The Child As Philosopher

( Originally Published 1914 )

PERHAPS the most fundamental and thoughtful of the excuses given for not acting logically in regard to obedience, for believing modern ideas about the value of wholesome freedom, but continuing to practice one or another method for suppressing it, is the statement that it is very difficult for the child to understand the difference between submission to the will of another and obedience to the principle of rightness. This must be admitted. It is hard for the child. It is hard for anyone. Precisely because it is hard for us to understand this clearly we find it hard to reason about our own parental authority. But everyone will admit that it is one of the few things really worth teaching the child or under-standing ourselves. To have grasped the conception that one must yield up his life only to what is right is to have entered upon the only variety of life worth living. The one thing which in real life brings us happiness is a glad and enlightened acceptance of righteousness as a guiding principle, not a hostile, enforced, or even painlessly automatic submission to other people's wills. Why should we try to make the child learn the bad habit before the good? Why should we not try to fix his attention upon the fact that it is not his parents' will which rules his world, but righteous and eternal laws. Why not teach him that if in any way he can reconcile his wish and what is right he is free to do so? Why thrust him, devoured with the desire for activity as he is, into the prison of inaction, blinded and gagged by the command, " Don't you dare to question your parents' commands!" where his desire, his reason, his instinct for right, and his natural ingenuity for accomplishing his ends all fester together in the dark? Why not bring them all out into the light of day together and set him the task of harmonizing them? All that the adult would need to do would be to act as umpire of this game of wits and to decide if the child has succeeded.

It is true that this mental habit of considering the best reasons for doing things and of trying to make one's action fit the ideal of good behavior rather than follow a course dictated by a series of arbitrary commands is hard to acquire, but, like every other good habit, it is a sure result of practice. It can and does grow in the child after he has heard and understood a great many times the real reasons for the actions to which he is constrained, and, quite as important, from having been as seldom as possible forced to yield because someone was physically stronger than he and could beat him (if necessary) until he did yield. For it is not enough to take care that some one or two actions are reasonable or to explain the grounds underlying only one out of many decisions. The whole moral atmosphere about the child should be permeated by a true sense of value and right pro-portions. Every action that is worth taking, even the most trivial, can be referred to some fundamental principle of right living, and it is a safe rule that if it cannot be so referred it is not worth enforcing upon a child. Every prohibition that is worth any-thing has a basis in some sound law of social equity. And again, it will be found upon honest scrutiny that any prohibition resting solely upon the prop, " Don't you do it because I tell you not to!" has a very rotten support, which will disappear as soon as the child acquires strength to knock it away.

Furthermore, the difficulty of making the child understand the fundamental laws underlying his own small actions will be very considerably lessened by the liberal exercise of that quality which should be enrolled among the seven cardinal virtues, the quality which is named according to one's native vernacular, " tact," or " ordinary horse sense." A wife who has ordinary horse sense does not choose the moment when her husband is very cold and wet and tired and hungry to ask him if he still loves her as on their wedding-day, and this is not because she doubts his love, but because life has taught her a tolerant realization of the hard tyranny which our bodies exercise over our souls. A mother, who has ordinary horse sense will not choose a moment when a child is ex-cited and tired and feverishly set upon some particular desire to expound to him for the first time the fundamental laws which prevent his having his way. If she does, she need not be surprised that they meet with scant respect or understanding. The fact is that crises of any sort cannot be adequately coped with at the moment alone. There must have been preparation for them, begun years before, and steadily continued. The girl at high-school who is unable to summon her forces to pass an algebra examination may be paying the penalty of an early childhood without sufficient sleep. The engineer, rising triumphantly to master a great problem in bridge building, may have begun his preparations for that feat when he was three years old and was allowed to struggle patiently with the latch of a door until he had mastered its workings. And the habit of obedience to right principles is perhaps the most arduous acquisition of wayward humanity. It needs long and patient preparation, planned with a far-seeing eye to further growth and development and practiced with due regard to the conditions of human life. One of these conditions, noted above, is that few but the most mature and philosophical human beings are able to bring all their reason to bear when their desires or their emotions are very strongly aroused. At these moments self-control will be powerful only if it rests on principles already approved by the rea-son in moments of calm, lucid, detached thought. A child before a showcase of candy, his eyes glistening with desire, the water fairly dribbling from the corners of his mouth, is not in a frame of mind to give an intelligent first hearing to any remarks about the enamel of his teeth and the bad effect upon it of candy. That consideration should be already as familiar to him as the fact that water runs downhill. so that a reference to it seems irrefutable to him. He should have been forewarned of the danger and prepared for self-control by a reasonable under-standing of the conditions involved, long ago, during a quiet hour, and not allowed to grapple with the idea first when all his avidly greedy little physical impulses were aroused and clamoring for indulgence.

