What Next?

Editor’s Note, by Art Middlekauff

According to Gearóid Barry, “The Armistice of 11 November 1918 gave Britons a moment of public jubilation, yet the first stage of demobilization at the end of 1918 … had to be rapidly revised such was the public frustration with it… Decanting so many men into the labour market increased unemployment markedly, from just 1 percent of the labour force in May 1920 to 23 percent by May 1921… Women workers, so prized in wartime, fared less well: by May 1919, they made up around three-quarters of the unemployed. Demobilization also occasioned anxieties that the war had ‘brutalized’ British society in general and ex-servicemen in particular.”^[1]

This time of demobilization, reconstruction, and social upheaval was causing many Britons to ask, “What next?” Charlotte Mason and her colleagues were not blind to this phenomenon. Mason’s close associate Elsie Kitching seized the opportunity to talk about what true reconstruction involves. First published in February 1920, it provides timeless wisdom on the topic of character formation.

Knowledge Makes for Character.

By E. K.
The Parents’ Review, 1920, pp. 113-127

“So in the compass of a single mind

The seeds and fragrant forms in essence lie

That make all worlds.” (H. Coleridge).

Times have changed, we say, and manners too, and the Commandant’s son sits down to breakfast at the same time and in the same hotel dining-room, if at another table, as his mother’s maid, and the hotel chambermaid consults the visitor as to whether she shall go out in white shoes and stockings, or, in her fur coat and brown shoes and stockings! Strikes are the chief support of the daily press. Ladies offer a bonus (see “The Times” column) of £5 for a year’s service with high wages for a maid and are only too glad to engage her at her “face” value without much inquiry as to “character”; for labour is now at a premium instead of character. We look back over a gulf of five years to the times of piping peace and say that we shall never see their like again. At holiday hotels we meet the broken officer with his brave little wife, the girl widow with six months’ married life behind her, the young officer, too old to go back and start again three years behind in his profession. The demobilised men have carried on the cry of ‘what next?’—a cry started during the war by all classes of the community who saw that autres temps, autres moeurs were coming upon us all.

The cry for reconstruction comes from all sides. To some it seems to mean a fresh start in life from a comfortable standpoint which the need of the moment shall decide without regard to past standards or future possibilities. To others it means that our “education” had not produced citizens who should know how to help the country to regain its balance after the wear and tear of the war. Training for everyone is one cry of reconstruction, and France has a waiters’ training school with education in nine sections. Adequate pay is another. Pensions for all classes of the community, another. But though a popular cry may be indicative of a popular need, it is well to remember that wise “Mikado” (Gilbert and Sullivan) whose one endeavour was “to make the punishment fit the crime”—in this case, fitly meet the need that produces the cry.

Are we too apt to think that sweets as a reward, whipping for a misdemeanour, meet all ‘Peter’s’ needs in the way of character training and that money, leisure, environment, freedom, not to say license, should meet any need voiced by the cry for reconstruction? The need must be considered, not what will stop the cry; otherwise we act like the nursemaid who stuffs an india rubber “comforter” into baby’s mouth whenever he cries and for whatever reason.

Now this particular need is that our children should become citizens of character. In England we have prided ourselves upon an aristocracy of character, and how to develop character has been, and is, the thought of parent and teacher, of all in authority. At a school treat some twenty years ago a parson asked some orphan school children what was the most precious possession a child could have and one little girl said “a character.” Everyone commented on “a striking answer,” but children often voice public opinion and though most of us have laughed over the innocent fun of “The Young Visitors” we cannot help feeling it an indictment. “A chiel’s amang us takin’ notes, and, faith, he’ll prent it,” and our vulgarities do not well bear the mirror of a child’s mind. “Why should not I d—— well do what I jolly well like in my own house,” said a little girl of seven to her nurse the other day; she had found her father’s view of life most congenial.

“In most countries education is considered a dull subject,” says the “Times Irish Supplement,” “and it must be admitted that English ‘pedagogical’ discussions have an effect on the mind such as music is said by Pindar to have had on the Eagle of Zeus.”^[1] The same paper says “that Irish Education has been compared to a storm-tossed ship steering under full press of sail for nowhere in particular.” Perhaps it is not only Irish education that sails thus and perhaps the vessel is at the mercy of any pilot because the captain has no orders for a definite port.

