Читать книгу Child and Country: A Book of the Younger Generation - Will Levington Comfort - Страница 13

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Matters of child-education became really interesting to me for the first time that winter. There were certain unfoldings of the little daughter in our house, and I was associating a good deal with a group of teachers in town, some of whom while still professionally caught in the rigid forms of modern education, were decades ahead in realisation. I recall especially a talk with one of my old teachers, a woman who had taught thirty years, given herself freely to three generations—her own and mine and to another since then. She had administered to me a thing called rhetoric in another age, and she looked just the same, having kept her mind wide open to new and challenging matters of literature and life and religious thought.

I had the pleasant sense in this talk of bringing my doubts and ideas to her tentatively, much as I used to bring an essay in school days. She still retained a vivid impression of my faults, but the very finest human relationships are established upon the knowledge of one's weaknesses—as the Master established His church upon the weakest link of the discipleship. Speaking of the children, I observed:

"I find them ready, when they ask. In the old occult schools there is a saying that the teacher will always come half-way, but that the student must also come half-way——"

"It is soil and seed in everything," the woman said. "In all life, it is so. There must be a giving, but also a receiving. I talk to five classes a day—twenty-five to fifty students each—but so much falls upon stony ground, among tares, so much is snapped up by the birds——"

"When a child asks a question, he is prepared to receive," I repeated. "If the answer is true and well-designed, it will stay. The question itself proves that the soil is somehow ready——"

"Yes," she said, "but one cannot sit at a desk and wait for questions. The teacher in dealing with numbers must not only plant the seed, but prepare the soil, too."

"I should say that the way to do that would be to quicken the imagination—to challenge the imagination," I suggested. "I know it has to be done in writing a story. One has to pick up the reader and carry him away at first. And most readers are limp or logy in the midst of abundance."

The teacher bowed gravely. Apparently she had come to listen.

" … Now, with this little girl here, there is but one subject that surely interests her. That has to do with the old Mother of us all——"

"Nature?"

"Yes. I've tried to find out something of what Nature means to her—what pictures mean Nature to that fresh young mind. It seems to her, Nature is a kind of presiding mother to all things, possibly something like a God-mother—to kittens and trees and butterflies and roses and children. She is mistress of the winds and the harvests. … I have talked with her about it. Sometimes again, Nature is like a wonderful cabinet—shelf after shelf full of amazing things, finished or to be finished. I told her about the Sun as the Father, and Nature the Mother. That helped her. She held to that. Always now when we fall into talk naturally—it is about the old Mother and the brilliant Father who pours his strength upon all concerned—Mother Nature's mate."

The teacher nodded indulgently. "That's preparing the soil. That's quickening the imagination. But one must have imagination to do that——"

We fell silent. I was thinking of the old school days—of the handful of days in the midst of thousands that had left a gleam; of the tens of thousands of young women now teaching in America without the gleam; beginning to teach at the most distracted period of their lives, when all Nature is drawing them toward mating and reproduction. …

"Yes, a teacher should have imagination," I added. "There's no way out of that, really. A teacher who hasn't—kills it in the child; at least, all the pressure of unlit teaching is a deadening weight upon the child's imagination. What is it that makes all our misery—but the lack of imagination? If men could see the pictures around everything, the wonderful connecting lines about life, they couldn't be caught so terribly in the visible and the detached objects; they couldn't strangle and repress their real impulses and rush for things to hold in their hands for a little time. If they had imagination they would see that the things they hold in their hands are disintegrating now as everything in Nature is; that the hand itself weakens and loses its power. Why, here we are upstanding—half-gods asleep within us. Imagination alone—the seeing of the spirit of things—that can awaken us."

I felt the need of apologising at this point for getting on that old debatable ground—but the secret was out. It was the essence of my forming ideas on educating the children, as it is the essence of everything else—all writing, all craftsmanship, labour and life itself.

" … Half-gods asleep in a vesture," I added. "All nature and life prompting us to see that it is but vesture we make so much of. Children see it—and the world takes them in their dearest years, and scale by scale covers their vision. I talked with a man yesterday—a man I like—a good man, who loves his wife by the pound, believes all things prospering when fat—children and churches, purses and politicians. A big, imperial-looking man himself, world-trained, a man who has learned to cover his weaknesses and show a good loser on occasion; yet, through twenty years' acquaintance, he has never revealed to me a ray other than from the visible and the obvious. He hunted me up because one of his children seemed to want to write. We talked in a club-room and I happened to note the big steel chandelier above his head. If that should fall, this creature before me would mainly be carrion.

"You see what I mean. He has spent every energy of his life here, in building the vesture. That which would escape from the inert poundage has not been awakened. One of the queerest facts of all life is that these half-gods of ours must be awakened here in the flesh. No sooner are they aroused than we have imagination; we begin to see the connecting lines of all things, the flashes of the spirit of things at once. No workman, no craftsman or artisan can be significant without it. … However, as I thought of the chandelier and the sumptuous flesh beneath, I talked of writing—something of what writing means to me. When I stopped, he said:

"'I didn't know you were so religious. … But about this writing matter——' and opened the subject again. …

"He's all right. Nature will doubtless take care of him. Perhaps his view of life: 'I see what I see and take what I can,' is as much as is asked from the many in the great plan of things—but I like madness better. To me, his is fatal enchantment; to me, wars and all tragedies are better. I would rather live intensely in error than stolidly in things as they are. If this is a devil and not a half-god that sleeps within—at least, I want him awake. I must feel his force. If he is a devil, perhaps I can beat him."

"That's something of a definition of imagination," the teacher said, "——seeing the spirit of things."

