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Chapter III

The Periods Of Growth

According to the modern psychologists who have followed children from birth to university age, there are in the course of development different and distinct periods. This conception is different from the one which was held previously and which considered that the human individual when young holds very little and then becomes more capable as it grows, the conception of something small that developed, i.e., something small which grows, but which holds always the same form. That was the old conception about the human mind. Today psychology recognizes that there are different types of psyche and different types of mind at different periods of life. These periods are clearly distinct from one another. It is curious to say that these periods correspond to different phases in the development of the physical body. The changes are so great, psychically speaking, that certain psychologists, trying to render them clear, have exaggerated and they have expressed themselves in this fashion: “Growth is a succession of births.” At a certain period of life, a psychic individuality ceases and another is born. These successive births take place during the period of growth. The first of these periods goes from birth to six years. This period shows notable differences, but during its whole length the type of mind is the same. From zero to 6 the period shows two distinct sub-phases. The first from to 3 years shows a type of mentality which is unapproachable by the adult, i.e., upon which the adult cannot exert any direct influence and, indeed, there is no school for such children. Then there is another sub-phase from 3 to 6 in which the type of mind is the same, but the child begins to become approachable in a special manner. This period is characterized by the great transformations that take place in the individual. In order to realize this, it is sufficient to think about the difference there is between a new-born babe and a child of 6. How this transformation takes place does not concern us for the moment, but the fact is that at 6 years the individual becomes, according to the usual expression, intelligent enough to be admitted to school.

The next period is from 6 to 12 years. This period is one of growth, but without transformations. It is a period of calm and serenity. It is also psychically speaking a period of health and strength and security. Now if we look at the physical body, we see signs that seem to mark the limit between these two psychic periods. The transformation that takes place in the body is very visible. I will cite only one item: the child loses his first set of teeth and starts growing the second.

Then there is the third period which goes from 12 to 18 years, which is also a period of such transformation that it reminds us of the first period. This last period can also be sub-divided into two sub-phases, one that extends from 12 to 15 and one from 15 to 18. This period is also distinguished physically by transformations in the body which achieves maturity. After 18 man is considered completely developed and there is no longer any considerable transformation. Man merely becomes older.

The curious thing is that official education has recognized these different psychic types. It seems to have had a subconscious intuition of them. The first period from to 6 years of age has been clearly recognized because it has been excluded from compulsory education and it has been noticed that at 6, there is a transformation. People seem to have reasoned that the child of 6 years is sufficiently intelligent to be admitted to school. In doing so they have unconsciously admitted that the child knows a great many things; for if he were completely ignorant, he would not be able to attend school. If, for instance, children do not know how to orientate themselves, how to walk, how to understand when somebody talks and so forth, even at 6, they would be unable to attend school. So we might say that this has been a practical recognition. But they never thought, these educators, that if the child can come to school, find his way about and understand the ideas transmitted to him, he must have learned to do so, because at birth he was unable to do any of these things. Who has taught him then? Not the teachers, because, as we saw, during this period the child is excluded from school. It has never even entered their minds that there must be a very elaborate procedure to enable the new-born individual who had no intelligence, no co-ordinated movement, no will, and no memory, to understand what we say.

An unconscious recognition was also given to the second period, because in many countries at 12 years of age children generally leave the elementary school and enter high school. Why have they chosen the period from 6 to 12 and why do they consider it the proper period in which to give the basic and elementary items of culture? As this happens in every country of the world, it means that it was not done by chance. It means that there must be a psychic basis common to all children that made this possible. It had been recognized by reasoning based upon experience. It has been found that during this period, the child can submit to the mental work necessary in schools. He understands what a teacher says and he has enough patience to listen and to learn. During this whole period, he is constant in his work, as well as strong in health. It is because of these characteristics that this period is considered as the most profitable for imparting culture. After the 12th year of age, usually there is the beginning of a higher sort of school. By this official education has recognized that at that year a new type of psychology begins in the human individual. That this type has two divisions has also been felt. It is shown by the fact that they have divided high schools into two parts.