We are living in an age of problems. The man in the street clamours not only for their settlement but for definitions. “Profiteering must be stopped” is one heading to a newspaper column. “What is profiteering?” asks another. In another column half the nation, government included, is accused of profiteering, but no one defines it.

Again,—what is Education? Who will define it? Special Committee after Committee settles (or not) some side issue leaving the main question untouched. What is P.N.E.U. Education and how does it differ from other educational methods? wrote an able teacher the other day. Another wrote,—“The P.U.S. programmes are splendid, but the P.N.E.U. thinks more of knowledge, we, Heads of Schools, more of character.”

We all want children to become citizens of character. The question is what is character and what develops it? We know and value character when we see it in others, and we know that fine character has been shewn under the most unpromising conditions and by the most unlikely persons in the war. We are inclined to wonder if environment counts for so much in the making of character when we read, for example, of the activities of that wonderful Ruhleben school.

Two opposing ideas as to the formation of character have been accepted. One school of thought considers that character means “being good” and therefore that ‘Peter’ must be made good by discipline. Another school of thought considers that ‘Peter’s’ character is inherent and that freedom, not discipline, will give it free play, with the personality of the teacher to create an atmosphere. Many have been the themes played on these two strings since the world began. One generation believes in repression, ‘pinches, nips and bobs,’ another takes a humanitarian view, deprecates any sort of physical discipline and looks upon military obedience as slavery. Recent educationists have suggested that freedom is the only way to secure “self-discipline,” and, as a consequence, character, but the still more recent war has shewn that, after all, discipline is not even unwelcome to men faced with problems of life and death.

“I wish you would not say, ‘we’ll see,’ Mother. It would be so much easier if you said ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ said a little girl who unconsciously realised that discipline made for ease of life because ‘no’ left you anyway free to suggest some other desirable course of action. A normal child takes discipline like a man and prefers the shortest, even if the sharpest, course. “Of course I chose the cane,” said a small boy of nine to me. “Who wouldn’t? Fancy sweating lines when you might be out!”

Some of us have suffered much in the war, some little, but there has been a strain upon everyone, and one result has been that we are all a little tired of “trying to be good.” We agree with ‘Peter’ that exhortations to “be good” are a little irksome. “Peter, I’ve told you so many times not to do that, you must be a good boy.” “Yes, Mother,” said this ‘Peter’ of our acquaintance, aged 6, “but I wish you would tell me something fresh.”

We are anxious to forget the war and all its horrors, a little inclined to take things easy for a bit, perhaps even to think that “of making, many books there is no end and that much study is a weariness of the flesh”; that, in fact, whatever we do (for privately we don’t think much of ourselves) it will not make much difference, and that if anyone should have any character it is sure to come out somehow. Possibly there is a change of mind coming upon us with regard to character and the forces that make for it, and if we are dissatisfied with “being good” as the condition for character, we may be on the way to a better conception of it and its development. The fact is, discipline is not creative. It is the casting out of the stones in making the King’s Highway. It is a dangerous weapon in the hands of those who assert that it does not matter what a boy does, or learns, but how he does, or learns it, but a blessed preparation in the hands of the wise parent or teacher who keeps his vision clear along the stretch of that Highway.

For years we have been struggling towards a science of education which should produce men of character. HartIey Coleridge wrote seventy years ago,—“It is confidently prophesied that another science is to remove all the moral and spiritual evils of the planet, that by analysing the passions we shall learn to govern them, and that when the science of education is grown of age, virtue will be taught as easily as arithmetic … with the aid of wooden diagrams.” Is this a prophecy of an education by apparatus of which we hear so much just now? Again, we have endless formulae at hand to-day for making character. Some agents advertise themselves in whole page advertisements; as “The Business Man’s Bible,” claiming Colonel at 27, M.P. at 28 as a testimonial for their royal road.

“Mental balance” gained by self-expression in physical exercises is another much vaunted recipe.

