meaning, so they will often love poetry or noble
speech before they have fathomed its depth, or discovered all
its beauty. Man does not advance with regular steps, utter-
ing nothing that he does not fully understand. On the
contrary, we know that his words gain content very slowly
The Higher Httngers 1 1 1
and gradually — that vague feelings precede words, and the
whole advance is made so that the spectator of a moment
might declare it altogether foolish and meaningless.
A recognition of the influence of the mere sound of great
poetry does not imply contempt for its deeper meanings.
On the contrary, it will impel us to look for these — to search
diligently for them, and to find them, it may be, after many
days.
In no subject has the want of continuity in education told
more disastrously than in voice-production.
The singing of the elementary school child is in many schools,
excellent. The voice production of pupil-teachers is lamentable
Yet the latter were school-children a few years ago, and earned
great praise for their singing.
As a matter of fact the expert in child-singing often declines
even to think of the pupil teacher's voice and its requirements.
The reason is not far to seek. In human life there are periods
of change. Our educational methods should meet these
chanf2;es. Otherwise we abandon our efforts, just at the
moment when we should realize them all in a new order of
training. But we have not been ready to meet the changes of
growing human life. Our system lacks continuity.
Breaks occur to-day at the door of the infant-room, at the
door of the Higher Grade school, and more or less at every
class-room door, as well as school door.
The aim of the new educational authorities should be that
of a certain old Highland oXd^n — Avisez la fin.
CHAPTER VI.
THE CHILD AS ARTIST. •»
Among the arts we may mention Dancing first, as it is the
idealization of simple movement. We would expect that the
child would learn to dance early — and this is the case.
Preyer's little child could dance in time to music at the age
of twenty-four months. The young children of savages are
precocious dancers. American Indian children (of three and
four) go faithfully through the dances of their elders. And the
children of tribes who indulge in more complicated dances
than these, quickly learn every step. The child of higher
civilization seems to have lost this precociousness — save in
exceptional cases. "Among the large number of children
whom I have seen dancing to music," says Groos, " I cannot
recall one who kept time regularly and with assurance, without
some teaching and example."
However necessary teaching may be as an aid to actual
performance, there is no doubt whatever as to children's ap-
preciation of good dancing. The rush on the pantomime
every year is a proof that parents and others acknowledge
this appreciativeness. But probably very few have any idea
of its actual range and quality. Kropotkine tells us how in
his early childhood he attended a performance by the finest
dancer in Russia — and how this great experience not only gave
The Child as Ai^tist 113
him intense pleasure but made him indifferent to all inferior
exhibitions of the same order. '' We have no reason to doubt,"
he observes, ^' that young children can appreciate the best in
this kind."
Dancing was an important subject in Greek education. It
is hardly admitted into the primary school to-day. Yet here
and there an effort is made to demonstrate the functions of this
beautiful primitive art. In a school in the north, numbering
600 girls, the physical training includes a form of dancing,
or rather, of slow movements which give grace and balance.
These ^re executed by the pupils with evident pleasure, and
not without profit, for the bearing and manners of the children
ard unlike anything that is seen in the ordinary elementary
school.
The fact that movement and even attitude has close relations
with mental states has been amply illustrated by experiments
with hynotic patients. Very little application of this principle,
however, has been yet made by educationalists. The ordinary
school drill is semi-military. It includes lunging, and a great
many arm-movements. Defiant attitudes characterize it. A
very subtle Roman priest has described this drill as devilish.
It is more correct to say that it is very limited in aim and
character — and can contribute little or nothing directly towards
the ethical training.
Very slowly do the teachings of the# great workers in the
laboratory find their application in the school. And yet here
and there a teacher is found already who illustrates them in
part.
There is no doubt that dancing will one day play a great
part in early education.
Music, — This is the art of prodigies ! Mozart composed
at three years old, Mendelssohn at five, Hadyn at four !
Many children can sing the scale correctly before they are
3
114 ^^^ Child as Artist
twelve months old. Musical images *'are organized before
any others," says Ribot. The creative energy can there-
fore find materials in this kind at its disposition at a very
early age.
At fourteen, Mozart wrote an opera of which his master
said : '^ It is true music — great, new, full of character, and
power."
The work of genius in music may then be virile, new, great,
at the age of fourteen. The Genius is an exceptional being —
but he does not live outside the reign of natural law. The
very fact that attainment of the highest kind is possible for
one, is evidence that the mode of activity in which such results
are attainable is precocious for all
There is no instance of a great scientist distinguishing
himself at the age of fourteen !
As we have seen children show very early signs of suscepti-
bility with regard to voices. They imitate sounds quickly and
accurately. But as their memory or experience of emotional
states is necessarily small, it is in nowise surprising that most
children should sing with little feeling.
There are not wanting those who warn us against the
" abuse of music in schools." " The excess of musical train-
ing may destroy all precision and definiteness in thought and
action .... Music caresses and excites the nerves only to
send us to sleep agaim" And the moralist — such as Tolstoi
for example — describes the evils that may result from over
stimulation through music.
Doubtless the stimulus of music is always very intimate and
personal, and music is the language of emotion. It regulates
vibrations in which all the personal life is resolved. Other
arts awaken ideas which determine feelings, but music
creates states and conditions of nervous activity. Therefore
the Greeks were reasonable in attaching great moral re-
sponsibility to the choice of melodies, modes, etc.
The Child as Artist 115
Yet on looking back over the history of our race and of
music, we must be convinced that a very large proportion of
people took music as a kind of narcotic. African music is
described as "somnolent" — a kind of hasheesh which even
the liveliest cannot long resist. The Cossack, the Negro, the
Indian, love monotony and rhythm, and plunge themselves
into a state of mild hypnosis by the aid of music. Even more
cultured and musical people betray the same tendency to seek
a dreamy pleasure in music, as our innumerable "berceuses,"
" nocturnes " and " reveries " witness. At our Salvation
Army meetings, and in many other gatherings, thousands
plunge into a state of dreamy consciousness induced by the
singing ! Quite innocently the leader of a crowd may use
catching airs, and rhymthic clapping, and induce a state of
great suggestibility.
In Souriau's book on Art, the hypnotic effect of melody,
painting, statuary, etc., is set forth in detail. The artist en-
trances us — more or less — ^sweeps us away by the force of his
appeal, or the presentation of his subject. " Art employs
hypnotism the better to control our minds and keep our
imagination in the limits prescribed by her suggestions.
What we owe to her is not merely the sleep but the dream."
The inducing of the trance is the first condition of the
highest aesthetic enjoyment. But the fact that it can be easily
induced — in mere rhythm for example — that catching easy
tunes can act as chloroform to us all has probably induced us
to remain long on the threshold of this art. The true function
of music is not to tickle the ear, or to lull the senses, but to do
just the opposite. Just as in the drama, we expect to experi-
ence many feelings, and are content with the variety as long
as we are recalled finally to a sense of the beautiful, so the life
and language of music depends on the variety and newness of
states which it can awaken. 2rai?iing in music awakens. It
is probable that children are more ready than we imagine
ii6 The Child as Artist
to leave the elementary stage and appreciate a higher order
of music.
RoMANCh:. — The myth-making age is often called the
Imaginative age of gold for the race, just as childhood is called
the golden period of life for the individual Imagination. It is
the tmie when the impulse to look for life everywhere is
predominant. And the primitive man and the child stand
distinct from the brute world (for only one writer pretends to
see any traces of animism in animal) and the Rationalist's
world through the life-giving impulse, which ensures to him
a world full of feeling and response if not sympathy.
Everything lives for the primitive man and for the child, but
it is of course his ow^n life which he sees everywhere. The
animals talk and the forest has caprices, and this identity of
nature in all opens the door to Romance. The kind of story
varies w^ith the creative power of the story-teller. It may be
absurd and horrible like the myths of the cannibals, or
beautiful and expressive like the myths of the Greeks. The
people of Oceania believe that the world is made by spiders,
grasshoppers and birds. More advanced peoples believed that
certain animals are gods in disguise. But the great majority
of myths are anthropomorphic. The primitive man and the
child tends to see himself, or something resembling his own
life in everything.
This giving of life to all is not necessarily accompanied with
any disinterested love of nature. All primitive poetry is
exclusively human. It is consecrated to human exploits and
pursuits. The Romans who peopled the world with dryads,
water-spirits, ^ genii' of every order — traversed Switzerland
many times but saw no beauty in it. Cassar crossed the Alps
and was so bored — so blind to the sublimity of the scene
around him that he distracted himself by writing a treatise on
grammar. *'The Greeks," says Schiller, "sublime artists as
they were never got far beyond man. They painted a land-
The Child as Artist 117
scape much as though it were a shield or a toga — that is to
say with intelh'gence but without feeling. Even to-day the
ordinary countryman looks at a landscape from a strictly
practical point of view. " Beautiful ! " cried a farmer the other
day, driving down a sublime pass between steep hills and
roaring cataracts. "Why there an't a yard o' grazing ground
far or nigh ! / don't see the beauty o' rocks." And indeed
the modern craze for fine scenery is not a century old — and is
confined to a comparatively small section of the community.
Moreover there is a note of weariness sometimes in the
enthusiast's voice as he describes a scene which betokens little
^cal rapture. "The spectacle of tropical vegetation and scenery,"
says one writer, '*has had w^onderfuUy little effect on the modern
man witnessing it for the first time."
The process by which nature — not only human nature —
becomes interesting, attractive, and beloved is a long one. It
is possible through the Imagination — which has to be not only
the " forerunner of reason " but the forerunner also of sympathy,
appreciation, and aesthetic feefing. It is the importance of the
role played by the creative faculty doubtless, that fixes the
interest of so many investigations on the origin and history of
myth-making. " In the genesis of myths," says Ribot, " there
are two moments. The first the moment when the man (or
child) creates and qualifies Hfe in everything, and the second
moment is that of invention. Everything becomes material for
romance. Peoples of dry and cold imagination — such for
example as the Romans, never reach this point at all." The
EngHsh city child reaches it, however very early. A headmaster
in Bradford — an expert and very keen naturalist— who takes
his pupils out on school-journeys, gives some testimony on this
point which is of value and interest. " I no sooner began to
take out the lower standard children than I began to see that
they had their own peculiar way of looking at nature. They
were not athirst for scientific truths : but they no sooner
ii8 The Child as Artist
became at home in their new environment than they began to
wish to hear and even to tell stories about everything." And
it was not difficult to find stories. For our forefathers were
close to the childhood of to-day in some ways. Here,
where the children are to-day, they have been almost recently
providing the only thing that was lacking, the plant lore !
Many of the stories are of Pagan origin and others are
romances of the Saints and the flowers. A whole world of
beauty is locked up in this obscure literature — now in demand
because of the importunities and delight of children. " They
always crowd round to listen to the stories," says one teacher,
"even those who slip away or look indifferent when we begin
to dissect a flower!" Dissection and analysis were not in
favour with those who gave their homely names to all our wild
flowers ! Neither are they much in favour with the children of
to-day.
It is not difficult to discern in all this inventiveness the
frank egoism of childhood. It was a foregone conclusion
with our ancestors that the non-human world existed ex-
clusively for the benefit of the human. Plants existed in order to
injure, or to cure men — perhaps to warn them, to remind
them of saints — or it might be to form a kind of alphabet by
which the Divine Maker could communicate with men. Just as
the child sees his own life everywhere, earlier generations saw
the whole world only in reference to their own life. The
difference lies here however that in the case of the child illusions
are quickly opposed and destroyed, through the influence of
older persons who treat them as a kind of madness. There is
a growing feeHng of intolerance for fairies among the
rationalistic men and women of to-day. Verses are written
and given as recitations whose object is to check the free
movement of children's Imagination, Of such is the following,
which I have heard recited by little ones sometimes in the
lower standards.
The Child as Artist 119
^' If you always strive to act
As others do to you
You'll be as blest as if the best
Of fairy tales was true."
Such Rationalism is premature, and as poetry (an art of which
we cannot have too high a standard in the primary school) these
lines do not rank high ! Rationalists in a hurry can do a great
deal of mischief.
The evolution of the myth and of the fairy tale has been
often traced. "Literature is a transformed mythology." The
obscure divinity becomes a hero. The child's mythological
entity too, the fairy, the brownie, the giant draws near and
nearer to reality — becomes at last a familiar being. This
transformation is witnessed in his drawings as we shall see
later. The myth precedes fact, and prepares the way for
history. The "mythical mould" must be fashioned ere w^e "pour
therein the miore or less fluid metal of History." Roland and
Arthur, Siegfried and Dietrich overshadow the fairies, but
they in their turn are displaced by still more realistic heroes.
Just as the popular imagination incarnates in some real man
its own idea of heroism — ignoring all that it does not w^ish to
accept, so the child continually accepts the embodiment of
which he stands in need. There may come a time when he
will have a taste for History. But at first even events are
personified. As Tolstoi writes, " In children, that is to say
in those who have not yet lived, the taste for History cannot
exist. In order to render History attractive to them we must
not merely clothe it in artistic form — but personify all the
historic events, as events are personified in myths and in
legends. But then it is no longer History but Art. " Children
care for History only when it is vivified by Art.
Drawing and Plastic Art.— The child's first favourite sub-
ject is man. Cubes and squares, the innumerable designs intro-
I20 The Child as Artist
duced in the kindergarten, even the flowers and leaves now so
much in vogue represent the teacher's, not the child's selection.
All moving things have indeed some attraction, and may be
chosen at an early date as models. Boats, engines, tram-cars,
animals have their claims. But the first favourite is man."^
Sometimes the face is represented in profile. But the human
figure is often drawn at first in full face. Perez has traced its
evolution.
■ It is naturally the head and face which interest the child most.
The black point which represents at first the eye in profile
drawings begins later to be surrounded by a black circle and the
pupils, lids, and lashes are finally indicated. This perfecting
of the drawing of the eye is not noticeable in the full-face
figures, the young artists feeling doubtless that here the placing of
the two black dots is enough. (The full face is always the
more elementary —the nose and mouth being neglected entirely
at first as in this drawing.)
Here is a figure as drawn on many slates, and paving stones —
* The Greeks represent the ideal childhood of the race. Their authors
resemble one another, as Herbart reminds us, in their childlikeness. They
emained faithful to the first model in plastic an.
The Child as AiHist 121
an original from the pencil of an average child in the lowest
standard. Mouth, nose, ears are neglected.
The nose is badly done even in profile drawings, and by
children of ten and eleven. It represents often the family nose,
the young artists following quite unconsciously their dominant
impressions. The self-taught child succeeds very late if at all in
drawing the mouth well. The ear is not an essential organ
apparently for the child artist. It is absent in the early
drawings.
PVom the very beginning however the child is much occupied
with the head gear — and with the hair. The hair is usually
represented by massed lines or by a series of curves.