Of course, it is hard to keep clear in the child's mind a conception of obedience unless it is clear in our own, and in the harrying, distracting confusion of everyday life with children it is hard to keep any abstract ideas clear. It is so necessary for the smooth-running of domestic life that children should " mind " that we often quite unconsciously put the emphasis on a point which in our lucid moments we do not believe to be the most important ; and as carpenters use " rule-of-thumb " to save making elaborate computations in the midst of a job, it is well to have a few succinct maxims to carry one over the inevitable periods when one's capacity for reasoning is clouded by fatigue or exasperation or even (parents have been known to feel it) had temper. One such rule-of-thumb is to remember clearly the vital difference between a real command and suggestion. Almost all of the incidents of child-life can be man-aged best by one form or another of suggestion, by which a moderate amount of flexibility is allowed. Of definite commands there should be as few as possible in a child's life, based only on real necessity, and the issuing of one should imply immediate obedience. This difference between the usual suggestion and the occasional necessary command should not only be clear in the parent's mind, but should be understood by the child. As a matter of fact, whether it is clear in the parent's mind or not, the child usually learning by experience makes the distinction himself between the times when he " really has to mind" and those others when, even if a command has been issued, there is not really valid ground for forbidding an alternative action. But it is in-finitely better to have the distinction, to have the whole idea clearly explained and admitted so that the child's judgment has sound material on which to work.

We have been supposing the modern child to live under a constitutional government. To explain fully to the child the reasons for the authority of his parents, the end to be gained by the various sorts of obedience, to have him understand that no hard-and-fast orders will be given him unless it is for the best good of his little circle or himself, all this is to ex-pound the " constitution " of his government to him. Not long ago I overheard a young mother giving her little son a " review " of the principles of good government and an exposition of the nature and occasional need of its temporary suspension in order that martial law might cope with unusual conditions, and yet I was sure, from the casual, unpretentious, and colloquial manner of her informal little talk, that she would have been greatly surprised to know that she had been discoursing on anything so abstract as " good government." She and her two children had been visiting neighbors of ours, and she was rather dreading the next moving, which was to the home of an elderly aunt quite unused to children. She sat with me out in the grape-arbor making buttonholes in a new dress for Harry's baby sister, while Harry played horse noisily up and down the garden path. When his breath gave out he came to sit in the arbor, kicking his heels joyfully against the legs of the rustic bench. His mother put down her sewing and looked at him with an affectionate smile. " Well, Harry," she said, " our nice visit here is 'most over. There's only a week more before Daddy will be back from his business trip, and then well go home and be all together again. We've just a visit to Aunt Emeline to make before that." Harry projected himself homeward with an effort of the imagination: "I wonder if Gretchen has remembered to give Whiskers his milk every day ! Say, has Aunt Emeline got a cat? "

" She has two cats," said his mother. " And that reminds me, I want to tell some things about our visit at Aunt Emeline's. Come over here, don't you want to, and sit in my lap while we talk? "

Thus ensconced, his head on his mother's shoulder, Harry took part in the following little dialogue. His mother said: " Aunt Emeline is a good deal older than Daddy or Mother, and she isn't so strong as young folks and she hasn't quite the same way of doing things, so while we're there, we'll have to do things a little differently. For instance, cats! Aunt Emeline loves cats, but she doesn't think it's good for them to be handled. She won't mind if you just pat them gently, but it would make her sorry you'd come if you should pick them up and hug them and love them the way we do Whiskers."

" Isn't that funny!" said Harry wonderingly.

" Well, it's not our way, but when we're visiting her in her house, of course we have to do things her way."

Harry seemed to see the force of this and assented thoughtfully. His mother went on: " There are lots of ways like that, that Aunt Emeline's different about. I can't think of them all now, to tell you be-forehand, so we'll have to fix things this way. You know l never ask you to mind me unless there's a good reason for it? "

" Oh, yes." Harry nodded as at a well-known proposition.

" And I always try to explain the reason so you can understand it? "

Harry took this again for granted as a self-evident truth.