Again, there are many excellent character-forming and good citizenship movements at work among children and young people, movements which give endless pleasure and occupation to their members. But methods of so-called character training limited to the cultivation of the “faculties,” to being good, to “self-expression,” even to “doing good,” are apt to make children think that “acquiring merit” is the object of life and, as Mr. Kipling tells us in his “Natural Theology,” the stress of life may bring a sad awakening,—

“What a return for all my endeavour—
Not to mention the L.S.D.!—
I am an atheist now and for ever,
Because the gods have afflicted me!”

The fact is, acquirement of character is not a natural but an artificial desire and Dickens has laid his kindly and humorous finger upon a weak spot in some current educational theories in this respect and shows us that people who set out to acquire information, or character, as an end in itself are prigs, if not worse. Perhaps Mr. Pecksniff, Mr. Gradgrind, Mr. Chadband are, after all, more serious indictments of our common thought than we are apt to think. Fortunately for ‘Peter’ he rarely wants to “acquire merit” himself, however much his elders may wish it for him. His desires go in other directions, as the following questions asked by a little boy of 7¾ show,—

1. Why can one give a better blow with a hammer if held by the end of the handle, than if held close to the head?
2. Why are the poles of the earth flat?
3. Why does flannel shrink?
4. Why are steel and iron stronger than (some) stone?

6. How do the Jews call Abraham, Father?
7. Why will a cartridge case float upright in water?
8. Why does a tuning fork buzz when put against paper if it has been struck?
9. Why does the knob of a bedstead roll in a circle?
10. How does the thermometer show if it is hot? How is a thermometer made?

Again, Sir William Rowan Hamilton’s little boy, when only five or six years old, cross-questioned his father about the mysteries in the doctrine of the Trinity; he was told that he was too young for such matters and had better go back and play with his top. “In the intervals of his play, however, he returned four successive times to propound a theory of his own; and his four explanations of the mystery were the four great heresies of the first four centuries!”^[2]

How cold the reading of the “Book of Proverbs” leaves us, though none but feels the cap fit sometimes! The impulse that makes for character does not come from moral platitudes. Polonius is a bore, but Hamlet with his struggle towards truth meets us on ground where we can walk with him. A wise parson once said that Solomon’s wisdom bore no fruit because he never translated it into life. S. T. Coleridge writes,—“the moral obligation is to me so very strong a stimulant that in nine cases out of ten it acts as a narcotic.” A little girl of my acquaintance (age 3½) was being solemnly talked to by her mother. Various misdemeanours were gone over and she was told that she must not do them again. The baby face looked solemn, then with an encouraging smile she said, “Say it all to me again, Mummy.” Had she discovered that her little misdemeanours were of interest (if sad) to her mother and curiously interesting to herself? No doubt she had forgotten them and welcomed them again as rather entertaining old acquaintances. Who can fathom a child’s mind? What wisdom and tact is needed to allow the wrong-doing to bring its natural consequences without letting the child become introspective. For a child will realise very early that his parents are anxious to cultivate his character and will either resent it or take an unholy interest in their concern. The moral teaching that comes from the great biographies of the Bible, from history, and from novelist, poet, and artist, in so far as each is great, is translated into life, that is, it keeps before us the vision of the Highway being cleared for the coming of the King; it does not centre our thoughts on the digging out of the stones and so make ourselves, our good or evil doing, our character in fact, the object of life. The great writer adorns the tale and leaves the pointing of the moral to the reader because there is a natural antipathy in man to have the cap fitted on him; he is quite able to do it for himself.

Now P.N.E.U. philosophy teaches that the common thought of the day needs a change of attitude as regards the formation of character, and it offers principles upon which the formation of character should be based. This change of attitude is curiously illustrated by that which Erasmus went through in his intercourse with Colet. Seebohm in his “Oxford Reformers” shows how patiently Colet waits while Erasmus is feeling his way towards that which constitutes the difference between his teaching and that of the schoolmen. Colet does not explain and refuses to discuss. He knows that a volte face does not come about in that way. His own change of mind came from the discovery of a fact which had always been there but which had become hidden by the scholastic philosophy of the Schoolmen. “This fact of the New Testament had brought him not to an endless web of propositions to the acceptance of which he must school his mind, but to a Person whom to love, in whom to trust, for whom to work.”