At first the limbs are indicated by straight lines — later by
double lines. Tiie fingers appear early but the child does not
count them. He puts six, seven, or eight on a hand indis-
criminately.
The point of insertion of the arms is very variable. When
the head and torso are united, it is natural that the arms should
spring from the middle or from the base of the badly drawn
square or oval. But even at the age of nine or ten many
children make both arms spring from the same side of the
body. As soon as they can place both arms, children usually
make one hand hold something up, and the other hold something
down. As they observe the upper limbs more than the lower
ones the curve of the arm is indicated, while the legs remain
at the mere straight-line epoch for years.
Not only does a child draw the human face and form by
preference. He ofien remembers it to the exclusion of feebler
images while he is trying to draw other things. Below for
example is a girl's drawing of a dog.
122 The Child as Artist
11%
CLCUtt
The Child as Artist 123
The face of a man imposes itself in spite of the accompani-
ments of four legs and a tail. And the same intrusion of the
dominant image is evident in this drawing of a cat by a girl of
thirteen, and also in the " cow" shown in a previous chapter.
Children who receive encouragement and help sometimes
reveal the same tendency.
Perhaps in this persistence of the image of the human,
(which haunts the young artist even when he turns to other
forms) we have an indication of the origin of the monster —
of the well drawn monster such as the centaur and satyr as well
as the clumsy and grotesque gods of wood and stone. Certain
it is that just as the primitive man and the child play with
the idea of humanity and force, and evolve gods, heroes and
giants, so they play too with the idea of humanity and form,
and conceive and execute grotesque drawings, which are
nothing but memories of living form interrupted and dominated
by the dominant image of the human. Sometimes children
have an idee fixe— dwell too long upon one object. The
human subject is the most effectual in breaking this up.
It is the point of return. A little boy paid a sea-side visit
and began to draw boats, but very soon he took to manning
them so heavily that nothing was visible at last but the
human forms and the sails. Another child drew engines
and waggons on suggestion. Then, by suggestion, he put
his grandmother in a first class carriage. That was the end
of the railway trains. Thenceforward he drew not only the
men and women he saw in the street but many other
subjects.
It is clear that the execution of the spontaneous memory
drawing involves the exercise of faculties which are absent
from any formal task. It involves for example a spontaneous
effort at abstraction. Something believed to be essential is
taken and the rest is left. It involves too, creation. Something
is forgotten; so something new has to be added which is
124
The Child as Artist
the artist's own contribution. The spontaneous drawing thus
involves more than the mere recall of images. Here is a
V:.i-, '^\^' ' \
/ 'r \ ':^:/t-i^^^^^
sketch giving the artist's impression of a tired rider on a tired
horse. I'he artist is four years and nine months old.
The Child as Artist
125
The subject of the second drawing is not man or animal,
but an engine. (This is a favourite subject with the modern
child). The artist is four and a half.
And here is a third drawing by a child of three and a half.
He gives us his impression of a wood. The little one is
nearer the earth than older people. He does not look so high
126
The Child as Artist
—and so here we have only the lower part of the bare trunks
visible in the drawing.
(These three drawings, and the four following ones, are
lent by Mr. Ablett, and are copies of the reproduction
of selected drawings from the Exhibition of the Royal
Drawing Society.)
The small artists whose drawings are given above were
plainly impressionists. In each sketch an aspect of the thing
observed is in close and peculiar relations to the emotional
state of the observer. The children are artists. Probably
they will reiiiain artists, while the majority are simply as it
were artists en route, or only for a time.
But the average child — the thousands of average children
who throng our elementary schools — are they artists ? Yes,
during a certain period of life (many psychologists have
already mentioned the fact) we are all artists. Who has not
drawn mannikins on his slate ? Who has not listened to
fairy and hero tales ? All children will not remain artists, in
The Child as Artist 127
the restricted sense of the word, after their twelfth or thirteenth
year. But we are all artists happily when we are children.
And when a human creature is a child, he must grow as a
child, learn as a child, even create as a child.
The nascent faculty of imagination chooses the freest forms.
The primitive man as well as the child draws pictures, creates
and loves stories and legends. Through these free forms of art
alone can the imagination at first embody itself. To forbid
such exercise to the child is like shackling the limbs of the
infant. For it is by such exercise that progress and growth
are possible. How then shall we teach Drawing?
To begin with, the motor training. All hand and eye
training are motor, since the sense of form depends largely on
the muscular sensibility of the eye. The early training given
by the successful teachers of forty and fifty years ago to young
children was rigorous — indeed very severe. For example,
Lecoq de Boisbaudron, a man whose eminent success justifies
us in quoting him largely at this point, began the training
of his pupils by making them draw lines and squares perfectly.
His first lessons were nothing if not a rigid discipline. He
made his pupils draw horizontal and vertical lines with great
exactitude, permitting them indeed, and encouraging them
even to help themselves by the use of dots — a method common
with primitive artists, as illustrated for us in the drawings of
early bushmen, and untutored artists in our own day. Only
after they had learned to draw lines accurately did he permit
them to go a step further.
The tradition of this method is still with us, and is held
most tenaciously perhaps by many who are not — as was
Lecoq — skilled and trained teachers of drawing. But as a
matter of fact experience has shown that where freedom and
ample opportunity is offered for practice, the need for such
rigorous training in accuracy is done away with. The
child, free to make large movements, draws boldly. His
128 The Child as Artist
lines and circles, like his mannikins, owe nothing at all to
bread crumbs and india-rubber. It is only when he is
struggling with small free-hand copies that his own hand
becomes timid — almost cowardly. When a child first begins
to learn td write, he moves his tongue, his facial muscles and
perhaps his feet. If he writes, or draws on a very small
surface and at a desk, these free movements are in part pre-
vented, and the difficulty of his task increased. A child does
not learn to walk by being obliged to walk correctly. Sup-
pression means only that the right movement cannot be
quickly selected, and that many useless movements are
repeated again and again. If the child is free he soon
finds the right movement. If, in the same way, the little
child writes or draws on a large surface, he makes many
unnecessary movements at first, but very soon those useless
discharges are suppressed. All over the country to-day,
we have little children drawing freely and boldly on large
surfaces, swinging circles, drawing curves, lines, and figures,
learning to draw and to write, in short, as easily as they once
learned to speak and to walk.
All the movements involved in these achievements come
under the category of "secondary automatic movements."
They are a step above those automatic functions which are
primitive or innate, for they are acquired movements. The
groups of movements which constitute the apprenticeship of
the manual labourer are also acquired. They are acquired,
in the first instance, with more or less difficulty. But pro-
gress should be rapid. When it is slow something is wrong.
Given freedom so that the right movements may be selected
by the child himself, and the conditions furnished for the
acquisition of orga?iic memory^ a little child should soon draw
a circle, a curve, etc., well just as he to day learns well and
quickly how he must move one foot after another and how
he can maintain the equilibrium of his body.
The Child as A^^tist 129
From infancy the eye is educated up to a certain point in
comparing and measuring distances and relations in space.
In the Infant school to day, this natural education is not sup-
plemented and carried on with the seriousness which such an
important subject deserves. The retina and muscles of the
unexercised eye— like all other unexercised parts of the body —
show early signs of lethargy. The spontaneous education
does not go on long enough. Lecoq indicates how it may
be continued in school.
On a sheet of paper a line is traced by a child. The child
indicates also by dots certain measurements — a centimetre, half
a centimetre, etc. When he has become familiar with these
measurements, the paper is taken away and he indicates them
at dictation and from memory. In this way he may be taught
to appreciate the length of one centimetre, then of two, and
three centimetre, of several metres.
Later he may begin to estimate the length of the window
frame, and the door, the relations between the height and
breadth of various things in the room — the distances between
the trees outside, etc. In short many exercises may be devised
by which he will begin to have some idea of the proportion of
objects and distances. Who does not see that all this will be
invaluable to him when he fairly embarks on the study of form ?
It is easy also to see that this form of education is merely a
continuation of something begun in infancy that spontaneous
education of the eye through which a baby learns to measure the
distance between his hand and his sucking-bottle, and begins to
realize that the moon is a great deal further off than the rattle
on his coverlet. The measuring of distant things is adapted
to the long sight of early childhood, whereas many of the
*' occupations" now so much in vogue are certainly unsuited
to it. Enough has been said already, however, in this book
on the work of children in infant schools. We have now to do
with the question of drawing.
9
130 The Child as Artist
The first apprenticeship over — which is designed to over-
come the lethargy of hand and eye — Lecoq de Boisbaudron,
far from quarrelling with the child's own choice of subject,
accepts it at once, and holds fast to it, making it the beginning
and the end of all his instruction. He sees that the children
draw mannikins. Like Leonardo da Vinci * he has never
despised the mannikins. Indeed all his teaching is designed
to give the children the power of seeing and drawing the
mannikins well. "Experience shows us," he writes, "that
the young draughtsman, whose training has consisted mainly
in a study of the human form, can specialize very aptly later,
if occasion requires, in any other kind of drawing."
Lecoq then began at once to give his pupils the human
face and head as a study. At first they appear to have
used copies, simple line profiles, without any shading, a kind
of free hand face practice. Later, they copied shaded profiles,
and finally the model in relief was introduced. Eye trainmg
of a merely mechanical kind ended here. " The pupils now
learn the apparent modifications of size and form, the effects
of perspective and foreshortening. They observe the shadows,
lights, and half-lights, reflections, degradations of tint, in
short their eyes are opened." It is plain that the teacher
believes that mechanical training given through the tracing
and measurement of lines, and the memory of these were a
* This great artist — a rare man among rare men for he was not only a
great artiat but a great thinker — was very anxious to impress on teachers
the duty of carefully examining the figures children draw on their slates.
He pointed out the fact that there is a difference between the children who
draw only profiles, and those who attempt three-quarter figures and various
poses. Among the latter may be found many budding artists. In every case
the spontaneous drawing is important. It is drawn from life. The child is
interested in it. He will gladly listen to criticisms on it. "It is prefer-
able," said Lecoq, " to provoke attention and remarks from the children
on real objects, rather than on representations from drawings. It is
preferable to teach them through their own drawings of real things seen
than from copies. If, for example, a child draws a man riding a horse he
will gladly listen to criticism on the proportions, and look keenly next day at
the riders in the street.
The Child as Artist 131
necessary prelude to this revelation. Modern teachers
would do well not to follow him too slavishly in this. We
rejoice to see the copies vanish from the class-room. What
an arrest they made possible — what waste of time ! Let us
return to the mannikins !
The pupils are drawing the human face, a subject which
interests them. The most prominent feature in profile at
least, is the nose. And yet the average child of ten or eleven
draws even this conspicuous feature, very badly, or rather he
declines to represent the individual nose at all. In his drawings
of faces he shows the family nose repeated in every face, that
is to say he yields quite unconsciously to his dominant im-
pression of noses.
Lecoy began the training of the visual memory of the face
with the study of its most prominent feature. He gave each
child a model of a human nose to carry home with him and
to study and learn visually by heart just as he learned orally
by heart the recitation, or the answers in the Catechism.
The next day the child brought the model back, handed it to
the teacher as he would give up a book, took his place in
class, and drew a picture of the model from memory. This
is the "recitation dessinee," whose object is to store the mind
with clear and accurate images. Of course the teacher did
not confine his pupils to the human model or fragments of it.
The subjects of the Visual Recitations were very numerous
indeed. Ink bottles, book, jars, cups, saucers, boxes, and
models of animals were used. Only later indeed were
full faces and heads given often as models. But the great
point in Lecoq's teaching is that he was not afraid of
introducing the human model at any and every stage.
From the beginning he let the child's effort and observation
swing towards it fearlessly, and let him record his impressions
of it from the first.
Those who complain that this will induce bad habits can
132 The Child as Artist
hardly have a very clear idea of how good habits are
formed.
They are formed by the avoidance of innumerable wrong
movements, possible or inevitable, at different points of
progression.
The early introduction of the human model is justified by
Lecoq, Ravaisson and others, not on the ground of any rapidly
acquired power to draw it well on the part of the children,
but because through the study of it the power to deal with
other and simpler models is quickly gained, so that the little
artists can apply themselves soon to every form of minor art.
It is astonishing how quickly children trained methodically
to observe, and record their observations in drawings or
modellings that have the human form as centre and point of
return have their eyes opened, and their emotional nature
quickened so that they begin to receive vivid impressions of
the world around them, and to reveal something of their own
physical and mental characteristics in the interpretation of
these. But however early this awakening may be the
teacher must forestall it Lecoq introduced copies of the
masterpieces,^ into the elementary class room, following a
precedent set by Leonardo da Vinci, who surrounded his
young pupils with the immortal examples of the antique, so
that the influence of these should correct and purify the
taste as well as stimulale the imagination. In this way
alone can we counteract the effect of all the ugliness and
imperfections of form that assail the eyes of even the most
favoured children. And yet the child, having his own sub-
jective outlook in nature, is not suffered to sink himself in any
stream of impressions. He is to be saved alive as a being with
* There is no doubt that sculptured models attract children more than
pictures, or at least more than engravings. And there is also little doubt
that pictures of men and animals are a great deal more interesting to them
than landscapes. The subtle effects and fugitive lines of landscape do
not appeal to children, who as a rule, love only tlie dramatic.
The Child as Artist 133
an outlook of his own, and is not to be drowned either in the
dark gulf of ugliness, or in the sweet wine-butt of beauty.
The teacher of drawing must needs regard sameness, even in
the conventional art of writifig as an ominous sign. In his own
class-room such results would be simply like the ringing of
an alarum bell. *' We have seen in some schools drawings
of figures which resemble each other closely in character,
and there are people who congratulate themselves on such
results. "The children learn from one another," they
cry. The teachers, however, who understands the principles
of our method will see in this similitude of result the most
crying danger of collective education. . . He will strive from the
first to save every pupil from the pitfall of mere imitation.
He will point out to him that he must be — first of all and
above all — himself.""^
It may appear to some very strange to speak of a little child
as an individual, with a subjective outlook all his own. And
yet it is during childhood that we gain, or rather find, what
personality we ever possess. Directly we cease to receive and
retain new states of consciousness, we fall into automatism.
For then the series of conscious states, constituting our physical
activity, becomes so well organised that we concern ourselves
with them no longer. Nothing new is introduced to modify or
disturb. The shallow and indolent person illustrates this state.
He ceases to change or modify his views in the least. Thousands
cease to change much after the age of thirty or forty. Happily
for us, however, we are all artists in our earlier years. The child-
artist acts on his own impressions, and above all on his new im-
pressions. And the time during which he continues to do this
* Since writing I see that a new author conscious of the same danger and
seeing no way of avoiding it, advises that art, as well as religion, should
not be taught in schools. But this counsel is a running away from
difficulties — not a facing of them. Children are artists pure and simple. If
they cannot be educated as artists their elementary education should be
abandoned ! But they can be educated. Art teaching must be revolutioned
but not destroyed !