We have in our country an inferior and a superior high school. The inferior high school lasts three years and the superior sometimes two and sometimes three. Here we have a period which is not as smooth and calm as the preceding one. Psychologists say that it is a period of such psychic transformation that it may be compared to the first period from to 6. Usually during this period the character is not steady, there is indiscipline and some sort of rebellion. Physical health also is not as strong and secure as during the second period. But the school pays no heed to this. A certain syllabus has been elaborated and children are forced to follow it, whether they like it or not. In this period also the children have to sit and listen to the teachers, have to obey implicitly and spend their time memorizing things.

Then comes the university. The university also does not differ essentially from the types of school that precede it, except perhaps by the intensity of study. Here also the professors come, they talk and students listen. When I was young, men did not shave, they had beards. And it was curious to see in the lecture halls all these men fully bearded, some of them with pointed beards, some with square ones; some had long beards and some had them short, while the most different varieties of moustaches were displayed. Yet all these men mature and more than mature were as little children. They had to sit and listen; they had to submit to the jibes of the professors; they had to depend for their cigarettes, for their street-car fares on the liberality of their fathers who scolded them if they failed in the examinations. They were adult men! These men, whose intelligence, whose experience was going to direct the world, whose instrument of work was to be the intelligence and to whom were allotted the highest professions, were the future doctors, engineers, lawyers. And what good is a degree today? Is one’s life assured on receiving one’s degree? Who goes to a doctor who has only just received it? And if somebody wants to build a beautiful house, does he go and ask the services of a newly fledged engineer. Or if I have a law suit on my hands, am I going to employ a newly accredited lawyer? No. And why? For the simple reason that all these years of study, all these years of listening, do not form ‘man’; only practical work and practice do that. Thus we find that young doctors have to serve in hospitals, and lawyers have to practice in the office of an established lawyer. The same plan has to be followed for the engineer. This apprenticeship lasts for years and years, before they can have a practice of their own. And in order to be able to find a place to practice, they must have an opportunity and protection. There have been very strange cases resulting from this in many countries. A typical one took place in New York. There was a procession exclusively of intellectuals; hundreds of them who had been unable to find any sort of employment. They bore a banner with this information: “We are without work; we are starving. What are we to do?” Such is the situation, even today. There is no planning. Education is without control, but some sort of acknowledgment is given to the fact that during growth there are different types at different periods of life. There are different mental types and to each mental type has been allotted a different phase of education, elementary, high school and university.

The Period of Creation

When I was young, the children from 2 to 6 years were not taken into consideration at all. Now there are pre-school institutions of different kinds. There is the creche for small children and the so-called Montessori school, nursery and kindergarten schools for children from 3 to 6. But today, as then, the most important part of education is considered to be university education, because from the university come the people who have best cultivated that part of man’s mind which we call intelligence. Now that the psychologists have come to study life, there is a tendency to go to the other extreme, and there are other people besides me who say that the most important part of life is not the university, but the first period the period that extends from to 6 years, because it is during this first period that intelligence, the great instrument of man, is formed; and not only intelligence, but the whole of the psychic faculties are constructed during this period. This has made a great impression upon all who have had any sensibility towards psychic life. Today many meditate upon the small child; upon the new-born, and the one year old, who create the personality of man; and they feel the same emotion, the same deep impression as those who in olden times used to meditate upon death. What is it that takes place when death comes? This is what attracted meditation and sentimentality in the past. Today a similar meditation is being carried out upon man who has just entered the world. This is a Man, this is the being who has been created with the highest and loftiest intelligence. Why is he to have such a long and painful infancy? No animal has a period of infancy so painful and so long. This is what attracts the attention of the thinkers. “What is it that takes place during this period?” they ask themselves.

Certainly it is a period of creation because before nothing existed, and then, a year or so after birth, the child knows everything. It is not as if a child were born with a little bit of intelligence, with a little bit of memory, with a little bit of will which after a while grows. There is nothing! Individuality starts from zero! It is not as though there were a little voice that later developed, as is the case, for instance, for the kitten, who at birth is able to mew even if imperfectly, or for the bird or the calf. Man is absolutely mute. The only means of expression he has is that of crying. In the case of the human being, it is not a question of development. It is a question of creation that starts from zero. If you do not exist, you cannot hope to grow. That is the tremendous step the child takes, the step that goes from nothing to something. We are not capable of it. Our mind is not capable of it.