Erasmus is at first startled by Colet’s indifference to the Schoolmen,—“he feigned inattention when they were mentioned, did not reply when asked about them and only when Erasmus pressed the inquiry and convinced Colet that he was in earnest did Colet present his point of view.” Still Erasmus was not satisfied. He fetched one of the Schoolmen down from the shelves. “Surely Colet cannot deny this, and this, and this. What could bebetter or truer?—Colet might have written it himself!—this of the Prologue; but 43 propositions to be mastered on the nature of God gives him pause and he begins to realise that, as Colet had said, the simple facts of Christianity had been corrupted by the methods of the Schoolmen for, further, they had to harmonise the dogmatic theology so manufactured with a scientific system as dogmatic as itself.”

Just as with theology in those days so is it with Education in these. Educationists seek to harmonise dogmatic psychology with a scientific system as dogmatic as itself. Has the result

been that we are inclined to cheat ourselves with words, with psychological terms, behind which we take refuge like the Roman soldier behind his testudo? We have sat at the feet of Kultur for so long that even this great and terrible war has hardly convinced us that we need a volte face from teaching which has permeated every avenue of thought. It has laid its finger on our theology, given us indeed our science, so called, of theology, of history, of education, and has largely supplied the scientific thought of the age—though we cannot forget that much of this latter hailed originally from Darwin!

Again, Kultur has bedazzled us with its virtues, it has flaunted the patriotism, the selfless patriotism, shown by its victims, the thoroughness of its skilled workmen; indeed we are inclined to feel somewhat sore to-day that we, as a nation, are not displaying the desire to forget class ‘rights’ for the nation’s sake in the way that the Germans are when we hear rumours of unceasing work on the part of the workmen that Germany may be ready to undersell other nations.

“I hardly dare say it,” said a visitor at an ill-managed English spa, “but a German would soon put all this on a satisfactory footing.” Every German at the beginning of the war spoke with one voice, saw with one eye, acted with one motive,—a wonderful spectacle to Englishmen in Germany accustomed in their own country to doing that which was right in their own eyes.

We could not, even if we would, turn the citizens of our nation into a Tank to overcome the world as Kultur tried to do—Kultur, which is awaiting the court martial of the nations,—but what preparation have we made or are we making to guide the flood of democracy that is upon us?

Matthew Arnold wrote of the danger of teaching the democracy to put its trust in material progress instead of progress “in sweetness and light” and thus “training them to be Philistines to take the place of the Philistines whom they are superseding,” and, he says, “they, too, like the middle class will be encouraged to sit down at the banquet of the future without having a wedding garment, and nothing excellent can come from them.”

Shall we say that discipline is of no use because we think it has failed in the making of character? Dare we say that freedom is the only alternative?

Again, teachers who really love children will tell you candidly that they prefer the naughty ones because “there is more in them.” Watch any group of children in a village playing at school, and it is the keeping of the naughty ones in order that forms the chief amusement. Indeed, I have heard it made a condition that the “pupils” should be naughty, presumably lest there should be no fun. “Now be a good boy” has little attraction for ‘Peter’ whose eager mind is full of the delights and possibilities of life both good and bad, and he is unwilling to co-operate in our efforts towards the formation of his character. A small boy of three was offered a much coveted money-box if he would leave off biting his nails for a week. After some consideration he said: “Mummy, I want the box but I would rather bite my nails.”

The change of thought therefore before us is that “being good”—which may be simply taking the line of least resistance—does not make for character any more than “being naughty”; that discipline does not of itself make for character any more than the absence of it. Whatever is subjective throws a child upon himself and becomes a cul-de-sac; character can only be developed by an objective aim.

Kultur succeeded, in so far as it did succeed, because it realised this and made patriotic sentiment its objective aim, but it was sentiment without knowledge and it is hoist with its own petard.

The making of character is like the coming of the spirit—we cannot tell whence it comes or whither it goes: we only know it is there when we see its manifestations. Hartley Coleridge says of Wordsworth:—

“’Tis thine to celebrate the thoughts that make
The life of souls, the truths for whose sweet sake
We to ourselves and to our God are dear.
Of Nature’s inner shrine thou art the priest,
Where most she works when we perceive her least.”