134 The Child as Artist
is essentially the growing period of life. For growth and vitality
depend on a faithful acting out of the latest original feeling.
It is, of course, when he is face to face with the living model
that the pupil is open to receive the most vivid impression.
It is then, above all, that he must receive it in his own way.
This palpitating model and himself are in peculiar relations.
Can he render them ? In any case no one else can render
them — not even the greatest master! "With the drawing of
the living form the individual feeling and expression begins to
manifest itself. Its aspect, even in the tranquil pose, guards
something of the mobility of life — something fugitive and un-
determined. And everyone perceives this quality of life in
his own way, and would express it in his own way if circum-
stances did not prevent such free expression." In general, this
palpitating model terrifies the untrained teacher more than it
alarms his pupil. The latter, as we know, has been drawing it
(clothed it is true) for years. Life does not repel children.
Movement does not repel them. The child in the kindergarten
will paint a running animal with far more success than he can
draw or paint a stationary one. The paper-cuttings of little
ones, grotesque as they are, illustrate action. Indeed, the one
feature of child-drawings which veteran artists unite in com-
mending and wondering over to-day is the movement of the
living figures. Nor is this a new development in child artists.
For the veterans testify that, in their own experience, life means
a losing as well as a gaining as they pass from one stage to
another. Thus, at the age of ten. Sir John Millais could draw
horses with a spirit which his later work hardly rivals. To
the modern psychologist this is very easily accounted
for. In childhood, the pathways of the nervous system are
j;elatively clear. And the very simplicity of nerve structure
favours the swift transmission of impressions. If, during this
particular period of life, the eyes are opened so that movements
The Child as A7'tist 135
are accurately observed, it is almost inevitable that they will
be forcibly expressed.
And now the question arises, "Are these stored memories
mere dead coin, or have they any life in them ? Do they rouse
latent power ? " Yes, they do. That is why they are useful
to the young. The memories of living creatures are, of course,
living ! It is true that, just as our knowledge of the future is
all taken from our knowledge of the past, so we must expect
to find the most spontaneous drawing composed of memories
of bye-gone impressions. And yet these drawings are not
mere reproductions.
"The first element in the creation of a new myth," says
Ribot, " is fusion or combination." The first element in the
creation of a child's new drawing is also fusion. In it the
objective element may be " drowned in images, transformed,"
or the objective element may " remain master, though subjected
to much innovation and change." In either case the fusion of
something old, with something new and personal is effected.
The use of recall-images is at first very free — almost exube-
rant. The child tries to combine all that he has heard with all
that he has seen. Everything appears in his drawings — fairies,
angels, water-sprites, etc., etc.
136
The Child as Artist
'THE FIRST COMING'
The above is a fanciful drawing by a little girl — a true
child's drawing She shows the entrance of a little child into
The Child as Artist 137
the world in her own way. Here is the cloud of angel-faces,
the background of wings, the Great Hand — all she has seen,
read, or heard is used freely to make the picture.
Fantastic forms are the result of very free use of images.
The children like them. Later, there is a tendency to let
them go. There is a growing desire to be content with
the actual. In short, the child progresses in the direction
of Realism.
There are degrees of Realism. In general, the artist stops
short at the point where the desire to understand begins to
trouble the joy of vision. " Even when painters begin to
interest themselves in science and philosophy, be sure their
heart is in them ! " cries Arreat. "That which attracts them
is not science or philosophy, but the trappings in which
the scare clothed." Ingres forbade his students to study
anatomy, and Ruskin spoke of modern science with great
impatience. Nevertheless, Lecoq drew up a catechism of
anatomy for his pupils. " Name such and such a muscle."
" What is the anatomy of this projection ? " " Explain the
anatomical causes of the changes of form resulting from such
and such a movement." Not content with giving his pupils a
human skeleton to draw, he gave exercises like the following :
" Let the pupils draw figures from life, in which every joint and
projection is emphasized. Then, on rough outline copies of
these draw in the bony framework as represented in the various
attitudes !
These anatomical studies end, as do all the rest with
visual recitations ! What is learned, must be learned by heart.
It must be realized in the form of recall-images. For recall-
images are the artist's raw material. To possess a wealth of
these, and to be able to use them freely, and rapidly— that is
the question.
Such realism as this, which allows us to choose the skeleton
as a model for the child artist may repel many persons.
138
The Child as Artist
Experience does not show that it repels children. There are
many Traddleses among boys, and indeed not a few among
girls also. '' The pleasure of the eyes," says one writer,
"is cruel." As a matter of fact the pleasure of the eyes is
The Child as Artist 139
neither cruel nor kind. It is wonderfully little concerned with
the personal feeling. That is its mark — that it is objective.
The horror of the man in the street for the nude model is in
strange contrast to the detachedness of the real artist at work
on the study of the nude. Drawing, as Herbart has made
clear in his grouping of subjects, is a link between humanistic
and scientific studies. And that is one reason why it takes
such an important place in the eyes of all great teachers of
elementary schools.
But to return. With visual training and years the actual
world breaks through the golden mists of childhood. Lecoq
does not change his methods, he amplifies and extends
them. More complicated models are distributed for the
"visual memory lesson,""^ and the living model is studied
with new energy and attention. The fairies trip away, but the
real world becomes more absorbing.
Here is a memory drawing by a girl of thirteen — re-
presenting the artist's own little sister seated before the
nursery fire.
Compare it with this drawing of Saint Catherine ; near the
saint, in the latter, stand angels, and beyond are cherubs.
The little artist has given the rein to her fancy, she has not
restricted herself to what she has seen. Memories of various
kinds are represented and combined in the picture. It is a
work of free art. The best in this kind may be master-
pieces from the brush or pencil of great artists. But they
in common with this sketch represent the early period, or
" golden age " of Imagination.
* Lecoq suggests as one visual recitation lesson, for example a model of
a fawn playing with its mother. The pupils handle and consider the
model for an hour — later, they take occasion to see a living fawn and
mother. — Then, having conned the lesson, and considered the difficult
parts, such as the joints, extremities, etc., well — they draw the animals from
memory — each pupil being warned against imitation, and secured from it
as far as possible.
[40
The Child as Artist
The Child as Artist 141
Compare both with this drawing of a donkey by an older
child — where imagination is even less free, than in either of the
preceding drawings. It is restricted almost sternly by
the visual memory of the living donkey. That is to say, the
artist has become a true realist. This progress towards realism
is very marked in the light literature of to-day; that is, in
certain works which we call fiction, but which are in reality
very careful representations of characters and phases of life
observed by the writer. In former days a flowery epistolary
style was de rigueur for all forms of light literature. To-day"^
* Although it is true that each observes in a way peculiar to himself,
selecting what attracts him, yet it is also true that close and full obser-
vation goes far to constitute originality, for it gives materials for new
142 The Child as Artist
simplicity and plainness have come to be regarded as essentials.
To write plainly what one feels, to report faithfully what one
sees are later ideals.
Realism, however, implies more than mere suppression.
The realistic novel does not owe all its success to its faithful-
ness to an original. The creative power is still the spell which
lends force and charm to the work, even although it seems
absent. But it is not allowed to intrude itself. The freedom
of childhood is left behind, and the character of inevitableness
becomes more and more impressed on the work. Thus the
child may say at the end of every story, '' They all lived happy
ever after that." But of the great drama, or modern novel
we say, '^ It could not have ended otherwise."
The fact that children are artists is admitted to-day, but
timidly, half-heartedly. In the " occupations " of infant schools,
brush-drawing, modelling, music, etc., find a place. But this
training abruptly ceases when the early standards are reached
— or it is carried on almost furtively. The well-to-do mother
who sends her little one to an expensive private school is afraid
all the drawing, painting, etc., may be mere waste of time, and
the inspector and manager have similar misgivings.
It is time to place the whole question of the art period of
life, and the training adapted to it, and possible to young
arrangement. The case of Sir Walter Scott illustrates this very forcibly.
" I observed," said Mr. Moritt of him, " that in visiting the mined Abbey
of Eggleston, he noted down even the peculiar little wild flowers and herbs
that accidentally grew round and on the side of a bold crag near his intended
cave, and could not help saying, that as he was not to be on oath in his
work, daisies, violets and primroses would be as poetical as any of the
humbler plants he was examining. I laughed in short at his scrupulousness,
but I understood him when he replied, that in nature no two scenes were
exactly alike, and that whoever copied truly what was before his eyes would
possess the same variety in his descriptions, and exhibit apparently an
activity as boundless as the range of nature in the scenes he recorded ;
whereas whoever trusted to imagination would soon find his own mind
circumscribed and contracted to a few favourite images, and the repetition
of these would sooner or later produce that very monotony and barrenness
which had always haunted descriptive poetry in the hands of any but the
most patient worshippers of truth."
The Child as Artist 143
children, on a firmer basis. Tentative efforts have been made
in the past. They have been overlooked largely because the
connecting truth behind all of them was not understood.
Herbart whose critical and comprehensive mind was far enough
removed from that of the artist, saw that the spirit of
pedantry which mingles so easily w4th education was highly
destructive to it. (" The intent to teach spoils children's books
at once ; it is forgotten that everyone, the child included,
selects what suits him from what he reads. . . . Interrupt the
story with moral precepts, and they will find you a wearisome
narrator. But give to them an interesting story rich in
incidents, relationships, characters, strictly in accordance with
psychological truth, and not beyond the feelings and ideas of
children then you will see how the charm of change ends in
])reference for the best.'") But he did not banish pedantry
through making art the soul of all his teaching. John Stuart
Mill assured England that catechisms were very poor substitutes
for beautiful stories, that clear mental pictures were the first kind
of mental furnishing necessary for the young. Nevertheless
the spirit of pedantry has found an abundant entrance. It
premeates the modern school. It is rampant in the class-
room of the little ones in the first standard ! It is tolerated in
the Infant room even.
The spirit of pedantry can be kept away only by the
spirit of childhood — which is also the spirit of the great
artist.
The affinity between the child and the artist can be
established now on an anatomical basis. Here is a drawing
of a brain, copied from a book by . Maurice de Fleury.
It shows the three or four modes of relationship with the
world which are brilliantly represented in various artist
types.
This man, we will say, is an artist in writing or painting.
He differs from other men in innumerable ways but we are
144
The Child as Artist
here concerned to note only two facts with regard to him.
The first that he receives by way of the optic nerve, at
the visual centre, an
exceptionally fine,
and full rain of im-
pressions from the
outer world. And
secondly that he
transforms these im-
pressions readily
into certain appro-
priate movements
through the medium
of line, colour, or
written words. The
impressions enter
the brain as vibra-
tions, energy. They
are received at the
visual centre, which
may be called the
capital of the
painter's or writer's
brain, and they are
to be transformed
into appropriate
movements. What
can help towards
this realization?
Only the vigour
and^ richness of
the original tem-
^ perament — the man
and his genius^
The Child as Artist 145
But what may hinder ? Not defect alone may hinder.
Development has its shadow side. Every thought and
idea of ours has a physical basis, and involves a physical
process. All the erudition of the wise, the comparison and
analysis of many facts, the evolution of mind in short is
attended by an enrichment of the nerve processes. The brain
of a great reasoner and philosopher like Taine, or Hume, or
Herbart, is like a luxuriant wood. A shaft entering there is
subject to arrest — divergence. Every impression is modified,
tempered, altered by innumerable bye-channels of in-coming
influence. The brain of the artist, superior as it is in certain
respects, is, as compared with that of the reasoner, as the thin
wood to the thick labyrinth. But this, from the point of view
of artistic power, is a great advantage. All the impressions
pouring in on the visual centre are sent forward to the motor
centre without interruption, without attenuation, and they are
there discharged in appropriate movements with all the force,
the fire, the verve, and fulness of the original impression.
The limitations implied in what we may be pardoned for
calling those splendid reflexes, are indicated in anatomy.
But what has all this to do with the training of children ?
It has much to do with it. It has every thing to do with it.
The child is allied to the artist (with all respect to the latter
be it said) through his simplicity, his poverty. His brain
also is, for the time being, like a wood in spring. Experience
and erudition have not done their work in him. He has
certain facilities now for learning through art.
These will be sacrificed later. We • lose to gain in life.
But every stage of life has its opportunities. And great men
have as it were alighted at everyone of these stages. Artists
are glorious children. They, if not the teacheis of childhood,
are the true inspirers of teachers ! What then are we to
think of the attempts at art training offered to-day in the
training colleges of elementary teachers ? It is surely obvious
146 The Child as Artist
that the relation of the child to art, and the place of art, as a
means of educaiton is almost ignored.
And why is the help of a great artist dispensed with so
lightly. Is it possible that we believe he exists only to adorn
our walls, to tickle our ears — in short to gratify our senses.
Alas ! Mankind has always been ready to treat the artist
as a foolish child ! Kings and rulers even treated him as a
spiolt child — forgave his insolence, laughed at his tempers,
and gave him plenty of flattery and enormous fees. Even
the dress of our divas shows that the public make them feel
they exist mainly to please, and everyone thinks that Bohemia
should be indulged. It is a depreciation of the true role of
the artist. There is a little truth in its suggestion, but it is not
the whole truth.
But this attitude after all is an insulting one. Amongst
the artists of to-day there are a few who have rendered great
service to public bodies— and who have shown that their
function and service does not end with the signing of songs,
and the painting of pictures.
It is impossible to doubt that the activity of the artist is
nearer to reflex action than is the mental labour of the
reasoner and philosopher. Far from establishing a universal
title to superiority for the philosopher, this may prove his unfit-
ness for certain orders of work and influence. The artist is
the king of childhood's world. He is himself in the words of
Fleury, " a sublime child." The scientist no longer belongs
to that world, and he has often made great blunders there.
Let us no longer give up our schools to the spirit of pedantry.
Let us no longer ignore the great, the stimulating influences of
great art in elementary class-rooms.
If the artist declares himself in childhood, that is because
his powers, however great, belong to childhood."^ He is
Mozart revealed his creative power at three, Hadyn at four, Schubert at
eleven, Giotto at ten, Raphael at eight, Greuze at eight, Van Dyck and
Michael Angelo at thirteen.
The Child as Artist 147
not alien, however superior to the average child. "The
child learns by doing/' said Froebel. The artist teaches by
doing. He is the great child, the elder brother and best
teacher of the young.
And only when this kinship is admitted can the power and
function of art in elementary education be fully appreciated,
and the scattered teachings of such great theorists as Froebel,
Herbert, etc., be linked together, and worked out into a more
or less perfect system.