" And yet there are some times, once in a while, when the reason is too hard for you to understand or things are so I can't stop just then to explain it to you, and you have to mind anyhow, because Mother means to do right things? "

"Like the time," said Harry, " when the lamp caught fire in the next room, and I didn't know what was the matter and you hollered to me to grab the baby and run."

" Yes," said his mother, " like that time. Or when you started to tell Mrs. Pratt about little Sister's cunning way of banging her spoon, and I told you to run away and play with Helen and I couldn't explain till after Mrs. Pratt left that her little girl-baby had died and it would make her feel so badly to hear about other babies. Well, at Aunt Emeline's house there will probably be a good many times when I can't very well explain to you the reasons for things without kind o' hurting Aunt Emeline's feelings. So you'll have to make up your mind to do what I say without understanding as much as usual the why of things. For instance, Aunt Emeline's head aches if people whistle in the house, so if you begin to whistle and I say: `please don't whistle now, Harry,' you'll just stop, won't you, without asking why? You can save up, though, till I put you to bed, and then you can ask me all the whys at once."

Harry was apparently quite used to this experience of quiet talking-over of a situation, for he listened with a sober attention and at the end meditated for a moment in silence. Then he remarked : "I shouldn't think little boys would have a very good time at Aunt Emeline's house."

His mother laughed. " Oh, I've just been warning you about the uncomfortable things. Just you wait till you see the size of Aunt Emeline's cookie jar, and the raisins in the cookies." On which cheering note she dismissed him to play again. As he ran off I said curiously : " Do you have any trouble in managing Harry? His father was always so head-strong as a child."

" Oh, no ! " she answered fervently. " Harry's such a good child! He must be just naturally reasonable! I shouldn't know how to manage a trouble-some child ! " But it occurred to me that very likely she was doing it every day.

In addition to a clear grasp on the difference between a suggestion and a command and to the under. standing by the child of the purpose and temporary nature of "martial law" (absolute orders, issued to him only when necessary) there is another rule of thumb communicated to me by a wise old woman of an instinctively philosophic turn of mind. As she phrased it: " When you have to tell a child to do something, bear down hard on what you want him to do it for!" This not only works practically as a help in discipline, but serves the purpose of reminding, not alone the child, but the parent, of the axiom that obedience is a means to an end, never an end in itself. All but the gloomiest cynics accord to human nature an inherent capacity to distinguish right from wrong, the reasonable and prudent from the unnecessary and trivial. The only enlightened purpose in training children is to develop this inherent capacity. To do this and at the same time to protect them from the too serious results of their mistakes many devices and tools are needed ; it is sometimes even necessary to use the tool of unintelligent, en-forced obedience to another human being. But this should be constantly recognized even in small de-tails as a tool only, not as anything valuable in itself; indeed, quite the contrary, as something pernicious in itself, clumsy, ill adapted to the purpose, and with a dangerous edge which may as easily be turned against the child's best welfare as for it. In short, a tool to be used only because we are not intelligent and resourceful enough to find better ones, and to be discarded as soon as possible. Since it is in the early years of childhood a tool easily grasped by even the clumsiest hands or the most wandering wits, it is necessary to be incessantly on our guard against it. The emphasis should be laid in every case, therefore, upon the reason for the order; and with the growth of the child's intellectual grasp on what is reasonable and right, the weight of authority should be shifted away from the personal until the child has passed insensibly with no shock and wrench of sudden transition from the baby's habit of dependence to the sane adult's habit of self-control.

The method of procedure should be, whenever possible, to issue the command or suggestion; to state clearly the end to be gained, with the reason for its desirability, and then to allow a discussion of ways and means of attaining the end. If an impartial judgment shows that ways suggested by the child will serve the purpose, he should be allowed to use them. It will be found that in blessedly many cases there will be no need to enforce upon him the abandonment of his ways, if he understands clearly that they will not accomplish the necessary action. The hearing before this domestic court should accord genuine consideration of the reasons adduced by the child and should not be a mere judicial sham to mask the high-handedness of the court-martial verdict which follows. As often as it can be contrived, the child should have the invigorating and encouraging experience of seeing whatever sensible and ingenious reasons he advances received with respect, and the verdict altered accordingly. This will not incite him to insubordination (which he soon learns defeats its own purpose), but will stimulate in him the in-valuable capacity to use intelligence and ingenuity in coping, not with his parents' will, but with the under-lying reasons for sensible and prudent and enlightened action.