Who does not thrill at the story of the Young Oxford Archæologist, “Sherref” Colonel Lawrence, “the uncrowned King of Arabia,” “Prince of Mecca,” whose name, it is said, will go down to history with those of Clive and Livingstone, for his amazing “war-work” in Arabia! Or, again, at the story of Dr. John Wilkinson, artist and grocer, who became suddenly blind, and one day when passing his tongue over a beech-leaf, found he had a microscope in his fingers and tongue and became so distinguished a botanist that he has recently received the honorary degree of D.Sc. of Leeds University! But such a sight as that palace built upon the Mount of Olives and containing in the Chapel a life-sized fresco of the ex-Kaiser and Kaiserin, opposite to one of God the Father, makes one realise why Kultur as the parent of character has failed.

“Character,” says the “Encyclopædia Britannica,” “is the moral and mental qualities of an individual human being, the sum of those qualities which distinguish him as a human personality.” Indeed character is a manifestation of the spirit. Has it been our mistake that we have considered it as the result of physical rather than of mental activities. Sir Thomas Browne says in his “Christian Morals,”—“Let intellectual tubes give thee a glimpse of things which visive organs reach not. Have a glimpse of incomprehensibles and thoughts of things which thoughts but tenderly touch.”

We have been so much accustomed to hear of what was achieved on the playing fields of Eton that we are apt to forget that character comes of mental food, and it has been well said that “moral goodness cannot be evolved to the greatest extent without intellectual power.”

P.N.E.U. philosophy teaches that character is a manifestation of the Person and that both body and mind must be fed as well as trained if character is to result; that feeding is of the first consideration in both cases, because what ‘Peter’ eats or what he knows produces a healthy body or a well-stored mind, that discipline must go hand in hand with the feeding; a healthy baby would soon become unhealthy if fed at all hours, whenever it cried, or on unsuitable food; that discipline must be mental and physical but is of little permanent value without food; that physical discipline, only, leaves an empty mind and cannot produce character though it may produce cranks; that mental discipline, the training of the faculties, etc., without mental food only leaves a room swept and garnished ready for all or any of the seven devils which inhabit such rooms; that right doing can only be a consequence of right knowing and that “being” follows as a natural consequence.

Has the general insistence upon “being good” first, sent our idea of character out of focus, so to speak, and made us forget how to help children to attain to “being.”

The Gospels are full of studies of character training.^[3] The story of the Samaritan woman, for instance, illustrates our Lord’s method of dealing with the question of character. The woman is bad, but He looks at the eager and intelligent mind behind her boldness. There is no word of “being good” or “being bad.” He sets her mind to work on a new idea, gives her knowledge. When her attention is arrested He calls forth a confession of her sin and its consequences but does not dwell upon it, and then proceeds to fill her mind with the most profound knowledge man can know. She recognises “the Christ” and immediately leaves her waterpot—a note of return—and goes to spread the good news. We know no more of her, but we do know that the act of recognition is faith, and we may believe that in her case too,—“thy faith hath saved thee.” Our Lord always taught those who came to Him for whatever reason. He challenged the attention of each one by an appeal to the mind, He then fed the mind and let it work. It is to be noted that it was not sin that called forth His wrath but want of understanding. Sin called forth His sorrow, the “precious sense of shame” was an appeal He always sheltered, but if a man, if a body of men, would not use the mind, would not perform the act of knowing and understanding but blindly followed the tradition of the Elders—for such He kept “the Wrath of the Lamb.” St. Paul’s comment is,—“Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

“It’s so delightful to feel my mind coming,” said a friend, a society girl, who had been told that she was quite capable of forming opinions for herself if she would but read books that would give her knowledge and who had started a course of reading. And children can be made to “feel their minds coming” if they are fed upon the right food. I have before me some sheets of a copy book which have been filled by a small boy of 7. Two of the printed lines to be copied are, “Use Irish soap and candles only,” “When wine’s in, wit’s out.” If such pitiful utilitarian sentiments convey anything they must be as dull and uninteresting to a child as exhortations “to be good,” and in such cases how can discipline be maintained except by the undue influence of the personality of the teacher or by punishment?

I saw the contrast between this kind of discipline and the discipline that comes where knowledge is to be had, when I watched a class of ten children (ages 7½–9½) who were accustomed to use their minds doing 2½ hours’ good work almost unaided. So absorbed were they in their work that they did not seem to realise they had a stranger, a ’prentice hand, with whom they might have played tricks in the absence of their usual teacher!