CHAPTER VII
THE CHILD AS ARTIZAN
Childhood is called the Age of Gold of the Imagination,
because during that period the Imagination seems to hold
the field alone untrammelled by reason. Yet the rational
element is present in childish imaginings, and grows until at
last it seems to become the antagonist of the faculty out of
which it sprung.
Ribot represents the growth and rivalry of the Imagination
and Reason in the following table.
/
(^
I
\4
^ •'"'
,-/"
L
f
The line IM represents the growth of the Imagination
through the period of childhood, adolescence and youth.
The line RX represents Reason. It begins later, progresses
very slowly by comparison with the other. At X the two
intellectual faculties are on a level and face one another as
The Child as Artizan 149
powerful rivals. The second period begins at MX when the
antagonism between Reason and Imagination, between the
inner world and the outer world is fairly established. In the
majority of people the imagination appears to give place
cefore the invading power of the younger faculty. In child-
hood the fancy is nimble, later, in adolescence and youth,
it has a new efflorescence — differing from the imagination of
childhood — but exuberant. Then in middle life the illusions
of youth are laid aside. Day dreams are no more indulged in,
and the actual and practical alone have a serious hold on the
mind. This decline of the imagination, however, is only
partial. It is indicated by the letters MN between which
the curve of Imagination falls rapidly.
Nevertheless the lines MN and XO show Reason
and Imagination maintaining equal ascendancy. This
represents the case of certain persons — " pure Imagina-
tives," Ribot calls them — in whom the inventive and creative
power remains to the end vivacious and active as in youth.
Development may be continuous and along one line, as for
example in the case of the young inventor. Watt, who revealed
his vocation in early life and remained faithful to it, or in the
case of young writers who compose stories and plays in
childhood and go on later to the composition of original and
virile literary works. But development may also be through
deviation or complete change of work and material. Thus
many great inventors have begun by composing poor music,
or romances, or painting inferior pictures, and only later found,
after much groping and failure, their true vocation. Some great
scientists too have made their debut by a poor literary
venture, then cast such work entirely aside, and found their
true vocation.
It is easy to see how deviation is necessary, not only for
the few but for the majority. Pratically all children run
through an art period. But not even a Newton or a Darwin
150 The Child as Artizan
proclaim themselves scientists in the Infant School. For the
scientist must possess the power of abstraction (which
develops slowly) and a wide experimental knowledge which
it is impossible to gain in the earliest years. The same is
true, up to a certain point of the mechanical genius and inventor.
It is quite impossible then that the scientist or mechanical
genius should erupt like the baby musician. And yet the .
creative power develops if exercised in the early as well as in
the later years. It is developed at first through certain
means of expression which will be discarded later. That is
to say, there is deviation, not in the case of a few, but of
nearly all children."^
Deviation- does not imply interruption. On the contrary
it is deviation at the right moment that alone can ensure
continuity of development. This appears strange to us
to-day because we are accustomed to associate Imagination
almost entirely with certain orders of work — noticeably with all
free forms of art, poetry, music, painting, fiction — while ignor-
ing the more prosaic forms in which the creative faculty
embodies itself. It appears to many that the mechanic, the
"practical" man who discovers a new way of lighting or
ventilation, can have nothing in common with the musician,
the painter, and romancer. Yet there is identity of nature in
the creative power of both.
Here is a drawing of a machine. It is quite certain that
the inventors exercised Imagination. It is equally certain
that they could not indulge their fancies in the making of it.
Their imagination was not free to do as it pleased. It was
subject to rigorous necessity. While the artistic creation
which finds expression in words, sounds, lines, forms, colours^
*The biography of many great philosophers and scientists show that they
gave little indication in childhood of their powers, or at least that those
nearest to them were mistaken with regard to them. Hume's mother
believed him to be a dull boy. Darwin's father anticipated little from
him. And at twelve Isaac Newton was accounted a dunce.
The Child as Artizan
151
is poured into a fluent mould, this kind of creation has to take
its place beside the productions of nature. Any miscalculation
in the planning must mean failure. In the working it may
even mean death.
■^ ^
1
* '^^^Sd^tS^f^f/
L *=
Yet this machine has something in common with the draw-
ings which we have seen in the former chapter. For all the
drawings are imitations of life. Nay if we had shown in place of
this complicated machine, a simple basket woven in the kinder-
garten, a hammer forged in the iron-work centre, we might
still say the sam.e thing. All are imitations of life. For the
basket is a substitute for the hand. A gimlet, knife, or
hammer are substitutes for a moving, active hand. The
machine is higher in the scale of evolution than the utensil,
or the mere weapon. It imitates a complicated organism.
Thus in this drawing legs are represented, also an arm with
elbow and hand indicated."^ Here are substitutes for lungs and
^ Some machines have not only feet but ankles !
152 The Child as Artizan
mouth, and even for a brain, in the finer controlHng machinery.
Moreover the machine has a respiratory system, a digestive
system, etc. Its makers have imitated hfe. They have
passed from Reahsm into Rivalry. And so successfully that
machines displace men to-day. They do the work of men,
while men very often do the work of machines. No wonder
that workmen have hated them as if they were alive.
The genius that creates machinery is not quite alien to
that which does not attempt to rival life, butt)nly to interpret it.
The intuition of primitive peoples is right, which declares the
great inventor and tlie great artist to be twin-brothers ! In the
Homeric poems, Vulcan, the inventor, and Minerva gave all
artizans power to '' execute lovely work." It was only later that
a divorce was established between the artist and the inventor.
Happily, it is not very hard to see, even to-day, the con-
nexion between the artistic and the industrial forms of creative
power. Educational authorities to-day admit an "art-period,"
since they introduce clay and colour work into the kinder-
garten. They admit an ''artizan-period," since they open
manual training for boys between the age of eleven and four-
teen. Experience has not as yet shown us how the cultivation
of the visual memory and the motor training given through
art, prepares the young artist for the following period of
development through manual labour. We have not co-related
the work of the standards enough to earn such "results." Yet
enough has been attempted to show that art offers a means of
expression and training in the earlier years, whereby the outer
world is reduced to proportions, made familiar, and harmonized
with the inner. (Compare the drawings of the children in the
fourth chapter of this volume with those of the trained
children, whose work is shown in the sixth chapter). We
j^now that it prepares the child to become an artizan.
There have been but few artizan prodigies as compared witf>
the number of '"wonder-children" in music, or even drawin
The Child as Artizan 153
And yet, in this field, also, genius is precocious ! At the age
of nine, Poncelet took a watch to pieces and put it together
again correctly. Newton, as a boy, learned the art of manag-
ing tools and contrived machines ; and Watt made observations,
as a child, which contained the germ of later discoveries.
Fresnel, at nine, made experiments with arches of wood,
and in early youth Herbert Spencer invented a velocimeter.
Humphrey Potter, a machine-minder, at twelve made
an invention which had an influence on the development
of automatic machinery. But in all this the child of
genius, though precocious, is no anomaly, no "bolt from
the blue," born to distract by a chance which no man
can estimate. Other children, having arrived at a certain age,
show similar tendencies. Most children wish to make useful
things — to invent, or at least to imitate, the inventions of
others. The artizan -period, like the art-period, is a time of
preparation, which arrives for nearly all children, and offers
new opportunities to the teacher.
Certainly, the wood work or iron work centre cannot be
a hall of fantasy. Still less is the workshop or the forge
a place for free fancy. Yet men have imagined more in the
work-a-day world than in any other world. And this is re-
cognized, after a fashion at least, by many nations. Thus the
French say of a rather dull person, not '* He has not painted the
'Assumption' or 'La Giaconda,'" but, "He has not invented
powder."
The origin of inverition is necessity. People built houses for
shelter. They invented ploughs because they were hungry, and
swords because they had to fight enemies. In a higher
civilization desire and necessity are still the motor power. " I
can affirm," said one inventor, " that, for me, the conception of
any new thing is always the result of a moral or material neces-
sity. Thus^ in 1887, a discourse of Bismarck put me m a great
154 T^^ Child as Artizaji
passion, and I at once conceived the idea of arming my country
with a new kind of gun." Emotion will stimulate animals to
great displays of intelligence. The other day a swan lifted
her nest (which threatened to be submerged by a flood), by
stuffing straw underneath it. And children will invent and
devise very cleverly under stress of circumstances or feeling.
The child, Humphrey Potter, became an inventor, thanks to
his yearning desire to go and play in the streets with other
boys !
In modern schools every need seems to be met in a rather
fatal way. Much attention is given to the provision of
good apparatus. This is not a thing to regret from every
point of view — and yet there is a shadow side to all this ample
provision, and a very dark shadow side it is too. The inventive
faculties are not stimulated by the introduction into schools of
costly and intricate apparatus. The inventive faculty is stimu-
lated now, as in pre-human days, by necessity and desire.
Where everything is provided, — desire receives its quietus.
Moreover, every complicated piece of apparatus represents
the labours, and inventions, not of one man, but of many.
How can an immature mind follow all these — understand
an aggregate of discoveries and achievements ? It is like
a difficult book, which the young learner has not learned to
read. And why should he learn to read it? It was not thus
that the inventors (of whom myriads have been forgotten) re-
ceived their training. They made their own trials — invented,
and rejected, failed and succeeded on their own account. And
there are persons who think that this process is the only one
worth anything. " All apparatus used to illustrate the funda-
mental laws of physics," writes Kropotkine, '* ought to be made
by the children themselves. . . . Instead of making themselves
an Atwood's machine with a broomstick and the wheel of an old
clock, they are to-day shown a complicated apparatus, and, in
most cases, the teacher does not know how to explain to them
The Child as Artizan 155
the principle of the apparatus, and indulges in irrelevant details".
And so it goes on, from the beginning to the end, with but
a few honourable exceptions."
As often happens it is the nation least exposed to the
danger which is most conscious of its existence. The
Americans, enterprising, industrious, adaptive, have provided
the world with wonderful labour-saving machinery. They are
the artizan nation par excellence — the inventors who transform
the industrial world. Their steam-ploughs, and stump-ex-
tractors, etc., are world-famed ; and, over and above all these
greater achievements, they busily contrive innumerable smaller
ones. Nowhere is the housewife aided by so many labour
saving appliances. They multiply their improved carpet-
sweepers, plate racks, kitchen ranges, lifts, etc. Thanks to
the amount of imagination consecrated to the improvement
of material life, even the working class of America live in
comparative comfort. If there w^ere not in these people many
desires, appetites, tendencies, they would not display such
lively imaginations. Yet they fling hack their young people,
at times, or\. primary desires — on primitive needs. In summer,
classes of boys (some from luxurious homes), are sent out to
the prairie and forest to make a summer school. Literally, to
make a summer school : for they have to cut the timber for
their house, build the walls, put on the roof, and find the
furnishing. Their parents probably think that their children
should be at least as inventive as the Indians, who made every-
thing, from a house to a needle from the buffalo skin and bones,
and made books from the bark of trees. Later, there may be
science lessons in the rude house of the school-boys, botanizing
excursions and sketching in the fields. But the pupils begin
by feeling the spur of primitive needs.
It goes without saying that they respond to it otherwise than
did the primitive man. Already their minds are furnished
with many concrete images, many ideas to which his w^as a
156 The Child as Artizan
stranger. Already their hands have been trained to use certain
implements, and construct others out of rude materials. But
it is recognized that all this manual skill, all these mental images
are inert, unproductive, mere baggage to be carried about unless
there is that which can move and handle them — that the
origin of invention is in the emotional life, not in the quantity
or quality of representations which we have at our disposal.
In the American the primitive desire to live has been trans-
formed and refined into an ever-growing desire to live better,
to live with more comfort, more luxury. His wants have not
merely kept pace wnth his inventions, but outstripped them.
A new desire has been the spur of every new invention. Yet
he allows his children to feel the primitive need out of which
all the rest has sprung.
Let us sum up in a few word all that is meant by the phrases
" the art " and " artizan periods of life."
The animism of early childhood is an embryonic form of
imagination whence issues the aesthetic faculty. Through the
exercise of this faculty in play, in art, in idol-making even the
intellect is trained, and the moral susceptibilities deepened and
widened. " The majority of new functions," said Espinas,
*' whether social or individual, are exercised in the first instance
under the aesthetic form." Machines, for example, were first
used as a kind of holy plaything, an article de luxe of the
temple. The wheel, which plays such an important part in
the construction of vehicles, machines, etc., etc., was at first a
kind of sacred toy used by the devout worshipper, a rosary of
the East. Recitation and the songs of the poets were once the
only kind of intellectual labour of which youth was believed to
be in need.
It is not necessary to go back so far, however, in order to
see how the mind of man is educated as primarily through free
art. Our forefathers of four and five centuries back were still
The Child as Artiza7i 157
pouring a great amount of creative energy into forms which are
now almost neglected. They had stories and legends, not
only about various localities, but about every weed and flower.
They enjoyed colour with a naive appreciation which we have
lost. Their highest works were great works of art, and the
first step in the thought process — that of affirmation — was
emphasized and dwelt on so that they represented every
degree of belief from the highest form to the lowest range of
credulity.
In the modern man the creative faculty is not weakened.
It expresses itself in new forms. We listen no longer for
divine voices in the torrents, we look no longer for a mysterious
message written in the blossoms of the field. "^ Yet the quantity
and power of the imagination is not really diminished. We
have fewer stories, but more inventions. Less joy in free
creation, but more patience in research and experiment.
Imagination is still the architect of theory. It still pervades
and illumines every field of human activity.
The child — despite the influences of his modern environ-
ment — retraces the journey of the race. Nothing justifies us
in believing that he can skip any process of human education
with impunity. The dangers of omission are exemplified not
only in the humblest, but even in the greatest thinkers. John
S. Mill regretted that his early education had been that of a
youth rather than of a child. He eloquently testified that little
ones learn more from "fables, myths, and hero tales," than
from precept and dogma. Scotland left the objective arts out
of her great scheme of popular education. The omission was
unfortunate. The gloom of Galvanism overshadowed the lives
* Yet the poets make these lovely trouvailles still !
A beautiful example of this is to be found in Longfellow's Evangeline :
*' Look at this vigorous plant that lifts its head from the meadow
See how its leaves are turned to the north, as true as the magnet
This is the compass flower, that the finger of God has planted
Here in the houseless wild to direct the travellers' journey ! "
158 The Child as Artizan
and darkened the wisdom of many of her sons. Her greatest
metaphysicians illustrate the dangers of an exclusively subjective
view of life and the world. Greek scholars she had in abund-
ance, but the secret of the " sane, sweet cheerfulness " of the
Greek was never shared by them.
Not only the evils of omission but also the evils of arrest are
illustrated for us by the Scots — illustrated well because they
have had an education worthy the name. In the islands of the
outer Hebrides there are men of considerable culture and
wide reading. Nevertheless their education shows great gaps.
