Part 3 (2/2)

But, remembering how it felt to be a child, have pity, and do not teach him these lessons when any one else is there. Let the humiliation of them be a secret between you two alone. Only when a wrong has been done which demands a rest.i.tution or an amend should the soul of the child, shamed with wrong-doing, be exposed to alien eyes.

When we sit in judgment on the aggressions and on the shortcomings of others the first need is neither justice nor mercy, but imagination with self-knowledge. The judge should be able to put himself in the place of the accused, to perceive, by sympathetic vision, the point of view of the one who stands before the judgment-seat. The judge is an adult human being, and therefore has some knowledge of the mental and moral processes of human beings. He should use this knowledge; and when it comes to a grown-up judging a child, it is no less necessary for the judge to place himself imaginatively in the place of the small offender.

And this cannot be done by imagination and self-consideration alone.

Memory is needed. Let me say it again: there is only one way of understanding children; they cannot be understood by imagination, by observation, nor even by love. They can only be understood by memory.

Only by remembering how you felt and thought when you yourself were a child can you arrive at any understanding of the thoughts and feelings of children. When you were a child you suffered intensely from injustice, from want of understanding, in your grown-up censors. You were punished when you had not meant to do wrong: you escaped punishment when you had not meant to do right. The whole scheme of grown-up law seemed to you, and very likely was, arbitrary and incomprehensible. And you suffered from it desperately. So much that, even if you have now forgotten all that you suffered, the mark of that suffering none the less remains on your soul to this day.

It would seem that the humiliations, the mortifications endured in childhood leave an ineffaceable brand on the spirit. How then can we not remember, and, remembering, refrain from hurting other children as we were hurt?

The spirit of the child is sensitive to the slightest change in the atmosphere about him. You can convey disapproval quite easily--and approval also. But while most parents and guardians are constantly alive to the necessity for expressing disapproval and inflicting punishment, the other side of the medal seems to be hidden from them.

The most prevalent idea of training children is the idea of prohibition and punishment. ”You are not to do it! You will? Then take that!” the blow or punishment following, expresses simply and exactly the whole theory of moral education held by the ma.s.s of modern mothers. The vast mistake, both in the education of children and government of nations, is the heavy stress laid on the negative virtues. Also the fact that punishment follows on the failure _not_ to do certain things--whereas no commensurate reward is offered even for success in _not_ doing, let alone for success in active and honourable well-doing. The reward of negative virtue is negative also, and consists simply in non-punishment.

The rewards of active virtue are, in the world of men, money and praise.

But there are deeds for which money cannot pay, and sometimes these are rewarded by medals and paragraphs in the newspapers--not at all the same thing as being rewarded by the praise of your fellow-men. Now children, like all sane human beings, love praise. They love it more keenly perhaps than other human beings because their natural craving for it has not been overlaid with false modesties and shames. They have not learned that

Praise to the face Is open disgrace.

On the contrary, praise to the face seems to them natural, right, and altogether desirable. See that they get it.

Do you remember when you were little how you struggled to exercise some tiresome negative virtue, such as not biting your nails, not teasing the cat, not executing, with your school-boots, that heavy shuffling movement, so simply relieving to you, so mysteriously annoying to the grown-ups? Can you have forgotten how for ages and ages--three or four days, even--you refrained from drinking water with your mouth full of food, from leaving your handkerchief about in obvious spots natural and convenient, how you sternly denied yourself the pleasure of drawing your hoop stick along the front railings--because, though you enjoyed this musical exercise, others did not? And how, all through the interminable period of self-denial, you heartened yourself to these dismal refrainings by the warm comfortable thought, ”_Won't_ they be pleased?”--and how they never were. They took it all as a matter of course. To them, because they had forgotten how it felt to be a child, all your heroic sacrifices and renunciations counted as nothing. To them it was natural that a child should keep his fingers out of his mouth, and off the tail of Puss, should keep his feet still and his handkerchief in his pocket, should do the suitable things with meat, drink, and hoop-sticks. They never noticed, and so they never praised.

But when, worn out by long abstinence from natural joys, natural relaxations, you broke one of those rules which seemed to you so useless and so arbitrary, then they noticed fast enough.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE TAIL OF PUSS.]

”Can you _never_ remember,” they said, ”just a simple thing like not biting your nails?” Bitter aloes following, no doubt. Or, ”I really should have thought,” they would say, ”that considering the number of times I've spoken about it you would remember not to make that frightful noise,” with boots or hoop sticks or a blade of wet gra.s.s or what not.

They did not pause to think, in their earnest grown-up business of ”bringing the boy up,” how many, how very many, and how seemingly silly, were the ”don'ts” which you had to remember. But you will not be like that: you will notice and approve, and most needful of all, reward with praise the earnest, difficult refrainings of the child who is trying to please you: who is trying to learn the long table of your commandments all beginning with ”Thou shalt not,” and to practise them, not because these commandments appeal to him as reasonable or just or useful, but just because he loves you, wants to please you, and, deepest need of love, wants you to be pleased with him.

A hasty yet determined effort at putting yourself in his place is the thing needed every time you have to sit in judgment on the actions of another human being--most of all when that human being is a little child. If we cultivated this habit we should not hurt other people as we do. I have seen cruel things.

A little girl, suffering from a slight affection of the eye, was given by a sympathetic aunt the run of a box of that aunt's old ball-dresses.

She spent a whole hour in arranging a costume which seemed to her to be of royal beauty. A crushed pink tulle dress, a many-coloured striped Roman sash, white satin slippers, put on over the black strapped shoes, and turning up very much at the toes. White gloves, very dirty and wrinkled like a tortoise's legs over the plump dimpled arms. Hair dressed high on the head over a pad of folded stockings, secured by hairpins borrowed from the housemaid. A wreath, of crushed red calico roses from somebody's last summer's hat, some pearl beads, the property of cook, and a blue heart out of a cracker--saved since Christmas.

”I am a beautiful Princess,” said the child, and the housemaid responded heartily: ”That you are, ducky, and no mistake. Go and show mother.”

But mother, when she was told that this stumbling, long-tailed bundle of crushed finery was a beautiful Princess, laughed and said, ”Princess Rag-Bag, I should say.”

”It's only pretending, you know,” the child explained, wondering why explanations should be needed by mother and not by Eliza.

The mother laughed again. ”I shouldn't pretend to be a Princess with that great stye in my eye,” she said, and thought no more about it.

But the child remembers to this day how she slunk away and tore off the beautiful Princess-clothes, and cried and cried and cried, and wished that she was dead. Children really do wish that, sometimes.

Another form of cruelty is mere carelessness. A child spends hours in preparing some surprise for you--decorates your room with flowers, not in the best taste perhaps, and fading maybe before your impatiently awaited arrival--or ties scarves and handkerchiefs to the banisters to represent flags at your home-coming.

”Very pretty, dear,” you say carelessly, hardly looking--and the child sees that you hardly look, ”and now clear it all away, there's a dear!”

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