The general spirit of unrest affects every class of the community, even the children, and though the war has done some thing towards re-establishing the principle of authority, the docility that follows its right use is still in question. The common thought of the day is compromise. “Give them a good time while they are young, trouble comes soon enough,” says the father, and he becomes his children’s devoted playfellow with little thought of the future; the schoolmaster is his boys’ greatest “pal” and they “rag” together; the mother takes her share of what is going, or not, as one of her daughters.

“You are like a toy to me,” said a little boy of three to an old gentleman visitor whose one idea was to give the child a good time on the floor with, perhaps, a want of dignity which struck the child. And the freedom which is supposed to give character free play is allowed to usurp the parents’ rightful authority and the child is called upon to assert himself while the parent stands aside.

“No, thank you, I am not having any if that is P.N.E.U.,” said a schoolmaster invited to join the Society. He had been witnessing the self-assertion of a small boy (supposed to be brought up on P.N.E.U. lines) who was regulating the lives of his elders, displaying his information and being generally “superior.”

P.N.E.U. philosophy teaches that the desire for knowledge is a natural desire but that it must be sought for its own sake and not for the sake of “acquiring merit.” The “single eye” brings the spirit of humility in its train, but knowledge sought for utilitarian purposes may be useful and even necessary, but it is not life-giving, creative. A recent book on China states that the street lecturers who used to recite the poetry and history of Chinese literature have given place to lecturers on useful subjects such as questions of wages, housing, vocational training. Are we in England, too, apt to give utilitarian information the first place? I was told recently that two children could not be managed at home, and the question was how young could they be sent to school where discipline and esprit de corps might reduce the little tyrants to order?

A teacher said to me the other day,—“I often wonder if I am doing right by the pupils in my class. They are always good with me but they speak rudely to the servants, are always troublesome with their mother, they call their nursery governess ‘Tom’ and treat her like a doormat.” Everyone knows how local habits are, how much easier it is to be tidier, temperate in all things, frank, with some people than it is with others. Even the turbulent Jews recognised that our Lord spoke as one “having authority,” and children are only too quick to recognise when they are spoken to with the authority that is vested in the office of parent, or teacher, and to give docility.

But though habits are essential to the good life, and habit is “ten natures,” we must not again confuse issues and say that habit any more than discipline produces character; for character however much it is supported by discipline, by esprit de corps, by “being good,” has only one source—knowledge and the training that knowledge brings with it. A little child’s character is built upon the knowledge of his parents’ love, upon all he can find out around him, upon all that is told him, upon his knowledge of other people and of God. He ponders these things in his mind, his conscience when instructed judges the actions suggested by his thoughts, and his will accepts the good or rejects the bad.

If he is brought up to think that “being good” is all that is expected of him ‘Peter’ will long for the time when he can be, as a little boy of my acquaintance once said, “an ordinary man like Dada.” If he is brought up in the knowledge that he is a citizen of no mean city, the subject of a great King, if his mind enters on its due inheritance of food, and his conscience, instructed by the Holy Spirit, discerns the truth, his will trained to answer the call of duty, he will do his “bit” when he grows up and will not show the want of character to which strikes and party politics bear witness. The habits of the good life, the restraining effect of esprit de corps, the healthy body and a mind free from fads (for which the nation thanks its public schools) are not sufficient for, or even efficient in, a man’s life work unless he has a well-filled mind, can give a reason for the faith that is in him, and has power to detect a fallacy presented to him—this only knowledge can do; without it the man is a ship steering under full press of sail for nowhere in particular. The discipline that goes with knowledge is too little thought of. The consequence is that anyone can set up a standard about anything, crowds will flock to it and mere opposition draws more to the standard because the standpoint is accepted without demur.

The recent talk and correspondence in the papers about Spiritualism is a case in point. The premise that spirit can materialise is accepted and all the rest follows easily. “Oh, but you have no right to say it can’t happen, you don’t know.” Life however is conducted upon certain axioms which can be neither proved nor disproved, but the ignoring of which bring disaster and “there is a curious notion abroad that though unlawful things can be done with the body people are free to do what they like with their minds”; and “Spiritualism” has recently been recommended as an experimental field for the man in the street. It is said by those who have lived among them that the Mapuche Indians live in terror lest haunting spirits should occupy their bodies. They believe these spirits are waiting at every corner and that a moment’s thought of them on their part gives the spirit entrance to their body. Shall we return to such a reign of terror?