The idea that the child is incapable of understanding these reasons no one with any acquaintance with children will advance for an instant. The child is, as a matter of fact, only too keenly sagacious about real reasons, and penetrates only too easily the enveloping mass of disingenuous talk in which we endeavor to hide our real motives from him. Most of the " enfant terrible " comic stories are based precisely upon this appalling capacity of the fresh eye of childhood to see through the pretended to the real. At an astonishingly early age any unspoiled child can be made to understand the few fundamental laws underlying his own restricted life. One of thèse (perhaps the most prominent in his limited experience) is the duty of keeping in good health. This does not mean that a three-year-old child, even if he has the germ of this idea well planted in his head, can be left alone in the room with a box of candy. It means simply that any adult enforcing moderation in candy upon the child has a lever of enormous strength upon which to lean. Throughout the child's early years it means consistency and dignity on the part of the parent, later it means validity in parental authority, and finally it ought to mean that by the time the child is twelve or four-teen he is reasonably safe from excesses in the matter of food.

Take again the case of my own little girl shrinking from the dash of cold water on her chest. She is but four years old, a sensitive, high-spirited, ardent little creature, with an intense dislike of anything physically disagreeable. The nature and use of the pores in the skin, the beneficial action of cold water and brisk rubbings, the example of such practices constantly kept up by her elders have all been laboriously and as interestingly as possible explained to her in words of one syllable. She understands clearly the use of the action intended; but [and here comes in the confusion of the mind of the cousin who cried out upon me for insisting against the child's will] all this, though excellent, does not as yet go far enough. She is but four years old and by no means mistress of her own complex organism. Her reason, although aroused and active, is not yet strong enough to make her every morning of her own accord march up to the bathroom and turn on the cold-water faucet. That is asking too much of four-year-old fortitude. But her reason is already strong enough to make her yield with no more than a momentary nervous resistance to an adult helping her to the performance of the necessary hygienic action. Because in matters where nothing vital is concerned she is allowed the free exercise of her own tastes and preferences, she does not therefore kick and scream and crawl under the bed when she is summoned to submit to something undeniably disagreeable. On the contrary, it is not even all of her that rebels against the shock of the cold water ; it is only her too sensitive baby-flesh. It is not, therefore a question of child against adult, rebellion against authority. It is a question of her own will-power and self-control against her body. To achieve the desirable action the adult does not need to catch her bodily and hale her along the whole distance; he needs, so to speak, only to give her a friendly shove along the difficult path into which her own reason has directed her.

In another family of my acquaintance the going to bed bugbear has been exercised in the case of each succeeding child as soon as he was old enough to understand the simple arithmetic involved. A quiet talk is started on a peaceful morning when the question of going to bed is not a burning one and the conversation runs somewhat as follows : " Now, Jack, let's decide about your bedtime. All the doctors and people who know best about how to keep well say that children of your age need at least ten and a half hours' sleep every day. If you have to be at school at nine and it takes you half an hour to get there and an hour and a half to get bathed and dressed and eat your breakfast, what time would you have to get up? " After this has been worked out, another sum is done to determine what time it is necessary to get to bed in the evening to have the right number of hours in bed. It is finally determined that if Jack starts to bed at eight o'clock in the evening he will be able to sleep the requisite length of time. No normal child who has had any experience of the use of reason can resist such a procedure, if put to him in a quiet moment, when no passions are obscuring his capacity for reason. But when night comes there is sure to be this plea : " Oh, Mother, just this once, it won't hurt me to stay up a little later ; just this once! " This is the sort of thing which is usually regarded as going back on the whole idea of reasonableness, and is put down as incipient insubordination, with no discussion al-lowed. But Jack's mother, having been warned by experience, made due provision even for this plea. As a matter of fact, there is some truth in it. When the doctors say a child should sleep ten or eleven or twelve hours out of the twenty-four, they do mean simply that he should sleep that long, as a general thing. They do not maintain that one night of fewer hours' rest will have any dire results. The child, using his good sense, knows this as well as you do, and the only honest treatment of him allows this, and continues as Jack's mother did : " But, of course, Jack, sitting up a little later once in a while won't do any special harm, so let's say that on one night every week you can sit up an hour later, and you can choose which night."

Then when Jack is summoned to bed (usually after a humane warning ten minutes ahead of time to soften the shock) he goes, not because Mother says so or because he is a good little boy who always minds his mother, but because he has begun to shoulder himself the responsibility put upon him by the fact of his existence, the responsibility for making the most possible of himself physically and morally.