Mechanical trades are practically unknown to them. The houses
are but poor sheltering places, where the smoke of the peat fire
wanders out through a barrel in the wall. There is no wood
in the islands — nothing to remind the islander that he has
never become an artizan. He is a seaman it is true — but all
his manual craft is in the management of his boat, the hauling
and casting of his nets. The women gut, salt, pack the
herring. They even dig the oat and potatoe patches as well
as do the work of the homes.
In the mind of the Hebridean all is moving and fugitive like
the travail of the sea. His myths and legends are not em-
bodied in any objective art. He invents nothing. His
imagination still roves free in the wild realms of phantasy. In
the dark, beautiful eyes of his children he sees no eager
desires, no ardent hopes, only the light of dreams, the dusk of
sorrow. " Tliis represents a type," some will say. As a matter
of fact all this is largely the result of circumstance, of experience,
and education. And all this may change- rapidly. "Man is,'* as
Dalton said, "so educable an animal, that it is difficult to
distinguish between what has been acquired through circum-
stance, and that which is, the original grain.'' The past fifty
years, and the changes they have brought have shown us all
how quickly the very disposition and character of men may
undergo modification as the result of a new direction of
The Child as Artizan 159
creative impulse. The problem appears to be this — how to
touch without dimming or degrading what is good in the
heritage of the past, and to stimulate the mechanical genius
at the same time so they may not linger in the wake, industrially,
of other men.
This is a local problem ! But it illustrates the larger
problem ? Does any one imagine that the teaching of the three
R's constitutes elementary education — that this is enough for
the masses ? Why, we have just seen that subject that are yet
regarded as extra in the curriculum are much closer to the de-
veloping child than is reading or writing, that the deeper pro-
blems of human destiny are concerned with the influence of
arts which we have ignored and which many cannot yet
bear to hear mentioned in connection with the education of
working-class children ! Squalid homes, neglected powers,
degraded surroundings (which would be unendurable to
any human being who had received an elementary education
worthy the name), point no lesson to many. In their haste
to be practical they decline to look below the surface and
find the truth. . . .
The masses illustrate to-day the results of arrested art training.
. . . It is perhaps iiuomen of all classes who offer the most
striking illustration of the effect of missing the "artizan"
training. Every art or trade practised by man has its
technique — that is to say, its laws and rules of action
established by experience. The laws of trades were at first
regarded as sacred, to meddle with them was an impious
act. But in the later development of every trade or art, the
workman was continually gaining new consciousness of himself
as an active, innovating agent. Some great inventors could
even find an advantage in being ignorant of much that was
accepted in their day. They were thus free to introduce new
methods boldly. But the domestic arts, perhaps more than
any others, represent still a code of rules, rather than a series
i6o The Child as Artizan
of opportunities for the display of the initiative ! Sewing,
cooking, washing, mending, etc., are performed in much the
same manner from one generation to another. The knitting
machines, sewing machines, etc., have indeed been invented —
by men. But the Hfe of an artizan's wife to-day is not very
different to that of the housewife of less enlightened days.
She invents no more — perhaps she invents even less than did
her great-grandmother. As for educational, authorities they
indeed recognise the need for a certain amount of knowledge
in the working woman. We have domestic training centres
in every city. But the pupils in these follow certain routine
methods. Little is left to their own initiative. Few invent
anything.
This halt of w^oman at the threshold of the artizan period
has had a disastrous effect on her whole mental development.
If she is well-to-do and continues her education she may pass
literary examinations brilliantly. Her weakness appears as a
rule however in the field of original research. " Even in art,"
says Arreat, " woman has not opened out any new tract
or taken any foremost place." It is only just to add,
however, that many paths were closed to her from the first,
more especially in that sphere which above all others is the
school of initiative. This may explain partly at least, why she
is often as the Frenchman said, " the slave, of latent memories."
CHAPTER VIII
THE COMMERCIAL SCHOOL
In many schools, situated in crowded areas, and attended by
children of the- poorest class, many striking illustrations can
be found of the precocious development of the " Commercial "
imagination. The parents take no special pains to cultivate
it. Teachers are not concerned with it. But Necessity —
acts as a spur. And the inventive and creative powers are
turned in the direction of " business ! "
Here, for example, is a big school in a poor district of a
northern city, which furnishes us with various kinds of money-
makers. The elder boys and girls who attend it are nearly
all half-timers, and work at the mill. But many of the younger
ones, unable to earn money, in this constitutional way sell
papers in the streets. Some not only sell papers, but engage
other children to sell for them. These take risks and chances
with their small capital, assume responsibilities, keep accounts
after their own fashion, and are in fact genuine employers of
labour. They offer us a good example of how necessity will
determine the direction of the creative powers. And this
activity is not without effect on the general mental develop-
ment. The teachers report that these small buyers and sellers
and employers of labour are much brighter and quicker in
school work than are the half-timers — even though the latter
II
1 62 The Commercial School
are usually much better fed, and come from a more respectable
class of home.^
The commercial form of inventiveness and resource differs
from that which we have been considering. It depends
mainly on intuition — a kind of unconscious reasoning in the
field of human relationships. The materials for the exercise
of this form of imagination are accumulated early by the street
arab in his wanderings. He learns to know humanity — at
least in a few aspects and relationships, and learns also liow to
adapt himself in his dealings with it, as the result of experience.
More fortunate children are precocious in the same way,
their powers of reading character sometimes astonishing their
elders, as w^ell as their readiness to apply the result of bye gone
experience to new cases. " It may be noticed,'* says Carpenter,
" that children display a power of bringing ' common sense '
to bear upon the ordinary affairs of life, which seems much
beyond that of their elders . . . They perceive the application
of self-evident ccnsiderations to the case at issue, without
being embarrassed by a number of other considerations which
distract the adult."
To be sure only a few justify the promise of early years.
"A very sensible child," said Carpenter, "' will often grow into
a much less sensible man." Few indeed, if any of the children
of the slums ever enter the world of finance. Their sharp-
ness does not as a rule develop with intelligence. It stops
short usually at the point of cunning.
No one can read the biographies of different types of great
men, or even observe the life of different types of average
people, without seeing that character is influenced very largely
* The case against the mill as a place for children, rests now almost
entirely on the monotonous nature of the employment. New methods of
sanitation and regulations for protection of juvenile mill hands do not
touch this fact — that the round of tasks makes no call on the initiative of
the young worker. Teachers report that the brightest children become
dull when they enter the factory.
The Commercial School 163
by occupation, by the order of image and the nature of the
creative activity with which the mind is usually concerned.
Thus for example the mechanic, dealing as he does with
rigid materials, and observing certain laws of matter is in
a more neutral state habitually towards human beings than is
the tradesmen or the diplomatist. Of artists, Arreat in his
" Psychology of Painters " writes, " We hardly meet in them any
of the lower forms of egoism, such as avarice, the desire to amass
material-wealth, the violent thirst to acquire." On the other
hand the artist is not as a rule a very active citizen. There is
no " Psychology of Scientists and Philosophers " in existence
as yet, but all that can be gathered from biography, report, and
the testimony of their entourage goes to show that the
scientists too are privileged from the point of view of
morality. As a class they possess the virtues of tolerance,
rectitude, and patience in a high degree, and it appears that
few, if any, among them have dimmed their laurels through
petty jealousies, vulgar pre-occupation, or immoral life. There
is no need to fall into raptures over all this. It may
be accounted for largely by the fact that the scientists'
interests and labours lead them far from the arena of personal
emulation. Not only is it impossible to quarrel with a theorem
or an hypothesis, but it is impossible even to give close atten-
tion to these without being diverted from personal considerations
and relationships. The passion for truth may make self-
forgetfulness inevitable. Science has had its martyrs, its
enthusiasts, its ascetics, who, professing no faith, were ready
for any trial.
During much of their life they are removed from the
storm of clashing interests. Like Nature, they are during a
great part of their time allowed to be non-moral !
Far otherwise is it with the tradesman — the financier. He
is required to be every moment, either moral, or immoral.
The success of a financier depends very largely on his ability
164 The Commercial School
to know at any given moment two things. First, what people
will want; and secondly, what people will do. He has to
satisfy his own wants through them. Yet this type — whatever
its failings — does not furnish the original of any great portraits
of the egoist. It is notorious that the successful man of
business usually spends little on himself. The American
merchant is said to be an unconscious martyr to his family
instincts. He will toil incessantly, deliberately shortening
his own life in order to minister to the ambition of his
wife, or the aspirations of his daughters. And the same
characteristic has been noted in the French, for they have a
significant proverb which applies very obviously not to the
poor artizan, but to the rich tradesman, " P^re de famille
capable de tout." Capable of cruelty, of deceit perhaps, but
also of sacrifice. But the commercial genius does not always
apply himself to working for his own family. He often
works for the enrichment of a whole class, a whole nation. " All
civilised nations," says Ribot, " count in their history men who
have conceived a great financial system and have succeeded,
in various degrees, in applying it, as did Fourier and other
idealists." In England Robert Owen offered an illustration
of how financial ability and inventiveness may easily shift its
aim from the personal to the social, from the sphere of family
interests to that of public interest.
Even in the case of the business man who becomes
avaricious and deaf to all claims save that of self, there is a
susceptibility for reform which suggests that he is an abortive
member of the social type, rather than a bona-fide egoist.
The conversion of Scrooge would be unbelievable if Scrooge
had not belonged to a type of person, in whom such sudden
transformation is (under certain circumstances) natural,
perhaps even inevitable.
Practised on a large scale, commerce to-day, however,
resembles war — is, indeed, a kind of war, in which the leader
The Commej'cial School 165
reconnoitres other camps, gains intelligence and prepares to take
his competitors at a disadvantage. Practised on a small scale,
commerce is a sort of hand-to-hand engagement. Customers
have to be dealt with separately, and personally, as in ancient
warfare. And at every moment the tradesman is exposed to a
storm of conflicting suggestions ; he is honest or dishonest —
truthful or untruthful — every moment. And not only is he
continually exposed, he is, we may add, expected (by other
people) to fall every moment. This is why " trade " is despised
by many, who, perhaps, themselves could ill stand the tests
it imposes. That there may be a heroism possible in it is,
however, admitted by a few. Thus Ruskin, whose imagination
was fired by the sight of a helmet and shield on a knight's
tomb, yet admitted the heroism of his own father, by writing on
his tomb-stone the words, " An entirely honest merchant."
The preparation for this career is after all largely humanistic.
The pupil has to learn among other things living languages.
If the previous training has been good and timely this should
present no great difficulty. The various memories once trained,
the pupil is prepared to take possession, as it were, of the new
tongues. It is not enough to have trained memories. One
must be allowed to use them all freely. Dictation and
recitation appear to be in this, as in other subjects, of indispens-
able value."^ Let the teacher (it goes without saying that he
must speak the language he is teaching purely and correctly)
dictate, while the pupil writes — making at first doubtless many
mistakes. Then let the pupil hear the dictation read, and read
it himself, correct it, and finally learn it by heart and recite it.
Thus eye, ear, hand will re-inforce one another, and the pupil
will quickly acquire a vocabulary, and an intimate knowledge
of words and phrases. Practise in conversation, and (in the
fulness of time, but not until much has been mastered
previously) the study of grammar will do the rest.
* Dictation and Recilation are as we have seen inportant in Drawing.
1 66 The Commercial School
As soon as possible the pupil should be introduced to the
new Literature. This should be done, not that he may read
new books, but in order that he may be introduced to a new
order of human mentality. All the studies of modern races
serve to show that they have powers and modes of feeling and
thinking which are largely complementary.
The teaching of ancient languages is believed to have an
immense effect on the mind. Why should the teaching of
living languages be regarded as ineffectual for all higher
purposes ?
Certainly, if ethical training- is wanted for any class of
students, it is needed for the pupils in commercial schools.
Book-keeping, invoicing, modern languages, and geography,
etc., are necessary ; and yet none of these directly take into
account the nature of those human relationships in which the
creative power of the pupils is to find the material of its activity.
"We almost all," writes a great American merchant, writing for
smaller merchants, "are liars and hypocrites in business
— and think it no shame. It is not an insult to call us liars
and hypocrites, by a percentage of ninety-nine in one hundred,
in business. We freely confess it among ourselves, when we
say that ' we can't do business without it.' " Is there no higher
aim than that in commerce ?
Yes ! In the commercial school, as in every school, we must
assume the existence of heroic forms of virtue. The financial
genius may take, as its aim, the reform of the finances of a power-
ful state — the enrichment or uplifting of the helpless masses
who are in the power of the classes above them. There is no
limit to be set on the aim of the developed commercial imagina-
tion of the financial genius in the future. And, if this order
of heroism is very late in making its appearance, that is mainly,
perhaps, because it involves, not only a high development of
the creative powers, but a great discipline and triumph of the
moral nature.
CHAPTER IX
IMAGINATION IN THE SCIENCE-ROOM
Progress seems to imply not merely new learning, but new
forgetting : not acquisition alone, but also apparent loss.
Few savages have: the gift of carrying a picture in the mind's
eye, and few children, as we have seen, can reproduce forms
clearly from memory without training. The "gift" belongs
to the favoured individuals among children and uncivilized
races. It is a conquest of the race. And yet as members of
the race continue to advance the gift ceases to be in evidence.
It is ignored, and apparently lost. Thus Dalton found that
the great majority of the men of science to whom he applied
for data on the power of visualization denied the possession
of any faculty of " mental imagery." " It is only by a figure
of speech," said one, **that I can describe my recollection of a
scene as a ' mental image ' which I can see with my mind's
eye and I do not see it. The mind possesses it."
The mind's remoter acquisitions are we know, not lost, but
sunken out of sight, far below, it may be, the movement of
conscious life and effort. And it is in this sense alone, doubt-
less, that the power of visual representation — feeble as it is
known to be among scientific men — is lost. Mental pictures
would be a cumbersome kind of medium of thought for those
who are occupied largely with highly generalized and abstract
thought. Substitutes for these have been found in symbols
i68 Imagination in the Science-room
Nevertheless it is not reasonable to suppose that because a
faculty for seeing clear mental pictures may one day be
supplanted, and even suppressed, the acquirement of it can be
at every stage of life and education neglected. To become
the master of any faculty involves a discipline. We have
seen that memory may become a tyrannical thing. We have
to learn to deal with it freely, masterfully, to forget and re-
member at will. Just in the same way we may learn to deal
with the power of visual representation — which is indeed a
high form of memory. — Here as elsewhere possession is good,
and mastery better. Dalton himself declares that the power
of dealing easily and firmly with mental imagery is the surest
criterion of a high order of intellect. Some have disciplined
the visual power till in them, or in their descendants, it
appears to be lost. Yet it is not lost ! The highest minds
are, according to Dalton, these in which it is obviously not lost,
but subordinated.