A type of mind different from ours, endowed with different powers is necessary to accomplish this. And it is not a small creation that the child achieves. It is the creation of all. He creates not only the language, but the organs that make it possible for us to speak. Every physical movement he creates, every side of our intelligence. He creates all that the human mind, the human individual is endowed with. It is a tremendous achievement!

This is not done with a conscious mind. We are conscious; we have a will and if we want to learn something, we go about it. There is no consciousness in the small child, no will. For both consciousness and will have to be created. The child’s mind is not the type of mind we adults possess. If we call our type of mind the conscious type, that of the child is an unconscious mind. Now an unconscious mind does not mean an inferior mind. An unconscious mind can be full of intelligence. One will find this type of intelligence in every being and every insect has it. It is not a conscious intelligence even though sometimes it looks as if it were endowed with reason. It is of an unconscious type and while he is endowed with it the child performs his wonderful achievements. The child of one year has already seen all things that are in his environment and is capable of recognizing them.

How has he been able to take in this environment? This is due to one of the special characteristics that we have discovered in the child: a power of such intense sensitivity that the things which surround him in the environment awaken in him an intense interest and such a great enthusiasm that they seem to penetrate into his very life. The child takes all these impressions not with his mind, but with his life. The acquisition of language is the most evident example of this. How is it that the child acquires language? It is said that the child is endowed with the sense of hearing, that he hears the voice of the human being and thus he learns to speak. Let us admit this. It is a fact. Why, however, amongst all the millions of different sounds and noises that surround him, does he hear just the voice of man? If it is true that the child hears, and if it is true that he takes only the language of human beings, it means that the human language must have made a great impression on the child. These impressions must be so strong, they must cause such an intensity of feeling and such a great enthusiasm as to set in motion invisible fibers within the body that begin to vibrate in order to reproduce those sounds. We can compare it to something similar in ourselves. Sometimes one goes to a concert. After a while one begins to see rapt expressions on the faces of the public; heads and hands begin to move. What has brought them into movement if not the impressions caused by the music? Something similar must happen in the unconscious mind of the child. The voice causes such impressions that the impressions aroused in us by music seem almost non-existent in comparison. One can almost see these movements of the tongue that thrills, of the minute chords that tremble and of the cheeks, everything vibrating and becoming tense, preparing in silence to reproduce those sounds that have caused so much emotion in the unconscious mind. And how is it that the child acquires language in its exactness? It is so exactly and firmly acquired that this language forms part of his psychic personality, it is called his mother-tongue, and it is as clearly distinguished from all other languages that he may learn, as a set of false teeth may be distinguished from the natural set. How is it that these sounds which in the beginning have no meaning suddenly bring to his mind understanding, ideas? He has not merely taken in the words. He has taken ‘the sentence, the construction of the sentence.’ If we do not understand the construction of the sentence, we cannot understand language. If we say, for instance, “the glass is on the table” it is the order of the words that gives the sense. If one said to them, “glass the on is table” it would be difficult to get the idea. It is the sequence of words that we understand. The child has absorbed the constructions of the language.

The Absorbent Mind

How does it take place? It is said “he remembers these things,” but in order to remember, he has to have memory and he had no memory; he has still to construct it. He would have to have the power of reasoning in order to realize that the construction of a sentence is necessary in order to understand it. But he has no reasoning power. He has to construct it.

Our mind, such as it is, could not do it; to accomplish it a different type of mind is needed, and that is what the child possesses, a type of intelligence different from ours. We might say that we acquire with our intelligence, the child absorbs with his psychic life. The child merely by going on with his life, learns to speak the language belonging to his race. It is like a mental chemistry that takes place in the child. We are vessels; impressions pour in, and we remember and hold them in our mind, but we remain distinct from our impressions, as water remains distinct from the glass. The child undergoes a transformation. The impressions not only penetrate the mind of the child, but form it. They become incarnate. The child makes its own ‘mental flesh’ by using the things that are in his environment. We have called his type of mind “Absorbent Mind” It is difficult for us to conceive the powers of the absorbent mind of the small child, but certainly it is a privileged form of mind. If only it could continue, if only it persisted! Just think. The child is born and for some months he lies in his house. After a while he walks, goes around, does things and he enjoys himself, he is happy; he lives from day to day and by doing this he learns movements; language comes into his mind with all its constructions; the possibility of directing his movements to suit his life and many other things. Whatever is in his environment comes to be part of his mind: habits, customs, religion. Think how wonderful it would be if, while merely enjoying ourselves, merely by existing, just because we had such a type of mind, we could become doctors or lawyers or engineers. Think of it. Children learn the language with all the perfection or imperfection they find in their environment without going to school. How wonderful would it be if one could learn German merely by walking with a German. Instead how hard have we to work. Arid how much have we to study when we have to learn the different subjects.

Little by little the child becomes conscious of all the things, these form his consciousness. And so we see the path followed by the child. He acquires all unconsciously, gradually passing from unconscious to conscious, following a path of pleasure and love, this consciousness seems to us a great acquisition. To become conscious; to acquire a human mind! But we pay for it. Because as soon as we become conscious, every new acquisition causes hard work and fatigue.

Movement is another of these wonderful acquisitions. At birth the child moves very little, then gradually his body becomes animated. He starts to move. The movements that the child acquires, just as is the case with language, are not formed by chance. They are determined in the sense that they are acquired during a special period. When the child begins to move, his absorbent mind has already taken in the environment. Before he starts to move, an unconscious psychic development has already taken place. As he starts to move, he begins to become conscious. If you watch a small child of three, he is always playing with something. That means he is elaborating with his hands, putting into his consciousness, what his unconscious mind had taken in before. It is by this experience in the environment in the guise of playing that he goes over the things and the impressions that he has taken into his unconscious mind. It is by means of work that he becomes conscious and constructs Man. He is directed by a marvelously grand mysterious power which little by little he incarnates and thus he becomes a Man. He becomes a man by means of his hands, by means of his experience, first through play, then through work. The hands are the instrument of the human intelligence. And by means of this experience he becomes a man, he takes a definite form and becomes limited because consciousness is always more limited than unconsciousness and sub-consciousness.

He comes to life and begins his mysterious work and little by little he becomes the wonderful personality adapted to his time and to his environment. He builds his mind, until little by little he has constructed memory; until little by little he has constructed understanding, reasoning power; until little by little, he has arrived at his 6th year. Then suddenly we educators discover that this individual understands, that he has the patience to listen to what we say, whereas before we had no power to reach him. He lived on another plane, different from ours. In this book we are concerned with this first period. And a study of the psychology of the child in the first years of his life is so marvelous, so full of miracles, that all who understand it cannot help but feel a great emotion. Our work is not to teach, but to help the absorbent mind in its work of development. How marvelous it would be if by our help, if by an intelligent treatment of the child, if by understanding the needs of his physical life and by feeding his intellect, we could prolong the period of functioning of the absorbent mind! What a service we should render if we could help the human individual to absorb knowledge without fatigue, if man could find himself full of knowledge without knowing how he had acquired it, doing it almost by magic. And why should it not be possible? Is not nature full of magic, full of miracles?

The discovery of the fact that the child is endowed with an absorbent mind has brought about a revolution in education. Now it is easy to understand why the first is the most important amongst the periods of development. The creation of human character takes place within its span; and once we have understood this, it also becomes clear that we must help the child in his creative work. For there is no age in which the child is more in need of intelligent help than in this period. It is evident that if the child meets with obstacles, his creative work becomes less perfect. We do not any longer help the child because he is a small and weak being. No! We have realized that the child is endowed with great creative powers, that these great powers are delicate in their nature and can be thwarted if obstacles are placed in their path. It is these powers we wish to help, not the small child, not his weakness. When we understand that these powers belong to an unconscious mind which must become conscious by work and experience carried out in the environment, when we realize that the child’s mind is different from ours, that we cannot reach it and teach him things, that we cannot directly intervene in this process of passing from the unconscious to the conscious and of constructing the human faculties; then the whole conception of education will change and will become that of a help to the child’s life. Education will take the guise of an aid to the psychic development of man and not of making him memorize ideas and facts.

This is the new path of education and how to help this mind in its different processes, how to second the different powers and how to give strength to the different qualities of this mind will be the object of our study in this book.