Part 4 (1/2)
The laws are very severe against those who would ill-treat an animal, but there is now no need to put them in force.
We never punish by the imposition of tasks, our aim being to inculcate the love of study, and encourage the child to regard his work as a favour and a privilege. On the contrary we now punish the student rather by taking away the old than by imposing new school work; and this is so effected that the boy, though at first delighted, soon thirsts to resume his studies.
In many cases the pupil is not allowed even to know that he is punished,--_i.e._, why the discipline is changed,--lest he should become attached to a fault for which he has suffered and, as it were, paid dearly; lest, too, the excitement of eluding detection should make it pleasurable to transgress when the immediate pressure is removed, and he should thus become schooled in untruthfulness and deceit.
The character-divers generally effect the child's correction by gentleness, and eventually bringing him to loathe the bad and love the good. Time, labour, and attention are bestowed unsparingly, and, however small the germ, the evil tendency is never left until, when this is possible, it is completely eradicated. In certain cases, where the footprint of nature is too firmly impressed, the efforts are continued until other and opposing qualities have been developed, and the moral patient has acquired such control over himself as to be able, in moments of temptation and impulse, to dominate the disturbing propensity.
Even after the fault seems to have been eradicated, the patient is for some time subjected to various tests and temptations before he is p.r.o.nounced cured. We do not trust to superficial appearances.
Similar precautions were taken in the cure of adult offenders against the laws, but as soon as my plans had time to operate, offences by adults were of rare occurrence.
When a child gives evidence of remarkable genius, he is watched with more than jealous care, with a view to his superior refinement, and other qualities which we like to see in harmony. We do not like to see, as it were, a garment made partly of rich brocade and partly of common material.
The character-divers, too, are greatly a.s.sisted in their observations by an establishment attached to each school called ”The Amus.e.m.e.nt Gallery,”
in which after a certain time the bent of the child, his versatility, capriciousness, constancy of purpose, and other qualities and defects are shown in his selection and continued or interrupted pursuit of any particular occupation or amus.e.m.e.nt.
It is scarcely possible to overrate the importance of acting with judgment towards children.
From the smallest beginnings, incurable defects of mind and permanent disease of body will gather strength, grow and obtain the mastery, till they carry off the sufferer, or implant vices that, like evil spirits, will torture the victim during his life's career.
Nothing is spared in the education of the future man and mother of men.
In the child is seen the parent of other generations, one who, as he is well or ill-directed, will strengthen or weaken the great work of human happiness, bearing with him a blessing or a curse for the community.
Therefore whatever may be the pains or expenditure required in the cure of incipient faults, as of incipient disease, we know that society will be repaid more than a thousand-fold in the happiness of its members, in evil prevented and good propagated, in the numbers of men of talent and genius whose works, teeming with great results, will be thus saved to the State.
But for the character-divers the services of numbers of men of extraordinary genius would have been lost to the State, and our world's progress in science, inventions, and happiness r.e.t.a.r.ded for centuries.
Nay, perhaps the then comparative civilization would have been thrown back into barbarism, through the destructive play of bad pa.s.sions and disappointed hopes.
Numbers who, if their early faults had grown into confirmed vices, would later have led a life of crime, and become inhabitants of dungeons and emissaries of evil, now grew into men of great eminence. The germ of evil propensities was destroyed, the exuberant motive power of their nature regulated and turned to good, by means which the character-divers thoroughly understood.
Amongst faults, the germs of which occupied the attention of the Djarke, are the following:
Untruthfulness, dishonesty, discontent, pride, vanity, boasting, cunning, envy, deceit, whether prejudice, self-deceit, or the wish to deceive others; nervousness or fear, inducing reticence and concealment of faults, excess of modesty or the occasional tendency of persons of genius to underrate their own powers, inattention to studies, want of application, power to learn too easily, lack of retentive memory, exaggeration and boldness, bad temper, sullenness, disposition to quarrel, cowardice, cruelty, caprice as distinct from versatility, selfishness, greediness, laziness, and its various causes, and generally the germs of all faults and vicious propensities, which, if not cured at an early age, would grow into tenacious vices.
From the precautions taken in Montalluyah the schools have become real nurseries, where the pupil is endowed with knowledge adapted to his capacity and natural bent, strengthened and graced with valuable habits and stores of physical and intellectual power.
VII.
CHARACTER-DIVERS--_continued_.