It is not difficult to understand how the power of clear and
rapid visual representation is useful to the scientist — and
particularly to the discoverer. Half the difference between
the discoverer and the ordinary man may be said to consist
in this, that the former can see that which is invisible to
the other. — He can conceive movements and forms that
are beyond mere physical vision. To Dalton for example the
atom was not an abstraction, though atoms and molecules are
abstractions to many of his followers. He could see it. The
chemists of to-day, as Tyndall has pointed out, stop short of
the intelligible atomic theory, and take refuge in the doctrine
of multiple proportions. The discoverer was not so timid, or
so abstract. He conceived a particle of vibrating matter,
occupied himself with its architecture, its behaviour, realized
it in short, and formed a mental picture of it. Not only the
great discoverers but all the great teachers of physics appear
to be able to resort to visual representation. " Tiie bodily
(university)
Imagination in the Science-rbWl 169
eye," said Tyndall. " cannot see the condensations and rare-
factions of the waves of sound. — But we construct them in
thought " — that is, wt ^-^ a a mental picture of them. " No
research," said Sir Norman Lockyer at the meeting of the
British Association, " could be more abstract to-day than the
study of the emanations of radium." But one of the most
eminent physicists of to-day aids himself in the study of this
subject by drawings illustrative of the behaviour of the
molecules of this substance in various conditions. " When
I look out of a railway carriage," says another, " it seems to
me that I see very plainly the billions of molecules liberated
in the change of heat into motion, and this power of seeing is
as useful almost in the world beyond sense as in the little area
of immediate observation." There is no reason to doubt that
in the realm of physical science the gift of visual representation,
i?i its higher form ^ is not merely an aid, but a necessity.
The same is true of the group of sciences which we call the
" social sciences." To take one of these, history. We have
seen that the child is no historian in the modern sense — that
history is an art for him, nothing more. He does not see
the past as it was. He has no true vision of far-off lands,
or vanished civilizations. So he constructs a fantastic, or
grotesque substitute for the true vision. Later he is under
no such necessity. He knows more — can realize the past, and
unseen people better. But he realizes them through the same
faculty by which he once supplanted them. Just in proportion
as his vision is clear, his interest is strong, and the past
become real to him. The historian, like the physicist then is
dependent more or less on his power of visual representation.
This power — on which so much depends — is almost ob-
trusive in childhood. It may be developed in every lesson — in
history as well as physics — in arithmetic as well as drawing.
Dalton discovered that many eminent scientists, as well as
a considerable proportion of the general public are in the habit
170 Imagination in the Science-room
of seeing numerals in forms. Most of these forms are mere
diagrams in which every number has its own definite place.
But others are shaded drawings, and some forms are brilliantly
coloured. The faculty of associating numerals with forms is
however more common with children than with grown-up
people, and illustiate their general tendency to dramatize
everything. Even when dealing with such abstractions
as figures they do not at once cast aside all dependence
on mental pictures. The tendency indeed is towards en-
franchisement. *' The more attention I give to the properties
of numbers," said one of the seers of number-forms, " the
less I am troubled with the clumsy shaded frame work
for them. . . . The higher numbers are to me quite abstract
and unconnected with a shape.'' In the earliest years the de-
pendence on such aids is more or less general. Successful
teachers of mathematics to young pupils owe much to their
practise of leading the child to visualize scenes and concrete
things.
In giving a lesson in number, for example, of which money is
the medium one very successful teacher encourages the child to
represent to himself the shop where the transaction takes place,
to visualize the coins that pass from the customer's hand to the
seller's and vice versa. Such aids are of course useful mainly
to beginners. But their effects are not to be confined to the
early stages of learning. There is great reason to think that
to them many far reaching successes may be traced. Very
often it happens that a pupil may go a certain length in
mathematics only to find himself suddenly balked. A subtle
weakness or deficiency makes the further field of labour dim.
What can this deficiency be but a lack of experience and of
representative power ? And the cause may lie far back in the
early life and training. Even the child prodigy in mathematics
is not exempt from such arrest. Very often it happens that
as he approaches manhood his power declines, while other
Imagination in the Science-room 171
people, who have gone forward to the physical sciences,
shoot far ahead, reinforced by teachings drawn from the
concrete, from experience."^
The material offered to the imagination in science differs, it
will be seen, from that offered in art, commerce, artizanship,
etc. Even the material offered in different sciences varies
greatly. For the mathematician it consists mainly of symbols,
abstractions. The geologist, botanist, astronomer, etc., is not
independent of mathematics, but the material on which his
imagination acts is largely concrete, and depends on sense
impressions.
Whatever the science, however, the worker's activities fall
into three distinct orders. He begins by observation, then pro-
ceeds to conjecture, and finally to verification. Observation
and information supply material. All that can be learned
constitutes the material. The power that creates, the motor
power is not in it. It is with the second step in the process
of creation and discovery that the imagination is concerned.
The scientist who creates an hypothesis, the little child who
hazards an explanation reaches it. In the third or last
step — verification — reason is paramount but imagination is
not absent.
If we look at our elementary schools to-day we see that
the first step is far from being entirely neglected. Serious
efforts are made to cultivate the power of observation in
children. With this end in view object lessons are given
early in the school life, and though, in the case of children of
poor physique and very limited experience, the results are
discouraging, yet in favourable areas and for children of
more favoured type and circumstance their value is recognized.
* A complete contrast to the method of Ijeginning with the concrete is
to be found in that of Mr. Stelling, Tom Tulliver's tutor, who, keeping
closely to abstractions, finally convinced a very intelligent hoy that Euclid
was only a means of torture, and left him quite powerless to connect the
p'^oblems with anything in his own world of experience or interest.
172 hnagination in the Science-room
The " object lesson " is, indeed, a test lesson for the young
teacher. So that even the most captious critic cannot say
that the taking of means whereby the imagination of children
should be supplied with materials is still quite neglected.
It is when we come to think of the second step in creative
activity that we see ground for dismay. Are we helping
children to "conjecture," to create for themselves the
material for rational investigation ? To be sure, the question
is somewhat absurd. We cannot " help " others to an im-
pulse. Or in any case the help we can give is of a
very negative kind. We cannot bestow imagination as a gift."^
No teaching or training can make a creator and discoverer,
else it would be indeed imperative to fabricate genius at any
cost. On the other hand we have power to prevent the
development of creative power. And no institution is more
aptly designed to effect this than a school. In schools we
give innumerable solutions, the results of the travail of creative
mind for many centuries. This kind of giving is necessary,
otherwise no generation could profit from the labours of the
past. But it is attended with risks to which eminent men are
no longer blind. " Education as at present conducted," said
Professor Boyd Dawkins at the meeting of the British
Association in 1903, "is killing the insatiable curiosity of
children. All children have faculties of investigation that
would teach them much if they were not dulled by education."
Certainly schools may be very destructive, and, indeed, it is
their constant tendency to become so.
Conjecture is provoked through curiosity. Curiosity like
other emotions, is a stimulus, an excitant. The search for
truth is a hunt, differing from the ordinary hunt or chase
only in its object. And all who have observed healthy
children in a state of freedom must admit that they long to
* Fichte taught that "the most original thing in us is the impulse to
action."
Imagination in the Science-room 173
join in this hue and cry. In the lonely islands of the Hebrides
you may often see groups of children poking sticks about in
pools, gathering lichens and shells among the rocks, over-
turning stones in black swampy earth in search of living
things. Having caught their spoil (for which they have no
practical use, and which they show no desire to kill or torture)
the children gather round it with cries of joy, place it on a dry
stone, turn it over, watch its movements. Sometimes a bolder
spirit hazards explanations (perhaps quite fictitious) in Gaelic
which are always deemed worthy at least of criticism. It is
easy to see what the function of the teacher is, and the school.
The function of the former is to help at the right moment, to
set the "hunters" on the right track, and of the school to
train the rational faculty to act on the material provided for
it by the imagination.
Much of this material will be rejected. None of it probably
will be lost. The little child as well as the great scientist pro-
gresses through his own mistakes — not through being pre-
vented from making mistakes. A false hypothesis has often
served the race well. Just in the same way the illusions of
childhood serve children well. Their wildest conjectures,
are like the early movements of infancy, through which
the little one learns finally the power of accommodation,
and is able to suppress useless discharges. Their false
explanations form a kind of bridge across which they pass
into the world of new light and knowledge. Their self-
created methods guide them even when they are false
Illusions and mistakes are a part, as Pascal declared, of every
thinker's force. They are the preconceived ideas which serve
the little child as well as the great discoverer as guide.
It is in incitants that the modern system of education
is lacking. All the efforts made to improve it appear to
be directed to other ends than this — that the creative original
power of every pupil should be roused to activity. Accuracy,
174 Imagination in the Science-room
fulness, method — the need for these is recognized more or
less. Only from the kindergarten, where the little children
have all their work prepared for them, to the upper standards
and colleges where the young teachers learn what they have
to do and be, and follow close in the traces of an all-foreseeing
pedagogic providence, the master fact, the key-stone verity ot
human education is forgotten, and that is, that the greatest
success, the unknown, undreamed-of, ever fair triumph comes
only to those who can use knowledge as an instrument,
and who apply it in ways that display the whole power, the
new power of each individual mind.
And yet the wealth of original creative power is desired
ardently to-day by all civilized nations. Of this abundant
evidence is furnished by the numerous costly schools of research
which foreign European nations have recently built and equipped.
Even England is making great, and will perhaps make still
greater sacrifices in order to secure the best kind of national
wealth. " No man,'' said a prominent statesman lately,
" can honestly say that we have done enough to equip research
with all the costly armoury which it must have in these latter
days."
The " costly armoury " is the outward and visible sign of
the great, though gradual advance which places the investi-
gators and discoverers of to-day in another world than that in
which the early thinkers dreamed in peace, and created their
own solutions of world- problems in freedom. The develop-
ment of reasoning power, and the increase of knowledge has
checked facile creation. Only primitive peoples imagine
as primitive people, only to young children do the gates of
fairy-land swing wide at a touch. When the dreamer is a-
wakened by experience, and informed by new knowledge the
creative power is necessarily subjected to new conditions.
Thus prevented, driven into new channels, it escapes the ob-
Imagination in the Science-room 175
servation of many, and is believed to have been destroyed by
the march of higher faculties. Some think of it with contempt.
(Among these, curiously enough, are many successful, practical,
business men in whom, as we have seen, imagination, along
certain limited ways, is well developed). Others look on
it with fear — and these timid ones belong in many cases
to the higher orders of men! "There are Tories," said
Tyndall, " even in science who regard imagination as a
faculty to be feared and avoided rather than employed."
As knowledge is increased, and experience deepened and
amplified, the creative imagination is subjected to new con-
ditions, so that many cease to recognise it in what seem very
prosaic callings ! But its role in the drama of mental activities
remains the same. It is still the motive-power, the power
that makes advance everywhere possible. It is still the
fore-runner of reason, which does indeed correct it and even
guide it, but guides not as an angel that goes before, but as a
captious grumbler and fault-finder that hobbles after. Even in
its fault-finding Reason is not the initiating power. Under all
calculations, inferences, etc., and more obviously in the creation
of all methods of logic and proof there is a moving, vivifying,
initiating something — and that something is imagination.
The " costly armoury " is provided to-day then in many
lands, for the discoverer. Only in the elementary schools we do
not train children as future discoverers. No, that is trouble-
some. We are tempted to hustle them along the path of
mere learning. The path is so long and straight. After
all the terra incognita is far away. A long journey must
be made to reach it. Much must be learned before any-
thing new to the race is discovered. Thus preliminary
learning threatens to-day to be suppressive — to degenerate
into a mere mechanical reception of facts and tabulation of
sequences. So that genius itself may be smothered by
erudition, like a flame under damp fuel.
176 Imagination in the Science-room
Yet this crushing out of the initiating power in young
scholars is a ruinous course. The increase of knowledge does
not render it necessary. The world is old to the experienced.
They are familiar with it. But it is new to every child.
The creative power like a vital current must still flow below
all his mental life and vivify it. The little child who
himself finds the method for solving a simple problem is
a discoverer. And without such discoveries and free
exercise of the creating and initiating power of the mind
by all pupils in all the elementary schools, there can be
no real preparation on the part of any nation for the use of
the " costly armoury " which is to be furnished forth to the
advanced students. Methods of invention, creation, and dis-
covery can never be taught.
But that children may have their powers of invention
and discovery weakened by suppressive methods of early
training we have little reason to doubt.
CHAPTER X
IMAGINATION AND MORAL TRAINING
The various faculties of the mind are not absolutely inter-
dependent. On the contrary, certain faculties may be highly
developed in the absence, or atrophy of others. Some idiots
have an extraordinary memory. Many persons have fair reason-
ing powers with little imagination. The most Striking fact in
connection with partial development, however, appears to be this :
that a good development of the intellectual powers may be found
in certain persons who are, from the moral standpoint, imbeciles.
At the bottom of the scale we have "moral imbecility." At
the top, we have "moral talent," and "moral genius." It is
useless to pretend that the possession of the latter places men
at a great advantage in the struggle for existence. The moral
genius is, even to-day, at a great disadvantage in most spheres
of industry, and, at no very remote date, the same order of
gifted person was exposed to grave personal risk. Neverthe-
less, the progress of the whole race, in morals, as in science or
industry, depends very largely on initiators, or ?nen of genius.
The superiority of the moral genius need not extend to every
sphere of intellectual life. Yet it distinguishes him from all
others. "Through causes of which we are ignorant," said
Ribot, "analogous to those which produce a great poet, or a
great painter, men of moral genius arise, who feel wliat others.
178 hnagination and Moral Training
do not feel, exactly as the poet or the painter feel and see what
others appear to be insensible to."
^ The most striking characteristics of this, as of other orders
• of great men, is originality. They take a course that is more
or less new, more or less unexpected. In some cases the
innovation may, it is true, be a negative one. The chief of a
^ barbarous tribe announces that it is his pleasure that no human
• sacrifices should be made at his burial. He is obeyed, and
this bloodless funeral constitutes a new departure for all his
people — the beginning of milder thoughts and manners in the
presence of Death. A barbarian chief spares his prisoners of
war, and this merciful course (which is without precedent)
startles his subjects, but, at the same time, implants in their
minds the idea that vanquished enemies may be dealt with in
more than one fashion. In no sphere of life is originality
more telling than in the moral sphere.