The necessity of food for thought as affecting character has long been recognised by the wise mother and nurse. “Change his thoughts,” they say, if a storm is approaching and baby’s face clears as if by magic. And children, nay we all, need to know where to find suitable food wherewith to change our thoughts in the face of temptation, for thus, says P.N.E.U. philosophy, works the “way of the will,” for the will must needs run away in order to fight another day! This way comes self-discipline.

Various quack forms of self-discipline are much in vogue. “Suggestion” is advocated as a remedial or as an educative agent. “What is the harm of suggestion?” wrote a teacher. Don’t we all “suggest” when we give children new ideas? The advocated forms of suggestion do not depend upon knowledge for stimulus, but upon the personality of the suggester who exerts his personal influence.

Miss Mason wrote once in answer to such a question. “I think we may give the children the inspiration of great ideas; indeed we must do so, but we must not try to frame their minds towards those ideas.” Instead of,—‘is it not lovely to begin lessons?’ would it do to say, ‘we all want to learn a great deal and the time has come for you to begin’—the idea implied but not spoken being that knowledge is a great thing and a life business, without any appeal to the child’s appreciation. Instead of, “Of course you can carry this cup of tea—I should leave out the ‘of course you can,’ and say brightly ‘pass it without spilling.’ For the French lessons a word about how good you found it to speak French last year would have given the ‘great idea’ about the language, as I do think children should approach the portals of new knowledge with reverence. The point in each case being that no appeal should be made to the child’s subjective consciousness; let him think out—beyond!”

P.N.E.U. philosophy teaches that neither will power, nor mind power are necessarily moral forces. The will depends upon the mind for ideas to accept or reject, the mind, for ideas, upon the food (knowledge) presented to it, the knowledge may be good, bad or indifferent and the result is character, good, bad, or indifferent. The power in the hand of the teacher is to see that by the provision of good, abundant, varied, knowledge the child’s mind is fed, his conscience instructed to discern between good and evil, his will trained to accept the right and reject the bad.

See that ye “hinder not,” “offend not,” “despise not” one of these little ones, said our Lord, but He also left the positive command to feed them. We have two specially recorded instances of suppers taken with His disciples. In one He takes the food as a symbol for feeding His disciples. In the other He gives the charge to them of feeding His lambs and His sheep.

The word used for feeding lambs is “to pasture”—not spoon feed. The image is that of a shepherd leading his flocks to pasture. The flocks feed themselves, his business is to search for green pastures, to guide them there and remain at hand in case of danger while they browse. This is the image that P.N.E.U. philosophy sets before teachers.

The highest office a man can hold is that of a teacher, and Hartley Coleridge’s sonnet on “The Use of a Poet” is no less appropriate to a teacher.

“A thousand thoughts were stirring in my mind,

That strove in vain to fashion utterance meet;

And each the other cross’d—swift as a fleet

Of April clouds, perplex’d by gusts of wind,

That veer, and veer, around, before, behind.

Now History pointed to the custom’d beat,

Now Fancy’s clue unravelling, led their feet

Through mazes manifold, and quaintly twined.

So were they straying—so had ever stray’d;

Had not the wiser poets of the past.

The vivid chart of human life display’d,

And taught the laws that regulate the blast,

Wedding wild impulse to calm forms of beauty

And making peace ’twixt liberty and duty.”

^[1] “On the sceptre of Zeus his eagle sleepeth, slackening his swift wings either side, for a dark mist thou” (OGolden Lyre) “hast distilled upon his arched head, a gentle seal upon his eyes and he in slumber heaveth his supple back, spell-bound beneath thy throbs.”

^[2] A Poet’s Children, by E. Towle.

^[3] See Miss Mason’s Gospel Commentary—“The Saviour of the World,” Vols. I–VI.

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Endnotes for the Editor’s Note

^[1] “Demobilization,” from International Encyclopedia of the First World War.

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