"I hadn't thought of it as a definition—but it expresses what the real part of life means to me. Men and women move about life and affairs, knowing nine out of ten times what is going to happen next in their wheel of things; what their neighbour is going to say next, from the routine of the day's events. After a little of that, I have to run away—to a book, to a task, to an awakened imagination. Only those who are in a measure like us can liberate us. That's the key to our friendships, our affections and loves. We seek those who set us free—they have a cup to hold the vital things we have to give—a surface to receive. If they are in a measure our true kin—our dynamics is doubled. That's the secret of affinities, by the way——"

The teacher smiled at me. "Tell me more about the little girl," she said.

" … She learned so quickly from the processes of Nature. I found her sitting in the midst of the young corn last summer, where the ground was filled with vents from the escaping moisture. I told her about the root systems and why cultivation means so much to corn in dry weather. She read one of Henry Ward Beecher's Star Papers and verified many of its fine parts. She finds the remarkable activities in standing water. The Shore is ever bringing her new studies. Every day is Nature's. The rain is sweet; even the East winds bring their rigour and enticements. She looks every morning, as I do, at the Other Shore. We know the state of the air by that. And the air is such drink to her. You have no idea how full the days are."

"You mean to make a writer of her?" the teacher asked.

"No—that was settled the first day. I asked the little girl what she wanted to be."

"'I want to be a mother,' she answered.

"'Of course,' said I, thoughtfully. … It had been the same with her music. She liked it and did well, but it never burned into her deeps—never aroused her productivity. And I have found it so with her little attempts at written expression. She is to be a mother—the highest of the arts. … Once we saw the terrible drama of the hornet and the grasshopper. I had read it in Fabre, and was enabled to watch it work out with some intelligence. Nature is a perfect network of processes, the many still to be discovered, not by human eyes but by intuitional vision. Finally I asked her to write what she thought of one of our walks together, not trying to remember what I had said—only expressing something of the activity which my words suggested."

The teacher nodded again. Her face had become saddened.

"I would not encourage her to become a writer," I repeated. "Expression of some sort is imperative. It is the right hand. We receive with the left, so to speak, but we must give something of our own for what we receive. It is the giving that completes the circle; the giving formulates, makes matter of vision, makes the dream come true. You know the tragedies of dreaming without expression. Even insanity comes of that. I have never told her matters of technique in writing, and was amazed to find that she has something that none of us grown-ups have, who are formed of our failures and drive our expression through an arsenal of laws and fears."

"Do you mean that you instruct her in nothing of technique?"

"I haven't—at least, not yet. I have hardly thought of it as instruction even."

"And spelling?"

"Her spelling is too novel. It would not do to spoil that. In fact, she is learning to spell and punctuate quite rapidly enough from reading. These matters are automatic. The world has taught men to spell rather completely. God knows we've had enough of it, to the abandonment of the real. I could misspell a word in every paragraph of a three-hundred-page manuscript without detriment to the reception of the same, all that being corrected without charge. There are men who can spell, whose God-given faculties have been taught to spell, who have met the world with freshness and power, and have learned to spell. I have no objection to correct spelling. I would rather have it than not, except from children. But these are things which a man does with the back of his neck, and he who does the constructive tasks of the world uses different and higher organs."

"I have taught much spelling," the teacher said quietly.

"You will forgive me for being so enthusiastic. These things are fresh to me," I said.

"The little girl is ten, you say?"

"Yes."

"She has a fine chance," the teacher remarked presently. "It saddens me to think of my myriads. But we do our best——"

"That is one sure thing," I said quickly.

"Still you are taking her away from us."

I felt a throb of meaning from that. I had to be sure she meant just as much as that throb meant to me. Constructive realisations come this way.

"What do you mean—taking her away?"

"You will make a solitary of her. She will not be of the world. You deal with one lovingly. It will become more and more a part of your work. Your work is of a kind to show you the way. She is following rapidly. I believe you have established the point that one can learn best from within, but one who does, must be so much alone. The ways will be lost between her and her generation—as represented by my five classes each day."

I had done a good deal of talking, but the teacher had guided me straight to the crossing—and with very few words. I realised now that more and more, I was undertaking to show the little girl short cuts to possessions that I had found valuable, but for which I had been forced to go around, and often with difficulty. Above all, I was trying to keep open that dream-passage, to keep unclouded that lens between spirit and flesh through which fairies are seen and the lustrous connecting lines around all things. By every impulse I was arousing imagination—it is all said in that. In doing this, was I also making a "solitary" of her—lifting her apart from the many?

There was no squirming out. I was doing exactly this; and if I went on, the job would be done more and more completely.

"She is not strange or different now," I said, "but see what will happen. She will find it harder and harder to stay. She will begin searching for those who liberate her. They are hard to find—not to be found among the many. Books and nature and her dreams—but the many will not follow her to these sources. … And yet every man and woman I know who are great to me, have entered this solitude in childhood. They were Solitaries—that seems the mark of the questers. … Why, you would not have one stay with the many—just to avoid the loneliness and the heart-pulling that leads us into ourselves. Everything done in the world that is loved and remembered—every life lived with beauty and productiveness to the many—has come from the Solitaries. Quest, that is the greatest word in English. One must have imagination to set out on the quest. … In reality we only search for our real selves—that which we yearn toward is the arousing of the half-gods within. When they are fully awake, we return to tell the many. Perhaps we do meet a more poignant suffering—but that is an honour——"

The teacher was smiling at me again. "Do you not see," she asked, "that all that you do and say and teach is for those who have the essential imagination?"

"But children have it," I said.