In his autobiography, Kropotkin describes how on one oc-
casion, the high-born lads who composed the School of Pages,
received what was virtually a kind of moral shock, through the
original behaviour of a plebeian writing-master whom they
were tormenting. The boys, full of the insolence of youth,
and pride of rank, insulted the poor, young master in various
ways. One day a member of the class threw an ink pot at
him, ruining in so doing the clean new shirt which he
was wearing. The young barbarians then expected nothing
but the sending of the culprit to the head-master for punish-
ment and the disgrace of the whole class, every member of
which had joined in the persecution. But the master betrayed
no sign of anger. He looked sadly at his ruined linen, said a
V few words of regret, and calmly went on with the lesson. This
conduct amazed the boys. It was unexpected — inconceivable !
When the paroxysm of astonishment was over, many of the
boys blamed the culprit, took the part of the master, were
startled in short into something like remorse and humanity.
hnagination and Moral Training 179
Scattered through every society there are persons who have a
higher moral potentiahty than others. And just as the progress
of any society in industry or science depends on the existence
of minor discoverers and inventors whose names are never
heard of, so progress in morals depends very much on the
existence and example of many minor reformers and initiators
who are continually illustrating the advantages of slightly new
and difficult modes of behaviour in the face of provocation.
The great moral reformer, as well as the great industrial
reformer is, of course, he who brings in a new motor power.
In the Egyptian " Book of the Dead," there is a Profession of
Negations — a Religion of Negation."^ One may compare it to
the many rules of the early craftsman. The command, " Do not
to others what ye would not that they should do to you," is far
enough removed from that other command, "Do to others what
ye would that they should do to you." With the enunciation of
the latter, the former rules became superfluous. Fear, which
from time immemorial, had determined the attitude and relations
of men was to be cast out, and superceded by a new power.
Thus far there is a certain analogy between the great moral
reformer and the great inventor in the industrial world. The
discovery of each is radical and positive. But the working out
of one presents a curious contrast to the working out of the
other. When the possibility of locomotion by steam was
illustrated successfully, nothing more was necessary but to-
cover the land from end to end with a network of railways.
When the uses of the microscope and telescope had been
demonstrated, it only remained to set instrument makers ta
work all over the land. But the moral genius has not merely
to demonstrate the existence and power of the new social force,
but to awaken in others the human disposition and powers
without which it can never be generated.
* It begins " I have not been idle, I have not waylaid, I have not:
boasted, I have not stolen," and so on ad injinittim.
i8o Imagination and Moral Training
This task presents difficulties. The disciple, if he has a
marked individuality, transposes and changes (according to the
constant tendency of the creative faculty), the original. If he
be a weak person he becomes a copyist, and gives us all but
what was most important and inimitable in the original. As
for the vast majority of the followers of the great teacher,
their fidelity takes the form of observances of customs, and
practices. Grant Allen has pointed this out in his book "The
Evolution of the idea of God." " If you," he writes, " were to
ask almost any intelligent and unsophisticated child, * What is
Religion ? ' he would answer off-hand with the clear vision of
youth, ^ Oh ! it's saying your prayers, and reading your Bible,
and singing hymns, and going to church or to chapel on
Sundays.' If you were to ask an unsophisticated Hindu
peasant the same question, he would answer in almost the self-
same spirit, ^ Oh, it is doing poojah regularly, and paying your
dues every day to Mahadeo.' If you were to ask any simple-
minded African savage, he would similarly reply, * It is giving
the gods flour, and oil, and native-beer, and goat-mutton.'"
Among Roman Catholic peasants the ** duties " are often
spoken of. The priests, too, speak of the *' duties," and these
are going to mass and confessions, and attending to the
various customs and practices of the Church.
Moreover, just as one order of superior mind does not
always understand another — as the great scientist and philo-
sopher Darwin, for example, lost the capacity of enjoying
music and could not appreciate the powers of Beethoven
or of Bach — so the great moral genius does not find interpreters
i save among those of his own order. The weakest and least
j convincing pages of the great psychologists and philosophers
are perhaps those in which they strive to explain the life and
motives of the men of commanding moral genius.
The psychology of the moral genius closely resembles in
'essential characteristics that of other great men. Like them
Imagination and Moral Training i8i
he towers above his fellows largely in virtue of the greater
freedom and power of the Imagination. In him, as in the
scientist or artist, sudden discovery, "inspiration " as it is called,
is sudden only in appearance. A period of incubation, or
preparation comes before it. Newton was ready to see the
meaning of a falling apple and so discovered the law of
gravitation. The mathematician Hamilton brooded for years.
Then one day as he walked near Dublin bridge his method
of quaternions flashed on him. It would be unreasonable
to suppose that during the period of incubation the
creative power is inactive. On the contrary, it is unresting
in spite of failure, is preparing all the time to take that higher
leap in the dark which issues in discovery. The birth of great
moral ideas is subject to the same laws, and depends on the
like sequence of events, only in the moral genius they are
emphasized. The concentration is longer, more conscious,
more painful, the illumination more dazzling, the verification
more difficult. Buddha practises asceticism, meditates for
seven years, sees the light, renounces a life of contemplation
and preaches for fifty years to the people. "True or false
historically," as Ribot says, " this order of events is psychologi-
cally exact. A fixed and persistent idea, then a series of
efforts and gropings, the decisive moment of the eureka ! then
the internal revelation manifesting itself to the outer world,
and imposing itself on millions. How does this mode of
creation differ from others, at least on the practical side ? "
It does not differ at all. The vitality of the moral genius is
realised, as it were, in his work, as is the vitality of
any other thinker. Only in the case of the former, the
channels worn by the inner activity seem to be deeper, the
concentration greater, so that the energy gathered, and freed at
last appears to project itself with astounding force and efficacy.
Nothing kills the power that is instinct in their teachings.
True that teaching itself is mutilated, is subject to a hundred
1 82 Imagination and Moral Training
misrepresentations. And it embodies itself after a little time
in mere ceremonies, customs, and observances. These
practises and customs do not represent or reflect the whole
power of the original genius who is responsible for them any
more than do the shells cast up by the tide represent the whole
power of the ocean whose movement has fashioned them.
The moral potentialities of human beings appear to be quite
at the mercy of circuaistances as are their intellectual gifts.
Severe illness in early childhood may impair the character. The
after effects of convulsions, of scarlet fever, and other disorders,
are concerned in some instances only with the moral nature and
disposition. Thus we hear of a truthful and honourable child
who becomes a dreadful liar as the result of malarial fever.
Pedagogic science, in its present stage, can do very little
for the moral imbecile. It is agreed by all authorities that
this type of child should be separated from others, and not
allowed to mix with the children in the ordinary school. It is
agreed too that moral imbeciles should be watched. Here
doctors and other advisers halt — for the present.
The first condition of moral development appears to be in
all cases, the existence of feeling, or rather a capacity for feeling.
Without this mere intellectual development can effect nothing
at all ! But where feeling is present or possible the processes
involved in creation or growth from within may be set up.
There is first then a capability for feeling, then the growth in
intensity and clearness of the feeling, later, the shaping of it
into clear mental images, then the handling of them with
growing freedom and versatility. We have traced this process
in Art. We have only to repeat it in the realm of morals.
Human creativeness in every sphere is governed by the same
fundamental laws.
We have now to deal with the role of Imagination in
the sphere of morals. Morality is made possible for us
Imagination and Moral Training 183
through a capacity we nearly all possess in some degree
of feeling for other people. The original extent of this
capacity varies widely in individuals, yet it is determined
largely by experience, just as artistic capacity or original feeling
varies, yet is determined largely even in the case of the most
gifted by experience. The education of the sympathies, like the
education of the art instincts, is carried on by means which
ensure a growing clearness and vividness of mind images, and a
growing versatility in the use of these. Now there is, as
Edward Carpenter has pointed out in a beautiful essay, a con-
stant tendency in every mind image to clear itself- — to emerge
out of dim chaos into light and action There is "a continual
ebullition and birth going on within us, a continual evolution
out of the mind-stuff of forms which are the expression of
underlying feeling." Moral education does not consist in the
reversal or upsetting of this process, but in the aiding and
supplementing of it.
A young child's impressions of other states than his own are
very few and very vague. Even where the moral potentialities
are good, they may remain vague and few for a long time,
as the numerous examples of originally well endowed but spoilt
and selfish children attest."^ " Why should Baby have so. many
roses ? " said a little boy to his weeping mother who had bought
the roses to place them on Baby's grave; "/want them all!"
This apparent callousness shocks us because we do not at once
realize that a little child does not spontaneously learn to image
other states than his own any more than he spontaneously begins
to draw objects in good perspective. He appears cruel, yet not
from lack of feeling, but rather from lack of power to shape his
feeling into any definite thought or imiage, mirroring the actua-
situation. Where our power of representing to ourselves other
states than our own fails, sympathy fails. That is to say, where
* American children are said to be spoilt and troublesome. Yet later
they become devoted sons and daughters.
184 Imagination and Moral Training
imagination fails, sympathy fails. Feeling may exist, and yet be
quite inoperative through lack of those clear mind images (and
their attendant impulses), in virtue of which we give it expression.
The child himself, however, makes spontaneous efforts to
obtam this kind of material and elaborate it. It certainly
is not furnished in mere precepts or axioms, and so the
child is disposed (as every teacher and mother knows) to
regard the moral of every tale as a mere superfluity. Yet his
love of the tale itself is largely due to the fact that it supplies
him with new and clear impressions of human conduct and
character. A story is not a mere series of incidents for him.
It is a series of opportunities. It offers new moulds into which
he can project himself. For history, as we have seen, the child
has his own uses. There are no half-tones about the boys' King
Alfred, Charlemagne or Henry IV. These characters are in
reality moulds into which he projects his own ideas and
sentiments. He incarnates in his hero his idea of bravery, of
heroism, and in others his idea of cowardice, treachery, cruelty,
etc. These are all fashioned after a certain workable image,
and become useful as types, just as wooden engines were once
useful as toys ! They form part of that " historical material "
of which Herbart says that it '' stands in close relation to the
child's own personality — that in studying it he considers the
actions and motives of men and develops his own moral sense."
Sometimes it happens that a child, not content with historical
lay-figures, will create phantom friends for himself, who assist
in the inner drama of his life. Thus, for example, a little boy
(known to the writer), was on very intimate terms with an
i maginary friend called *' Madou," who behaved, at times, in
very strange ways, and drew from his creator expressions of
astonishment. " Why, Madou ! how can you say that ? " the
child would suddenly exclaim, turning round quickly. In order
o find a parallel to this, we should have to turn to those great
writers who concentrate their minds on the characters in their
Imagination and Moral Training 185
tales, till these seem as real to them as living beings."^ Balzac,
having listened to a conversation about the men and women
around him, cried out suddenly, *' Come ! let us talk about
the real people — the people in my book." It appears as if the
actual world may become very shadowy as we withdraw from it.
Now, the spontaneous means which a child adopts to ensure
that the inner drama of life shall have some variety and colour,
indicate a real need, just as does the cry of hunger, and vigor-
ous taking of nourishment, the asking of questions, the draw-
ing of pictures — in short, all the other healthy activities of
childhood. To suppress such efforts is simply to suppress life
and its strivings. For the same reason that we supplement the
efforts or aid a young child to find its proper food, and direct
it in its activities, we supplement the effort of the inner life to
dramatize feeling, and create new situations and opportunities of
(pictured) action.
A^ *• What ! " some may exclaim at this point with indignation,
^ " to help children to dramatize feeling — to picture action, and
give vivacity to the inner life ? But surely moral teachers have
something better to do than this? They have to exhort, to
to give precepts and axioms, to press homo moral truths, etc."
It is difficult for even the highly trained thinker to shake him-
self free from every trace of pedantry : difficult for many learned
men to believe — though surely the evidence is overwhelming
— that mere exhortation and precept has little effect on the
young, or indeed, for that matter, on the majority of older
people. And yet if we find (as we do), that few are much
influenced, in reality, by external commands, prohibitions, warn-
* Other parallels can be found in dreams, and in madness. In dreams,
the activity of the inner world proceeds without interference or correction.
The mental images become intense, vivid, until at last they may awaken
us. Nothing interferes with them. They occupy the field alone, while
they last. In madness, too, the conxctive power of the objective world is
broken — the chain of connection is snapped. Thus, a madman believes
what the riotous inner world imposes, and is not able to receive the counter
message from without.
1 86 'Imaginatio^i and Moral Training
ings, precepts, advice, etc., the reason probably is this : that
the precepts, etc., have Httle or nothing to do with the series
of changes continually taking place in the inner life, changes
which alone constitute its moral progress or backsliding//
The power of sympathy, like every other power, grows slowly,
mainly because it is subject to many limiting circumstances.
A mother loves her own child and divines all his wants and
wishes. She has moral genius where he is concerned. But
where the child of a stranger is concerned, she has no power of
divination. Primitive tribes and clans were faithful and devoted
to their own kindred. Beyond the family their virtues did not
extend — it was not even conceived that one could love a
stranger ! To take less extreme cases of limitation however 1
Young people draw together. Girls have girl friends. The
rich make- friends with the rich, and the poor with the poor.
And the reason for this is that sympathy depends on power of
imagination — power of representing other states than one's own.
But the state of those near and similar to us is more easily
represented than that of the stranger. Where the power of re-
presentation (or imaginative power) fails, sympathy fails.
This is illustrated in all the prejudices of caste, rank, colour,
race, and religion. The country English hind in *'Adam
Bede," declared that Frenchmen were dressed-up monkeys.
He had never seen a Frenchman, and could not imagine one !
But country hinds are not the only people who suffer in this
way. Exclusive persons, even if they are highly '* educated,"
tend to become dwarfed and stunted through lack of experience,
and finally of imagination. A lady of the Southern States is
reported to have almost fainted on seeing President Lincoln
acknowledge the salutation of a black man. This act of com-
mon politeness horrified her. And yet she was probably a good
wife and mother — a good friend perhaps, and much beloved
in her own set. And why did she behave and feel like a
barbarian outside her own set or caste? The answer is simple.
Imagination and Mo7'al Training 187
Because her power of vivid representation did not extend
beyond her own set. Prejudice and cruelty of every kind
marks the point at which the power of the Imagination in the
moral life has exhausted itself. In the sphere of morals as
well as the sphere of intellect, Imagination is the forerunner.
Where it fails there is no going forward.
This being so, the duty of the teacher seems plain. He must
supplement and refine the stock of mind images through which
the pupil seeks to gain a knowledge of other states than his
own.
And having done this successfully, it appears to be necessary
to refrain as much as possible from doing more. If a child
has a right to make his own discoveries in mathematics, or
geometry, has he not an equal right to make his own dis-
coveries in morals ? If he suffers in one sphere of activity from
having solutions and formulae pressed on his acceptance, how
can it be well for him to be coerced into taking everything on
trust in another? /As a matter of fact, where the representation
is clear and forcible enough, the judgment is nearly always
spontaneous and original. David having murdered Uriah
judged himself. But how was he led to do this? Simply by
having the picture of his own action revealed to him. Seeing
it he cried out, "The man that hath done this shall surely
die." The prophet left him to pass judgment."^
All this does not imply, of course, that there should be no
theoretic teaching at all in the sphere of morals, but merely
that theoretic and authoritative teaching, however supported,
cannot take the place of real education of the Imagination.
*' If," said Hinton many years ago, '*the Imagination is to
be dormant until the heights of any science are attained, or
until, through long experience and discipline, a criterion of
* To take an example from actual experience : It was found that some
boys in a Higher Grade school were in the habit of teasing the pupils of a
"special centre" or class for the feeble-minded. Reprimands were given
1 88 Imagination and Moral Training
truth is gained, it will, — at least if it resembles any of the other
powers — become atrophied."/
An effort has been made ih this book to show that Imagination
is precocious, and that not only is it a supremely important faculty
in itself, but that all the higher faculties are dependent on it !
To make it '' lie dormant " then in youth and early childhood,
is to atrophy it, and in so doing to atrophy and destroy
the whole mental and moral life.
" But," it may be truly said, " the education of the Imagina-
tion UTiplies not mere learning, but great and important events
— events and changes in the organism itself. The experience,
not of mere excitement (such as is felt by those who strive for
prizes) but deep emotion, the fixing of clear mental images,
and freedom of initiative. And how can these be secured in
elementary schools for the children of the masses?"
The answer is, " These can be secured when many, or
perhaps a few teachers, inspectors, and administrators feel
that they are necessary, and all-importajit."
It is not difficulties that paralyse us, but doubt, fear, and ignor-
ance of the goal.
If we do not see the true goal, it is easy to understand why
we are easily discouraged, ready to magnify our difficulties and
to follow the line of the least resistance.
But the real goal, the true aim of education is fixed. It is a
brighter, a higher aim than even the greatest theorists of the past
dreamed of. To catch a glimpse of that goal is to be strong to
overcome all difficulties, to win a new insight in dealing with the
materials of knowledge, and to find a new power of evoking,
even under great difficulties, the capacities of the human spirit.
— then punishments, but all were unavailing. At last a relative of one of
the ringleaders took him aside, and described to him in detail and with
great force the condition of one of his victims. This word-picture took
hold of the young tyrant. It came into his narrow field of vision, like a
torch. He stopped his persecution, nnd became the champion of his
former victims.
CONCLUSION
A GREAT deal has been said in this little book about lines
coloursy-sounds, etc. That was inevitable, since it is a book
about the training of the imagination in childhood.
Art is, as Tolstoi has shown, a human activity, by which we
communicate our feelings to others.
Speech is a human activity, by which we communicate our
thoughts (our feelings are communicated mainly by gestures,
tones, expression).
Without Speech there could be little development of the
reasoning power.
Without Art there can be little development of the emo-
tional life.
If people lacked the power of speech, that is the capacity to
receive the thoughts of other men and communicate their own
thoughts, they would be like wild beasts.
And if, to quote Tolstoi literally, '' they lacked this other
capacity of being infected by art, people might be more savage
still, and above all more separated from, and more hostile to,
one another."
But the power to speak is attained early in life — that is about
the second or third year.
And the capacity for art, and desire to express feelings that
have been lived through is also attained in early childhood —
and may be highly developed and trained in childhood.
1 90 Conclusion
The desire to express feeling, and the power to express it
is not confined to art-critics. Indeed, it is doubtful whether
these have any feehngs to express, though they may have many
thoughts about art. Simple people, (like the Japanese) young
nations like the ancient Greeks, working people of all
lands, and children, have originated the music, the drama, the
sculpture, the games and the stories that are immortal.
And they have done this not because they have some occult
power denied to all others ! But because they have expressed
truthfully and naturally feelings that do not die, and that are
common to all.
This fact is obscured for us to-day when we go into the
houses of the working classes, and see only cheap and showy
pictures hung on the walls, and inartistic furniture in the rooms.
But a Uttle consideration only is needed to see that these showy
things — namely, the bead ornaments, and ugly china, the cheap
pictures, and flaunting wall-papers — do not express the emotional
life of their owners at all, or in any case, they express only their
most superficial, temporary and insignificant feelings. They
are bought in haste. ^'I nivver bothered wi' them," said a
Yorkshire woman of her ugly pictures. No. There was nothing
of her life or feelings in them. They were supphed by vendors
and furnishers who are certainly not concerned to express the
deep emotional life of any human creature.
That children need emotional expression, and strive to find
it not simply by cries, and clamorous efforts at speech, as in
their babyhood, but through art, is easily forgotten to-day.
For our whole system of elementary education, up till recent
days, was designed to crush this desire, and prevent its expres-
sion. Even in those schools where drawing and music were
taught, these arts have hitherto been treated not at all as means
of expressing the true feelings of the children. That is why
the children did not respond.
Impressed as they were by living forms and faces, by active
Conclusion 1 9 t
creatures of the lower animal world, they were set to draw cubes,
boxes, and extraordinary artificial forms called 'free-hand'
copies ! Songs were taught which had no reference at all to
their life and feelings. In some cases the whole interest and
energy was consumed in technique — even while the most
importatit part of technique, such as the breathing and control
of the breath was neglected. In' other cases, songs unsuit-
able — such as ' Juanita, a Spanish love song ' — were given.
And the very notion of dancing in elementary schools was
scouted by the majority of public educationalists as perfectly
monstrous. It is not strange that the children soon ceased to
remind the people that they had any capacity for art ?
And yet one has only to observe the common people and chil-
dren to-day in order to see that they not only have a capacity for
this human activity, but that in all their intercourse it is the
prominent factor. They no sooner come together in unre-
strained and disinterested intercourse than the will and the
power to transmit feelings through art reveals itself. In the
North and West Highlands the people still meet together
in the evenings round hut or bothy fire-sides. Tales are
told at such gatherings that are models of fine art in their
way. Not a superfluous word, not a single ineffective or super-
fluous gesture. Sometimes the tale-telling passes into a kind
of discourse. One speaker stands forth from the rest and holds
the whole company's attention. " They are born orators,"
said a priest who had listened to such discourses round the
peat-fires of poor mud-floor dwellings in the Hebrides.
Nor have we any reason to think that these men have special
gifts denied to others. Carlyle records the wonderful art ex-
hibited in all the word-portraits sketched with careless ease by
his father as he talked at the fireside. Even the Englishman,
if not wordy, certainly expresses feeHng infectiously when he
meets his fellows under favourable circumstances. Last night,
in a cellar underneath a public hall, an old Yorkshireman (who
iga Conclusion
had never been to school) kept the eyes of an admiring circle
fixed on him. It was not difficult (even though he spoke a broad
dialect not easily to be understood by the strangers) to follow
all he said. For he acted out all his story with gestures which
could not be misinterpreted — so vivacious and expressive were
they. As for children, do we not see how, even in the darkest
slum, they will dance, if anj^ street organist will play — how they
will sing, if it be but the refrain of a music-hall, or some vulgar
jingo-air. The superficial observer, hearing and seeing may
think that they are incapable of appreciating anything better.
And yet these very children choose the best when it is offered
to them. When slum school libraries were being introduced
a visitor would ask the children in a class which stories they
liked best. It was believed that they would name some weak
writer of little scraps, or sentimental tales. But no. The
story of Joseph was found to be the most popular of all, and
close after followed Hans Anderson's Tales, the * Ugly Duck-
ling' being perhaps the prime favourite. Grimm and Anderson
were read eagerly. The story of Joseph was spoken of with
sparkling eyes. And these were the best stories. As for sing-
ing, even little children of five and six soon learn to sing beauti-
fully. If only the teacher knows how to use her own voice, and is
not content merely to learn the 'Sol-fa' and give ear-tests — if she
love music and can give the right kind of teaching then very
quickly the class-room becomes a place where the child's claims
as an artist are vindicated. Prima donnas have listened in wonder
and admiration already to the singing in Board Schools. More
than one great musician has exclaimed ** What a field is here
— what wealth of musical talent which we never dreamed of."
No ! We have had no time to dream of the powers possessed
by children. We have been too busy in forcing upon them things
for which they were not ready. We have not had time to
think of their real needs, because we were so anxious to give
them things which they do not need, and will not yet use
Conclusion 193
Just as we are apt to forget that the working people are the
producers of wealth, so we are apt to forget that they, and their
children are already possessed of great wealth. So we let the
wealth be wasted. In every slum district, where means have
been taken to supply the childrens' needs, where washing and
swimming baths are provided, where bright laundry and
cookery centres are attached, so that neglected children can
learn what it is to put clean clothes on a clean body, where
light, and fair colours, and green living things, and sympathy
are found — where teachers are allowed to help ere they
teach, and to strengthen ere they admonish — in these districts
young human life springs forth glad and bright, and the love of
art and desire to express fresh tender, lovely feelings that
infect"^ is born. The slum child seems to slip from all his
degradations as his shameful soiled clothing is cast from him.
Very soon he begins to move gracefully and expressively, to
sing, draw, act. He is no longer a creature who can give
nothing but only receive. He also has something to give.
And to whom will children give this new, free gift — the most
original, the most disinterested gift of all — that is to say their
own feelings expressed in art. The answer is obvious. They
will give it first of all and above all to their parents. They
will give their art to the working people — to those who
have ceased to express their own feelings adequately,
and have bought cheap prints, and ugly ornaments to take
the place of their own lost art. And, some children,
happily not the majority, will offer their gifts to parents who
have ceased to try to express themselves and communicate any
more as human beings, and who go in despair to see spectacles
that convey de-humanising feelings, or, who it may be, drown all
human consciousness in strong drink. Will they understand
* " To evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced, and having-
evoked it in oneself then, by means of movements, lines, colours, sounds
or forms expressed in words, so to transmit that feeling that others may-
experience the same feeling — ^^this is the activity of Art ! — Tolstoy.
194 Conclusion
in reeeiving their childrerL^s offering that the)r are really getting
back their own — that this power is theirs since they have
transmitted it ? We cannot say. But one thing we may affirm
with great decision, viz, that if they cannot accept this kind of
restoration, they are not likely to receive any other. If the
voice of their own children — and the art of their own children,
true, not imposed from without, but expressing feelings that
have already been lived through — \ithis be ineffectual, then all
the popular concerts, free-art galleries and philanthropic
entertainers can never hope to succeed.
Only this child art must be true. On sincerity everything
depends. The great characteristic of child-art during the
past century was insincerity. We all remember those more or
less lifeless drawings which scholars used to bring back from
schools. They had perhaps, some little show of animation at
one point or another — that was where the drawing-master had
touched them up. If he were a good drawing-master he could
make them appear to live.
But the poor scholar's work was dead. He or she, had
nothing to express. The work might be theirs partly, and
yet they were not in it. It was an empty thing. Such
drawings are still brought home alas ! and framed and placed
on walls. They remind one of the blown eggs which country
folks string together sometimes and hang up as ornaments.
They are prettily coloured or spotted, and remind you of
something that is dead. Only the drawing appears to pretend
that the something is still living. It is insincere. Not only is
plastic art insincere — we have managed to make even the
speaking voice false. Thus we have seen how in elementary
school inflection is taught mechanically and the changes of the
child's voice in reading and speaking bear no relation to his
own feelings. Recitation to-day is often as dead as were the
young ladies' landscapes of yesterday. Such art can infect no
one with any genuine, healthy human emotion. It is false.
Conclusion 195
Ti^le child art cannot exist when children are not allowed to
experience the emotions natural to childhood, or where they
are compelled to occupy themselves in " artistic '^ work that
does not embody these emotions. A little boy, beholding the
solan geese plunging into the sea near a great rock was deeply
impressed and interested and immediately made a drawing of
the rock, birds, and sea. This was true art — the outcome of
real feeling.
Six little girls of five, act a play called "The Troubles of
Babies." Every one of them has a baby sister or brother at
home whose behaviour has impressed itself on them, and they
are themselves moreover very close to the baby-period of life.
Even though the play has been composed for them by grown-
up people they act in it with great sincerity. This performance
was an immense success. Tired mothers look beamingly at
the little creatures. The recital of * Cassius and Brutus' by
two older boys produces not the smallest impression.
Thus the true art of children, appeals quickly and powerfully
to parents. The sympathy it evokes from them differs entirely
from that feeling of empty pride which the dead drawing or
the dead recitation might awaken. It seems to remove, and
suddenly, the pressure of that iron hand that has silenced the
music of their own lives, and almost quenched the natural
desire for communion.
No one, looking back on the history of the past century
can fail to see that the development of industry was accompanied
by a corresponding loosening of parental ties. The North
country artizan at first scouted the idea of sending his child
to the mill. And yet very soon the mills were filled with
little children of six and seven years old. In that cold, iron
world the children soon ceased to feel what children feel.
The parents too began to cease to feel what parents feel.
There was no art, because the natural emotions were crushed.
Later new protective laws were passed for the little ones.
196 Conclusion
And Nature driven out with a fork comes running back. But
the parents have forgotten the language of human emotion,
through the use of which humanity is helped and strengthened.
They have long believed they had no part or lot in the world
of art — that they were incapable of full human life. They
beheve this still and what is quite as bad, many rich, good,
and intelligent people believe it.
Yet no sooner are their children allowed to experience natural
emotion, and taught the first principles of drawing, music^
etc., than they begin to restore to their parents what was lost,
and to lift them to that state of human receptivity and higher
feeling from which they have for a moment fallen. The lost
human life and language which the greatest preachers, artists,
and philanthropists had sought in vain to win back is recalled
by children.
Thus the effectiveness of the school as a social factor
increases in proportion as we make the teaching timely, and
well fitted to the stage of life through which the pupils are
passing. And yet art training in childhood is in no sense a
mere missionary service to parents. It is, primarily, for the
child's sake that we must introduce it. As the blossom comes
before the fruit, and ornament before dress, so the human
imagination embodies itself first in the free forms of art.
Through art the creative power is exercised and prepared for
the world of realities. So that, having found materials, not
impediments, it begins at last to manifest itself in other forms,
in the inventiveness of the artizan, the tradesman, the moral
reformer and the thinker.
Finis
' or THE
UNIVERSITY
W. folly «5r» Sons^ Prinlejs, Aberdeen.
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY
BERKELEY
Return to desk from which borrowed.
This book is DUE on the last date stamped below.
130ec5 IFf
:%v-
w^;
fE6 I**
REC'D LD
NOV 16 135B
13Jw'58HiX
r.V'^V^
JAN 22 Iboa
REca ucf
DEC 26 1959
FE31 '65 -2 PM
JUN5 '64|fe/
i.-3
JULS '64
LD 21-95m-ll,'50(2877sl6)476
XB
0A8tC)
H I q a.G
L
W
THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY