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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Education of Catholic Girls, by Janet
+Erskine Stuart
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Education of Catholic Girls
+
+
+Author: Janet Erskine Stuart
+
+Release Date: May 24, 2005  [eBook #15892]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EDUCATION OF CATHOLIC GIRLS***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Michael Gray (Lost_Gamer@comcast.net)
+
+
+
+THE EDUCATION OF CATHOLIC GIRLS
+
+
+     *     *     *     *
+
+
+   PUBLIC SCHOOLS FOR GIRLS. A Series of Papers by Nineteen
+     Headmistresses dealing with the History, Curricula, and
+     Aims of Public Secondary Schools for Girls. Edited by
+     SARA A. BURSTALL, Headmistress of the Manchester High
+     School, and M. A. DOUGLAS, Headmistress of the Godolphin
+     School, Salisbury. Crown 8vo, 4_s_. 6_d_.
+   THE DAWN OF CHARACTER. A Study of Child Life. By EDITH E.
+     READ MUMFORD, M.A., Cloth-workers' Scholar, Girton
+     College, Cambridge, Lecturer on 'Child Training' at the
+     Princess Christian Training College for Nurses,
+     Manchester. Crown 8vo, 3_s_. 6_d_,
+   NOTES OF LESSONS ON THE HERBARTIAN METHOD (based on
+     Herbart's Plan). By M. FENNELL and Members of a Teaching
+     Staff. With a Preface by M. FENNELL, Lecturer on
+     Education. Crown 8vo, 3_s_. 6_d_.
+   SCIENCE OF EDUCATION. By T. P. KEATING, B.A., L.C.P. With
+     an Introduction by Rev. T. A. FINLAY, M.A., National
+     University, Dublin. Crown 8vo, 2_s_. 6_d_. net.
+   TALKS  TO TEACHERS ON PSYCHOLOGY AND TO STUDENTS ON SOME OF
+     LIFE'S IDEALS. By WILLIAM JAMES, formerly Professor of
+     Philosophy at Harvard University. Crown 8vo, 4_s_. 6_d_.
+   EDUCATION AND THE NEW UTILITARIANISM, and other Educational
+     Addresses. By ALEXANDER DARROCH, M.A., Professor of
+     Education in the University of Edinburgh. Crown 8vo,
+     3_s_. 6_d_. net.
+   EDUCATION   AND PSYCHOLOGY. By MICHAEL WEST, Indian
+     Education Service. Crown 8vo, 5_s_. net.
+
+   Longmans, Green  and  Co.,
+   London, New York, Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras.
+
+
+     *     *     *     *
+
+
+THE EDUCATION OF CATHOLIC GIRLS
+
+by
+
+JANET ERSKINE STUART
+
+With a Preface by Cardinal Bourne
+Archbishop of Westminster
+
+Longmans, Green and Co.
+39 Paternoster Row, London
+Fourth Avenue & 30th Street, New York
+Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras
+
+Fourth Impression
+1914
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Nihil Obstat:
+F. THOS. BERGH, O.S.B.
+
+Imprimatur:
+FRANOISOUS CARD. BOURNE
+ABCHIEPOS WESIMONAST,
+
+die 1 Januarii, 1912.
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+We have had many treatises on education in recent years; many
+regulations have been issued by Government Departments; enormous sums
+of money are contributed annually from private and public sources for
+the improvement and development of education. Are the results in any
+degree proportioned to all these repeated and accumulated efforts? It
+would not be easy to find one, with practical experience of education,
+ready to give an unhesitatingly affirmative answer. And the
+explanation of the disappointing result obtained is very largely to be
+found in the neglect of the training of the will and character, which
+is the foundation of all true education. The programmes of Government,
+the grants made if certain conditions are fulfilled, the recognition
+accorded to a school if it conforms to a certain type, these things
+may have raised the standard of teaching, and forced attention to
+subjects of learning which were neglected; they have done little to
+promote education in the real sense of the term. Nay, more than this,
+the insistence on certain types of instruction which they have
+compelled has in too many cases paralysed the efforts of teachers who
+in their hearts were striving after a better way.
+
+The effect on some of our Catholic schools of the newer methods has
+not been free from harm. Compelled by force of circumstances, parental
+or financial, to throw themselves into the current of modern
+educational effort, they have at the same time been obliged to abandon
+the quieter traditional ways which, while making less display, left a
+deeper impress on the character of their pupils. Others have had the
+courage to cling closely to hallowed methods built up on the wisdom
+and experience of the past, and have united with them all that was not
+contradictory in recent educational requirements. They may, thereby,
+have seemed to some waiting in sympathy with the present, and
+attaching too great value to the past. The test of time will probably
+show that they have given to both past and present an equal share in
+their consideration.
+
+It will certainly be of singular advantage to those who are engaged in
+the education of Catholic girls to have before them a treatise written
+by one who has had a long and intimate experience of the work of which
+she writes. Loyal in every word to the soundest traditions of Catholic
+education, the writer recognizes to the full that the world into which
+Catholic girls pass nowadays on leaving school is not the world of a
+hundred, or of fifty, or of even thirty years ago. But this
+recognition brings out, more clearly than anything else could do, the
+great and unchanging fact that the formation of heart and will and
+character is, and must be always, the very root of the education of a
+child; and it also shows forth the new fact that at no time has that
+formation been more needed than at the present day.
+
+The pages of this book are well worthy of careful pondering and
+consideration, and they will be of special value both to parents and
+to teachers, for it is in their hands and in their united, and not
+opposing action, that the educational fate of the children lies.
+
+But I trust that the thoughts set forth upon these pages will not
+escape either the eyes or the thoughts of those who are the public
+custodians and arbiters of education in this country. The State is
+daily becoming more jealous in its control of educational effort in
+England. Would that its wisdom were equal to its jealousy. We might
+then be delivered from the repeated attempts to hamper definite
+religious teaching in secondary schools, by the refusal of public aid
+where the intention to impart it is publicly announced; and from the
+discouragement continually arising from regulations evidently inspired
+by those who have no personal experience of the work to be
+accomplished, and who decline to seek information from those to whom
+such work is their very life. It cannot, surely, be for the good of
+our country that the stored-up experience of educational effort of
+every type should be disregarded in favour of rigid rules and
+programmes; or that zeal and devotion in the work of education are to
+be regarded as valueless unless they be associated with so-called
+undenominational religion. The Catholic Church in this and in every
+country has centuries of educational tradition in her keeping. She has
+no more ardent wish than to place it all most generously at the
+service of the commonwealth, and to take her place in every movement
+that will be to the real advantage of the children upon whom the
+future of the world depends. And we have just ground for complaint
+when the conditions on which alone our co-operation will be allowed
+are of such a character as to make it evident that we are not intended
+to have any real place in the education of our country.
+
+May this treatise so ably written be a source of guidance and
+encouragement to those who are giving their lives to the education of
+Catholic children, and at the same time do something to dispel the
+distrust and to overcome the hostility shown in high quarters towards
+every Catholic educational endeavour.
+
+FRANCIS CARDINAL BOURNE,
+ARCHBISHOP OF WESTMINSTER.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+PREFACE
+INTRODUCTION
+CHAPTER
+    I. RELIGION
+   II. CHARACTER. I.
+  III. CHARACTER. II.
+   IV. THE ELEMENTS OF CATHOLIC PHILOSOPHY
+    V. THE REALITIES OF LIFE
+   VI. LESSONS AND PLAY
+  VII. MATHEMATICS, NATURAL SCIENCE, AND NATURE STUDY
+ VIII. ENGLISH
+   IX. MODERN LANGUAGES
+   X. HISTORY
+   XI. ART
+  XII. MANNERS
+ XIII. HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN
+  XIV. CONCLUSION
+       APPENDIX I
+       APPENDIX II
+       INDEX
+
+
+
+
+Pair though it be, to watch unclose
+The nestling glories of a rose,
+Depth on rich depth, soft fold on fold;
+Though fairer he it, to behold
+Stately and sceptral lilies break
+To beauty, and to sweetness wake:
+Yet fairer still, to see and sing,
+One fair thing is, one matchless thing:
+Youth, in its perfect blossoming.
+                      LIONEL JOHNSON.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+A book was published in the United States in 1910 with the title,
+EDUCATION: HOW OLD THE NEW. A companion volume might be written with a
+similar title, EDUCATION: HOW NEW THE OLD, and it would only exhibit
+another aspect of the same truth.
+
+This does not pretend to be that possible companion volume, but to
+present a point of view which owes something both to old and new, and
+to make an appeal for the education of Catholic girls to have its
+distinguishing features recognized and freely developed in view of
+ultimate rather than immediate results.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+RELIGION.
+
+"Oh! say not, dream not, heavenly notes
+   To childish ears are vain,
+That the young mind at random floats,
+   And cannot reach the strain.
+
+"Dim or unheard, the words may fall.
+   And yet the Heaven-taught mind
+May learn the sacred air, and all
+   The harmony unwind."
+                                          KEBLE.
+
+The principal educational controversies of the present day rage round
+the teaching of religion to children, but they are more concerned with
+the right to teach it than with what is taught, in fact none of the
+combatants except the Catholic body seem to have a clear notion of
+what they actually want to teach, when the right has been secured. It
+is not the controversy but the fruits of it that are here in question,
+the echoes of battle and rumours of wars serve to enhance the
+importance of the matter, the duty of making it all worth while, and
+using to the best advantage the opportunities which are secured at the
+price of so many conflicts.
+
+The duty is twofold, to God and to His children. God, who entrusts to
+us their religious education, has a right to be set before them as
+truly, as nobly, as worthily as our capacity allows, as beautifully as
+human language can convey the mysteries of faith, with the quietness
+and confidence of those who know and are not afraid, and filial pride
+in the Christian inheritance which is ours. The child has a right to
+learn the best that it can know of God, since the happiness of its
+life, not only in eternity but even in time, is bound up in that
+knowledge. Most grievous wrong has been done, and is still done,
+to children by well-meaning but misguided efforts to "make them
+good" by dwelling on the vengeance taken by God upon the wicked, on
+the possibilities of wickedness in the youngest child. Their
+impressionable minds are quite ready to take alarm, they are so small,
+and every experience is so new; there are so many great forces at work
+which can be dimly guessed at, and to their vivid imaginations who can
+say what may happen next? If the first impressions of God conveyed to
+them are gloomy and terrible, a shadow may be cast over the mind so
+far-reaching that perhaps a whole lifetime may not carry them beyond
+it. They hear of a sleepless Bye that ever watches, to see them doing
+wrong, an Bye from which they cannot escape. There is the Judge of
+awful severity who admits no excuse, who pursues with relentless
+perseverance to the very end and whose resources for punishment are
+inexhaustible. What wonder if a daring and defiant spirit turns at
+last and stands at bay against the resistless Avenger, and if in later
+years the practical result is--"if we may not escape, let us try to
+forget," or the drifting of a whole life into indifference, languor of
+will, and pessimism that border on despair.
+
+Parents could not bear to be so misrepresented to their children, and
+what condemnation would be sufficient for teachers who would turn the
+hearts of children against their father, poisoning the very springs of
+life. Yet this wrong is done to God. In general, children taught by
+their own parents do not suffer so much from these misrepresentations
+of God, as those who have been left with servants and ignorant
+teachers, themselves warped by a wrong early training. Fathers and
+mothers must have within themselves too much intuition of the
+Fatherhood of God not to give another tone to their teaching, and
+probably it is from fathers and mothers, as they are in themselves
+symbols of God's almighty power and unmeasured love, that the first
+ideas of Him can best reach the minds of little children.
+
+But it is rare that circumstances admit the continuance of this best
+instruction. For one reason or another children pass on to other
+teachers and, except for what can be given directly by the clergy,
+must depend on them for further religious instruction. This further
+teaching, covering, say, eight years of school life, ten to eighteen,
+falls more or less into two periods, one in which the essentials of
+Christian life and doctrine have to be learned, the other in which
+more direct preparation may be made for the warfare of faith which
+must be encountered when the years of school life are over. It is a
+great stewardship to be entrusted with the training of God's royal
+family of children, during these years on which their after life
+almost entirely depends, and "it is required among stewards that a man
+may be found faithful." For other branches of teaching it is more easy
+to ascertain that the necessary qualifications are not wanting, but in
+this the qualifications lie so deeply hidden between God and the
+conscience that they must often be taken for granted, and the
+responsibility lies all the more directly with the teacher who has to
+live the life, as well as to know the truth, and love both truth and
+life in order to make them loved. These are qualifications that are
+never attained, because they must always be in process of attainment,
+only one who is constantly growing in grace and love and knowledge can
+give the true appreciation of what that grace and love and knowledge
+are in their bearing on human life: to _be_ rather than to _know_ is
+therefore a primary qualification. Inseparably bound up with it is the
+thinking right thoughts concerning what is to be taught.
+
+1. To have right thoughts of God. It would seem to be too obvious to
+need statement, yet experience shows that this fundamental necessity
+is not always secure, far from it. It is not often put into words, but
+traces may be found only too easily of foundations of religion laid in
+thoughts of God that are unworthy of our faith. Whence can they have
+come? Doubtless in great measure from the subtle spirit of Jansenism
+which spread so widely in its day and is so hard to outlive--from
+remains of the still darker spirit of Calvinism which hangs about
+convert teachers of a rigid school--from vehement and fervid spiritual
+writers, addressing themselves to the needs of other times--perhaps
+most of all from the old lie which was from the beginning, the deep
+mistrust of God which is the greatest triumph of His enemy. God is set
+forth as if He were encompassed with human limitations--the fiery
+imagery of the Old Testament pressed into the service of modern and
+western minds, until He is made to seem pitiless, revengeful,
+exacting, lying in wait to catch His creatures in fault, and awaiting
+them at death with terrible surprises.
+
+But this is not what the Church and the Gospels have to say about Him
+to the children of the kingdom. If we could put into words our highest
+ideals of all that is most lovely and lovable, beautiful, tender,
+gracious, liberal, strong, constant, patient, unwearying, add what we
+can, multiply it a million times, tire out our imagination beyond it,
+and then say that it is nothing to what He is, that it is the weakest
+expression of His goodness and beauty, we shall give a poor idea of
+God indeed, but at least, as far as it goes, it will be true, and it
+will lead to trustfulness and friendship, to a right attitude of mind,
+as child to father, and creature to Creator. We speak as we believe,
+there is an accent of sincerity that carries conviction if we speak of
+God as we believe, and if we believe truly, we shall speak of Him
+largely, trustfully, and happily, whether in the dogmas of our faith,
+or as we find His traces and glorious attributes in the world around
+us, as we consider the lilies of the field and the birds of the air,
+or as we track with reverent and unprecipitate following the line of
+His providential government in the history of the world.
+
+The need of right thoughts of God is also deeply felt on the side of
+our relations to Him, and that especially in our democratic times when
+sovereignty is losing its meaning. There are free and easy ideas of
+God, as if man might criticize and question and call Him to account,
+and have his say on the doings of the Creator. It is not explanation
+or apology that answer these, but a right thought of God makes them
+impossible, and this right thought can only be given if we have it
+ourselves. The Fatherhood of God and the Sovereignty of God are
+foundations of belief which complete one another, and bear up all the
+superstructure of a child's understanding of Christian life.
+
+2. Eight ideas of ourselves and of our destiny. It is a pity that evil
+instead of good is made a prominent feature of religious teaching. To
+be haunted by the thought of evil and the dread of losing our soul,
+as if it were a danger threatening us at every step, is not the
+most inspiring ideal of life; quiet, steady, unimaginative fear and
+watchfulness is harder to teach, but gives a stronger defence against
+sin than an ever present terror; while all that belongs to hope
+awakens a far more effective response to good. Some realization of our
+high destiny as heirs of heaven is the strongest hold that the average
+character can have to give steadiness in prosperity and courage in
+adversity. Chosen souls will rise higher than this, but if the average
+can reach so far as this they will do well.
+
+3. Eight ideas of sin and evil. It is possible on the one hand to give
+such imperfect ideas of right and wrong that all is measured by the
+mere selfish standard of personal security. The frightened question
+about some childish wrong-doing--"is it a mortal sin?" often indicates
+that fear of punishment is the only aspect under which sin appears to
+the mind; while a satisfied tone in saying "it is only a venial sin"
+looks like a desire to see what liberties may be taken with God
+without involving too serious consequences to self. "It is wrong"
+ought to be enough, and the less children talk of mortal sin the
+better--to talk of it, to discuss with them whether this or that is a
+mortal sin, accustoms them to the idea. When they know well the
+conditions which make a sin grave without illustrations by example
+which are likely to obscure the subject rather than clear it up, when
+their ideas of right and duty and obligation are clear, when "I ought"
+has a real meaning for them, we shall have a stronger type of
+character than that which is formed on detailed considerations of
+different degrees of guilt.
+
+On the other hand it is possible to confuse and torment children by
+stories of the exquisite delicacy of the consciences of the saints, as
+St. Aloysius, setting before them a standard that is beyond their
+comprehension or their degree of grace, and making them miserable
+because they cannot conform to it.
+
+It is a great safeguard against sin to realize that duty must be done,
+at any cost, and that Christianity means self-denial and taking up the
+cross.
+
+4. Eight thoughts of the four last things. True thoughts of death are
+not hard for children to grasp, to their unspoiled faith it is a
+simple and joyful thing to go to God. Later on the dreary pageantry
+and the averted face of the world from that which is indeed its doom
+obscure the Christian idea, and the mind slips back to pagan grief, as
+if there were no life to come.
+
+Eight thoughts of judgment are not so hard to give if the teaching is
+sincere and simple, free from exaggerations and phantoms of dread, and
+on the other hand clear from an incredulous protest against God's
+holding man responsible for his acts.
+
+But to give right thoughts of hell and heaven taxes the best
+resources of those who wish to lay foundations well, for they are
+to be foundations for life, and the two lessons belong together,
+corner-stones of the building, to stand in view as long as it shall
+stand and never to be forgotten.
+
+The two lessons belong together as the final destiny of man, fixed by
+his own act, _this_ or _that_. And they have to be taught with all the
+force and gravity and dignity which befits the subject, and in such a
+way that after years will find nothing to smile at and nothing to
+unlearn. They have to be taught as the mind of the present time can
+best apprehend them, not according to the portraiture of mediaeval
+pictures, but in a language perhaps not more true and adequate
+in itself but less boisterous and more comprehensible to our
+self-conscious and introspective moods. Father Faber's treatment
+of these last things, hell and heaven, would furnish matter for
+instruction not beyond the understanding of those in their last years
+at school, and of a kind which if understood must leave a mark upon
+the mind for life. [1 See Appendix I.]
+
+5. Eight views of Jesus Christ and His mother. For Catholic children
+this relationship is not a thing far off, but the faith which teaches
+them of God Incarnate bids them also understand that He is their own
+"God who gives joy to their youth"--and that His mother is also
+theirs. There are many incomprehensible things in which children are
+taught to affirm their belief, and the acts of faith in which they
+recite these truths are far beyond their understanding. But they can
+and do understand if we take pains to teach them that they are loved
+by Our Lord each one alone, intimately and personally, and asked to
+love in return. "Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and
+forbid them not," is not for them a distant echo of what was heard
+long ago in the Holy Land, it is no story, but a living reality of to
+day. They are themselves the children who are invited to come to Him,
+better off indeed than those first called, since they are not now
+rebuked or kept off by the Apostles but brought to the front and given
+the first places, invited by order of His Vicar from their earliest
+years to receive the Bread of Heaven, and giving delight to His
+representatives on earth by accepting the invitation.
+
+It is the reality as contrasted with the story that is the prerogative
+of the Catholic child. Jesus and Mary are real, and are its own
+closest kin, all but visible, at moments intensely felt as present.
+They are there in joy and in trouble, when every one else fails in
+understanding or looks displeased there is this refuge, there is this
+love which always forgives, and sets things right, and to whom nothing
+is unimportant or without interest. Companionship in loneliness,
+comfort in trouble, relief in distress, endurance in pain are all to
+be found in them. With Jesus and Mary what is there in the whole world
+of which a Catholic child should be afraid. And this glorious strength
+of theirs made perfect in child-martyrs in many ages will make them
+again child-martyrs now if need be, or confessors of the holy faith as
+they are not seldom called upon, even now, to show themselves.
+
+There is a strange indomitable courage in children which has its deep
+springs in these Divine things; the strength which they find in Holy
+Communion and in their love for Jesus and Mary is enough to overcome
+in them all weakness and fear.
+
+6. Eight thoughts of the faith and practice of Christian life. And
+here it is necessary to guard against what is childish, visionary, and
+exuberant, against things that only feed the fancy or excite the
+imagination, against practices which are adapted to other races than
+ours, but with us are liable to become unreal and irreverent, against
+too vivid sense impressions and especially against attaching too much
+importance to them, against grotesque and puerile forms of piety,
+which drag down the beautiful devotions to the saints until they are
+treated as inhabitants of a superior kind of doll's house, rewarded
+and punished, scolded and praised, endowed with pet names, and treated
+so as to become objects of ridicule to those who do not realize that
+these extravagances may be in other countries natural forms of peasant
+piety when the grace of intimacy with the saints has run wild. In
+northern countries a greater sobriety of devotion is required if it is
+to have any permanent influence on life.
+
+But again, on the other hand, the more restrained devotion must not
+lose its spontaneity; so long as it is the true expression of faith it
+can hardly be too simple, it can never be too intimate a part of
+common life. Noble friendships with the saints in glory are one of the
+most effectual means of learning heavenly-mindedness, and friendships
+formed in childhood will last through a lifetime. To find a character
+like one's own which has fought the same fight and been crowned, is an
+encouragement which obtains great victories, and to enter into the
+thoughts of the saints is to qualify oneself here below for
+intercourse with the citizens of heaven.
+
+To be well grounded in the elements of faith, and to have been so
+taught that the practice of religion has become the atmosphere of a
+happy life, to have the habit of sanctifying daily duties, joys, and
+trials by the thought of God, and a firm resolve that nothing shall be
+allowed to draw the soul away from Him, such is, broadly speaking, the
+aim we may set before ourselves for the end of the years of childhood,
+after which must follow the more difficult years of the training of
+youth.
+
+The time has gone by when the faith of childhood might be carried
+through life and be assailed by no questionings from without. A faith
+that is not armed and ready for conflict stands a poor chance of
+passing victoriously through its trials, it cannot hope to escape from
+being tried. "We have laboured successfully," wrote a leading Jewish
+Freemason in Rome addressing his Brotherhood, "in the great cities and
+among the young men; it remains for us to carry out the work in the
+country districts and amongst the women." Words could not be plainer
+to show what awaits the faith of children when they come out into the
+world; and even in countries where the aim is not so clearly set forth
+the current of opinion mostly sets against the faith, the current of
+the world invariably does so. For faith to hold on its course against
+all that tends to carry it away, it is needful that it should not be
+found unprepared. The minds of the young cannot expect to be carried
+along by a Catholic public opinion, there will be few to help them,
+and they must learn to stand by themselves, to answer for themselves,
+to be challenged and not afraid to speak out for their faith, to be
+able to give "first aid" to unsettled minds and not allow their own
+to be unsettled by what they hear. They must learn that, as Father
+Dalgairns points out, their position in the world is far more akin to
+that of Christians in the first centuries of the Church than to the
+life that was lived in the middle ages when the Church visibly ruled
+over public opinion. Now, as in the earliest ages, the faithful
+stand in small assemblies or as individuals amid cold or hostile
+surroundings, and individual faith and sanctity are the chief means of
+extending the kingdom of God on earth.
+
+But this apostleship needs preparation and training. The early
+teaching requires to be seasoned and hardened to withstand the
+influences which tend to dissolve faith and piety; by this seasoning
+faith must be enlightened, and piety become serene and grave,
+"sedate," as St. Francis of Sales would say with beautiful commentary.
+In the last years of school or school-room life the mind has to be
+gradually inured to the harder life, to the duty of defending as well
+as adorning the faith, and to gain at least some idea of the enemies
+against which defence must be made. It is something even to know what
+is in the air and what may be expected that the first surprise may not
+disturb the balance of the mind. To know that in the Church there have
+been sorrows and scandals, without the promises of Christ having
+failed, and even that it had to be so, fulfilling His word, "it must
+needs be that scandals come" (St. Matthew XVIII. 7), that they are
+therefore rather a confirmation than a stumbling-block to our faith,
+this is a necessary safeguard. To have some unpretentious knowledge of
+what is said and thought concerning Holy Scripture, to know at least
+something about Modernism and other phases of current opinion is
+necessary, without making a study of their subtilties, for the most
+insecure attitude of mind for girls is to _think they know_, in these
+difficult questions, and the best safeguard both of their faith and
+good sense is intellectual modesty. Without making acquaintance in
+detail with the phenomena of spiritualism and kindred arts or
+sciences, it is needful to know in a plain and general way why they
+are forbidden by the Church, and also to know how those who have lost
+their balance and peace of mind in these pursuits would willingly draw
+back, but find it next to impossible to free themselves from the
+servitude in which they are entangled. It is hard for some minds to
+resist the restless temptation to feel, to see, to test and handle all
+that life can offer of strange and mysterious experiences, and next to
+the curb of duty comes the safeguard of greatly valuing freedom of
+mind.
+
+Curiosity concerning evil or dangerous knowledge is more impetuous
+when a sudden emancipation of mind sweeps the old landmarks and
+restraints out of sight, and nothing has been foreseen which can
+serve as a guide. Then is the time when weak places in education show
+themselves, when the least insincerity in the presentment of truth
+brings its own punishment, and a faith not pillared and grounded in
+all honesty is in danger of failing. The best security is to have
+nothing to unlearn, to know that what one knows is a very small part
+of what can be known, but that as far as it goes it is true and
+genuine, and cannot be outgrown, that it will stand both the wear of
+time and the test of growing power of thought, and that those who have
+taught these beliefs will never have to retract or be ashamed of them,
+or own that they were passed off, though inadequate, upon the minds of
+children.
+
+It is not unusual to meet girls who are troubled with "doubts" as to
+faith and difficulties which alarm both them and their friends.
+Sometimes when these "doubts" are put into words they turn out to be
+mere difficulties, and it has not been understood that "ten thousand
+difficulties do not make a doubt." Sometimes the difficulties are
+scarcely real, and come simply from catching up objections which they
+do not know how to answer, and think unanswerable. Sometimes a spirit
+of contradiction has been aroused, and a captious tendency, or a love
+of excitement and sensationalism, with a wish to see the other side.
+Sometimes imperfect teaching has led them to expect the realization of
+things as seen, which are only to be assented to as believed, so that
+there is a hopeless effort to _imagine_, to _feel_, and to _feel
+sure_, to lean in some way upon what the senses can verify, and the
+acquiescence, assent, and assurance of faith seems all insufficient to
+give security. Sometimes there is genuine ignorance of what is to be
+believed, and of what it is to believe. Sometimes it is merely a
+question of nerves, a want of tone in the mind, insufficient
+occupation and training which has thrown the mind back upon itself to
+its own confusion. Sometimes they come from want of understanding that
+there must be mysteries in faith, and a multitude of questions that do
+not admit of complete answers, that God would not be God if the
+measure of our minds could compass His, that the course of His
+Providence must transcend our experience and judgment, and that if the
+truths of faith forced the assent of our minds all the value of that
+assent would be taken away. If these causes and a few others were
+removed one may ask oneself how many "doubts" and difficulties would
+remain in the ordinary walks of Catholic life.
+
+It seems to be according to the mind of the Church in our days to turn
+the minds of her children to the devotional study of Scripture, and if
+this is begun, as it may be, in the early years of education it gains
+an influence which is astonishing. The charm of the narrative in the
+very words of Scripture, and the jewels of prayer and devotion which
+may be gathered in the Sacred Books, are within the reach of children,
+and they prepare a treasure of knowledge and love which will grow in
+value during a lifetime. Arms are there, too, against many
+difficulties and temptations; and a better understanding of the
+Church's teaching and of the liturgy which is the best standard of
+devotion for the faithful.
+
+The blight of Scriptural knowledge is to make it a "subject" for
+examinations, running in a parallel track with Algebra and Geography,
+earning its measure of marks and submitted to the tests of
+non-Catholic examining bodies, to whom it speaks in another tongue
+than ours. It must be a very robust devotion to the word of God that
+is not chilled by such treatment, and can keep an early Christian glow
+in its readings of the Gospels and Epistles whether they have proved a
+failure or a success in the examination. In general, Catholic
+candidates acquit themselves well in this subject, and perhaps it may
+give some edification to non-Catholic examiners when they see these
+results. But it is questionable whether the risk of drying up the
+affection of children for what must become to them a text-book is
+worth this measure of success. Let experience speak for those who know
+if it is not so; it would seem in the nature of things that so it must
+be. When it is given over to voluntary study (beyond the diocesan
+requirements which are a stimulus and not a blight) it catches, not
+like wild fire, but like blessed fire, even among young children, and
+is woven imperceptibly into the texture of life.
+
+Lastly, what may be asked of Catholic children when they grow up and
+have to take upon themselves the responsibility of keeping their own
+faith alive, and the practice of their religion in an atmosphere which
+may often be one of cold faith and slack observance? Neither their
+spiritual guides, nor those who have educated them, nor their own
+parents, can take this responsibility out of their hands. St. Francis
+of Sales calls science the 8th Sacrament for a priest, urging the
+clergy to give themselves earnestly to study, and he says that great
+troubles have come upon us because the sacred ark of knowledge was
+found in other hands than those of the Levites. Leo XIII wrote in one
+of his great encyclicals that "Every minister of holy religion must
+bring to the struggle the full energy of his mind and all his power of
+endurance." What about the laity? We cannot leave all the battle to
+the clergy; they cannot defend and instruct and carry us into the
+kingdom of heaven in spite of ourselves; their labours call for
+response and correspondence. What about those who are now leaving
+childhood behind and will be in the front ranks of the coming
+generation? Their influence will make or unmake the religion of their
+homes, and what they will be for the whole of their life will depend
+very much upon how they take their first independent stand.
+
+It is much that they should be well grounded in those elements of
+doctrine which they can learn in their school-days. It is much more if
+they carry out with them a living interest in the subject and care to
+watch the current of the Church's thought in the encyclicals that are
+addressed to the faithful, the pastorals of Bishops, the works of
+Catholic writers which, are more and more within the reach of all, in
+the great events of the Church's life, and in the talk of those who
+are able to speak from first-hand knowledge and experience. It is most
+of all fundamental that they should have an attitude of mind that is
+worthy of their faith; one that is not nervous or apologetic for the
+Church, not anxious about the Pope lest he should "interfere too
+much," nor frightened of what the world may say. They should have an
+unperturbed conviction that the Church will have the last word in any
+controversy, and that she has nothing to be alarmed at, though all the
+battalions of newest thought should be set in array against her; they
+should be lovingly proud of the Church, and keep their belief in her
+at all times joyous, assured, and unafraid.
+
+Theology is not for them, neither required nor obtainable, though some
+have been found enterprising enough to undertake to read the _Summa_,
+and naive enough to suppose that they would be theologians at the end
+of it, and even at the outset ready to exchange ideas with Doctors of
+Divinity on efficacious grace, and to have "views" on the authorship
+of the Sacred Writings. Such aspirations either come to an untimely
+end by an awakening sense of proportion, or remain as monuments to the
+efforts of those "less wise," or in some unfortunate cases the mind
+loses its balance and is led into error.
+
+"Thirsting to be more than mortal,
+I was even less than clay."
+
+Let us, if we can, keep the bolder spirits on the level of what is
+congruous, where the wealth that is within their reach will not be
+exhausted in their lifetime, and where they may excel without offence
+and without inviting either condemnation or ridicule. The sense of
+fitness is a saving instinct in this as in 1 every other department of
+life. When it is present, first principles come home like intuitions
+to the mind, where it is absent they seem to take no hold at all, and
+the understanding that should supply for the right instinct makes slow
+and laborious way if it ever enters at all.
+
+To know the relation in which one stands to any department of
+knowledge is, in that department, "the beginning of wisdom". The great
+Christian Basilicas furnish a parallel in the material order. They are
+the house of God and the home and possession of every member of the
+Church militant without distinction of age or rank or learning. But
+they are not the same to each. Every one brings his own understanding
+and faith and insight, and the great Church is to him what he has
+capacity to understand and to receive. The great majority of
+worshippers could not draw a fine of the plans or expound a law of the
+construction, or set a stone in its place, yet the whole of it is
+theirs and for them, and their reverent awe, even if they have no
+further understanding, adds a spiritual grace and a fuller dignity to
+the whole. The child, the beggar, the pilgrim, the penitent, the lowly
+servants and custodians of the temple, the clergy, the venerable
+choir, the highest authorities from whom come the order and regulation
+of the ceremonies, all have their parts, all stand in their special
+relations harmoniously sharing in different degrees in what is for
+all. Even those long since departed, architects and builders and
+donors, are not cut off from it, their works follow them, and their
+memory lives in the beauty which stands as a memorial to their great
+ideals. It is all theirs, it is all ours, it is all God's. And so of
+the great basilica of theology, built up and ever in course of
+building; it is for all--but for each according to his needs---for
+their use, for their instruction, to surround and direct their
+worship, to be a security and defence to their souls, a great Church
+in which the spirit is raised heavenwards in proportion to the faith
+and submission with which it bows down in adoration before the throne
+of God.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+CHARACTER I.
+
+"La vertu maitresse d'aujourd'hui est la spontaneite
+resolue, reglee par les principes interieurs et les
+disciplines volontairement acceptees."--Y. LE QUERDEC.
+
+The value set on character, even if the appreciation goes no further
+than words, has increased very markedly within the last few years, and
+in reaction against an exclusively mental training we hear louder and
+louder the plea for the formation and training of character.
+
+Primarily the word _character_ signifies a distinctive mark, cut,
+engraved, or stamped upon a substance, and by analogy, this is
+likewise character in the sense in which it concerns education. A "man
+of character" is one in whom acquired qualities, orderly and
+consistent, stand out on the background of natural temperament, as the
+result of training and especially of self-discipline, and therefore
+stamped or engraved upon something receptive which was prepared for
+them. This something receptive is the natural temperament, a basis
+more or less apt to receive what training and habit may bring to bear
+upon it. The sum of acquired habits tells upon the temperament, and
+together with it produce or establish character, as the arms engraved
+upon the stone constitute the seal.
+
+If habits are not acquired by training, and instead of them
+temperament alone has been allowed to have its way in the years of
+growth, the seal bears no arms engraven on it, and the result is want
+of character, or a weak character, without distinctive mark, showing
+itself in the various situations of life inconsistent, variable,
+unequal to strain, acting on the impulse, good or bad, of the moment;
+its fitful strength in moods of obstinacy or self-will showing that it
+lacks the higher qualities of rational discernment and self-control.
+
+"Character is shown by susceptibility to motive," says a modern
+American, turning with true American instinct to the practical side in
+which he has made experiences, and it is evidently one of the readiest
+ways of approaching the study of any individual character, to make
+sure of the motives which awaken response. But the result of habit and
+temperament working together shows itself in every form of spontaneous
+activity as well as in response to external stimulus. Character may be
+studied in tastes and sympathies, in the manner of treating with one's
+fellow creatures, of confronting various "situations" in life, in the
+ideals aimed at, in the estimate of success or failure, in the
+relative importance attached to things, in the choice of friends and
+the ultimate fate of friendships, in what is expected and taken for
+granted, as in what is habitually ignored, in the instinctive attitude
+towards law and authority, towards custom and tradition, towards order
+and progress.
+
+Character, then, may stand for the sum of the qualities which go to
+make one to be _thus_, and not otherwise; but the basis which
+underlies and constantly reasserts itself is temperament. It makes
+people angry to say this, if they are determined to be so completely
+masters of their way in life that nothing but reason, in the natural
+order, shall be their guide; but though heroism of soul has overcome
+the greatest drawbacks of an unfortunate physical organization, these
+cases are rare, and in general it must be taken into account to such
+an extent that the battle against difficulties of temperament is the
+battle of a lifetime. There are certain broad divisions which although
+they cannot pretend to rest upon scientific principles yet appeal
+constantly to experience, and often serve as practical guides to
+forecast the lines on which particular characters may be developed.
+There is a very striking division into assenting and dissenting
+temperaments, children of _yes_ and children of _no_; a division which
+declares itself very early and is maintained all along the lines of
+early development, in mind and will and taste and manner, in every
+phase of activity. And though time and training and the schooling of
+life may modify its expression, yet below the surface it would seem
+only to accentuate itself, as the features of character become more
+marked with advancing years. Where it touches the religious
+disposition one would say that some were born with the minds of
+Catholics and, others of Nonconformists, representing respectively
+centripetal and centrifugal tendencies of mind; the first apt to see
+harmony and order, to realize the tenth of things that must be as they
+are, the second born to be in opposition and with great labour
+subduing themselves into conformity. They are precious aids in the
+service of the Church as controversialists when enlisted on the right
+side, for controversy is their element. But for positive doctrine, for
+keen appreciation, for persuasive action on the wills of others, they
+are at a disadvantage, at all events in England, where logic does not
+enter into the national religious system, and the mind is apt to
+resent conviction as if it were a kind of coercion. There are a great
+number of such born Nonconformists in England, and when either the
+grace of Catholic education or of conversion has been granted to them,
+it is interesting to watch the efforts to subdue and attune themselves
+to submission and to faith. Sometimes the Nonconformist temperament is
+the greatest of safeguards, where a Catholic child is obliged to stand
+alone amongst uncongenial surroundings, then it defends itself
+doggedly, splendidly, and comes out after years in a Protestant school
+quite untouched in its faith and much strengthened in militant
+Christianity. These are cheerful instances of its development, and its
+advantages; they would suggest that some external opposition or
+friction is necessary for such temperaments that their fighting
+instinct may be directed against the common enemy, and not tend to
+arouse controversies and discussions in its own ranks or within
+itself. In less happy cases the instinct of opposition is a cause of
+endless trouble, friction in family life, difficulty in working with
+others, "alarums, excursions" on all sides, and worse, the get
+attitude of distrust towards authority, which undermines the
+foundations of faith and prepares the mind to break away from control,
+to pass from instinctive opposition to antagonism, from antagonism to
+contempt, from contempt to rebellion and revolt. Arrogance of mind,
+irreverence, self-idolatry, blindness, follow in their course, and the
+whole nature loses its balance and becomes through pride a pitiful
+wreck.
+
+The assenting mind has its own possibilities for good and evil, more
+human than those of Nonconformity, for "pride was not made for men"
+(Ecclus. x 22), less liable to great catastrophes, and in general
+better adapted for all that belongs to the service of God and man. It
+is a happy endowment, and the happiness of others is closely bound up
+with its own. Again, its faults being more human are more easily
+corrected, and fortunately for the possessor, punish themselves more
+often. This favours truthfulness in the mind and humility in the
+soul--the spirit of the _Confiteor_. Its dangers are those of too easy
+assent, of inordinate pursuit of particular good, of inconstancy and
+variability, of all the humanistic elements which lead back to
+paganism. The history of the Renaissance in Southern Europe testifies
+to this, as it illustrates in other countries the development of the
+spirit of Nonconformity and revolt. Calvinism and a whole group of
+Protestant schools of thought may stand as examples of the spirit of
+denial working itself out to its natural consequences; while the
+exaggerations of Italian humanism, frankly pagan, are fair
+illustrations of the spirit of assent carried beyond bounds. And those
+centuries when the tide of life ran high for good or evil, furnish
+instances in point abounding with interest and instruction, more
+easily accessible than what can be gathered from modern characters, in
+whom less clearly defined temperaments and more complex conditions of
+life have made it harder to distinguish the characteristic features of
+the mind. To mention only one or two--St. Francis of Sales and Blessed
+Thomas More were great assentors, so were Pico de Mirandola and the
+great Popes of the Renaissance, an example of a great Nonconformist is
+Savonarola.
+
+The old division of temperaments into phlegmatic or lymphatic,
+sanguine, choleric, and nervous or melancholy, is a fairly good
+foundation for preliminary observation, especially as each of the four
+subdivides itself easily into two types--the hard and soft--reforms
+itself easily into some cross-divisions, and refuses to be blended
+into others. Thus a very fine type of character is seen when the
+characteristics of the sanguine and choleric are blended the qualities
+of one correcting the faults of the other, and a very poor one if a
+yielding lymphatic temperament has also a strain of melancholy to
+increase its tendency towards inaction. It is often easy to discern in
+a group of children the leading characteristics of these temperaments,
+the phlegmatic or lymphatic, hard or soft, not easily stirred, one
+stubborn and the other yielding, both somewhat immobile, generally
+straightforward and reliable, law abiding, accessible to reason, not
+exposed to great dangers nor likely to reach unusual heights. Next the
+sanguine, hard or soft, as hope or enjoyment have the upper hand in
+them; this is the richest group in attractive power. If hope is the
+stronger factor there is a fund of energy which, allied with the power
+of charm and persuasion, with trustfulness in good, and optimistic
+outlook on the world, wins its way and succeeds in its undertakings,
+making its appeal to the will rather than to the mind. On the softer
+side of this type are found the disappointing people who ought to do
+well, and always fail, for whom the _joie de vivre_ carries everything
+before it, who are always good natured, always obliging, always
+sweet-tempered, who cannot say no, especially to themselves, whose
+energy is exhausted in a very short burst of effort, though ever ready
+to direct itself into some new channel for as brief a trial. The
+characters which remain "characters of great promise" to the end of
+their days, great promise doomed to be always unfulfilled. Of all
+characters, these are perhaps the most disappointing; they have so
+much in their favour, and the one thing wanting, steadiness of
+purpose, renders useless their most beautiful gifts. These two groups
+seem to be the most common among the Teutons and Celts of Northern
+Europe with fair colouring and tall build; perhaps the other two types
+are correspondingly more numerous among the Latin races. They are
+choleric, ambitious, or self-isolated, as the cast of their mind is
+eager or scornful and generally capable of dissimulation; the world is
+not large enough for their Bonapartes. But if bitterness and sadness
+predominate, they are carried on an ebbing tide towards pessimism and
+contemptuous weariness of life; their soft type, in so far as they
+have one, has the softness of powder, dry and crushed, rather than
+that of a living organism. In children, this type, fortunately rare,
+has not the charm or joy of childhood, but shows a restless straining
+after some self-centred excellence, and a coldness of affection which
+indicates the isolation towards which it is carried in later life.
+Lastly, there is the unquiet group of nervous or melancholic
+temperaments, their melancholy not weighed down by listless sadness as
+the inactive lymphatics, but more actively dissatisfied with things as
+they are--untiringly but unhopefully at work--hard on themselves,
+anxious-minded, assured that in spite of their efforts all will turn
+out for the worst, often scrupulous, capable of long-sustained
+efforts, often of heroic devotedness and superhuman endurance, for
+which their reward is not in this world, as the art of pleasing is
+singularly deficient in them. Here are found the people who are "so
+good, but so trying," ever in a fume and fuss, who, for sheer
+goodness, rouse in others the spirit of contradiction. These
+characters are at their best in adversity, trouble stimulates them to
+their best efforts, whereas in easy circumstances and surrounded with
+affection they are apt to drop into querulous and exacting habits. If
+they are endowed with more than ordinary energy it is in the direction
+of diplomacy, and not always frank. On the whole this is the character
+whose features are least clearly defined, over which a certain mystery
+hangs, and strange experiences are not unfrequent It is difficult to
+deal with its elusive showings and vanishings, and this melting away
+and reappearing seems in some to become a habit and even a matter of
+choice, with a determination _not to be known_.
+
+Taking these groups as a rough classification for observation of
+character, it is possible to get a fair idea of the raw material of a
+class, though it may be thankfully added that in the Church no
+material is really raw, with the grace of Baptism in the soul and
+later on the Sacrament of Penance, to clear its obscurities and
+explain it to itself and by degrees to transform its tendencies and
+with grace and guidance to give it a steady impulse towards the better
+things. Confirmation and First Communion sometimes sensibly and even
+suddenly transfigure a character; but even apart from such choice
+instances the gradual work of the Sacraments brings Catholic children
+under a discipline in which the habit of self-examination, the
+constant necessity for effort, the truthful avowal of being in the
+wrong, the acceptance of penance as a due, the necessary submissions
+and self-renunciations of obedience to the Church, give a training of
+their own. So a practicing Catholic child is educated unconsciously by
+a thousand influences, each of which, supernatural in itself, tells
+beyond the supernatural sphere and raises the natural qualities, by
+self-knowledge, by truth, by the safeguard of religion against
+hardness and isolation and the blindness of pride, even if the minimum
+of educational facilities have been at work to take advantage of these
+openings for good. A Catholic child is a child, and keeps a childlike
+spirit for life, unless the early training is completely shipwrecked,
+and even then there are memories which are means of recovery, and the
+way home to the Father's house is known. It may be hoped that very
+many never leave it, and never lose the sense of being one of the
+great family, "of the household of faith." They enjoy the freedom of
+the house, the rights of children, the ministries of all the graces
+which belong to the household, the power of being at home in every
+place because the Church is there with its priesthood and its
+Sacraments, responsible for its children, and able to supply the wants
+of their souls. It is scarcely possible to find among Catholic
+children the inaccessible little bits of flint who are not _brought_
+up, but bring up their own souls outside the Church--proud in their
+isolation, most proud of never yielding inward obedience or owning
+themselves in the wrong, and of being sufficient for themselves. When
+the grace of Q-od reaches them and they are admitted into the Church,
+one of the most overwhelming experiences is that of becoming one of a
+family, for whom there is some one responsible, the Father of the
+family whose authority and love pass through their appointed channels,
+down to the least child.
+
+There is no such thing as an orphan child within the Church, there are
+possibilities of training and development which belong to those who
+have to educate the young which must appeal particularly to Catholic
+teachers, for they know more than others the priceless value of the
+children with whom they have to do. Children, souls, freighted for
+their voyage through life, vessels so frail and bound for such a port
+are worthy of the devoted care of those who have necessarily a
+lifelong influence over them, and the means of using that influence
+for their lifelong good ought to be a matter of most earnest study.
+Knowledge must come before action, and first-hand knowledge, acquired
+by observation, is worth more than theoretic acquirements; the first
+may supply for the second, but not the second for the first. There are
+two types of educators of early childhood which no theory could
+produce, and indeed no theory could tell how they are produced, but
+they stand unrivalled--one is the English nurse and the other the
+Irish. The English nurse is a being apart, with a profound sense of
+fitness in all things, herself the slave of duty; and having certain
+ideals transmitted, who can tell how, by an unwritten traditional
+code, as to what _ought to be_, and a gift of authority by which she
+secures that these things _shall be_, reverence for God, reverence in
+prayer, reverence for parents, consideration of brothers for sisters,
+unselfishness, manners, etc., her views on all these things are like
+the laws of the Medes and Persians "which do not alter "--and they are
+also holy and wholesome. The Irish nurse rules by the heart, and by
+sympathy, by a power of self-devotion that can only be found where the
+love of God is the deepest love of the heart; she has no views,
+but--she knows. She does not need to observe--she sees' she has
+instincts, she never lays down a law, but she wins by tact and
+affection, lifting up the mind to God and subduing the will to
+obedience, while appearing to do nothing but love and wait. The stamp
+that she leaves on the earliest years of training is never entirely
+effaced; it remains as some instinct of faith, a habit of resignation
+to the will of God, and habitual recourse to prayer. Both these types
+of educators rule by their gift from God, and it is hard to believe
+that the most finished training in the art of nursery management can
+produce anything like them, for they govern by those things that
+lectures and handbooks cannot teach--faith, love, and common sense.
+
+Those who take up the training of the next stage have usually to learn
+by their own experience, and study what is given to very few as a
+natural endowment--the art of so managing the wills of children that
+without provoking resistance, yet without yielding to every fancy,
+they may be led by degrees to self-control and to become a law to
+themselves. It must be recognized from the beginning that the work is
+slow; if it is forced on too fast either a breaking point comes and
+the child, too much teased into perfection, turns in reaction and
+becomes self-willed and rebellious; or if, unhappily, the forcing
+process succeeds, a little paragon is produced like Wordsworth's
+"model child":--
+
+"Full early trained to worship seemliness,
+This model of a child is never known
+To mix in quarrels; that were far beneath
+Its dignity; with gifts he bubbles o'er
+As generous as a fountain; selfishness
+May not come near him, nor the little throng
+Of flitting pleasures tempt him from his path;
+The wandering beggars propagate his name.
+Dumb creatures find him tender as a nun,
+And natural or supernatural fear,
+Unless it leap upon him in a dream,
+Touches him not. To enhance the wonder, see
+How arch his notices, how nice his sense
+Of the ridiculous; not blind is he
+To the broad follies of the licensed world,
+Yet innocent himself withal, though shrewd,
+And can read lectures upon innocence;
+A miracle of scientific lore,
+Ships he can guide across the pathless sea,
+And tell you all their cunning; he can read
+The inside of the earth, and spell the stars;
+He knows the policies of foreign lands;
+Can string you names of districts, cities, towns,
+The whole world over, tight as beads of dew
+Upon a gossamer thread; he sifts, he weighs;
+All things are put to question; he must live
+Knowing that he grows wiser every day
+Or else not live at all, and seeing too
+Each little drop of wisdom as it falls
+Into the dimpling cistern of his heart:
+For this unnatural growth the trainer blame,
+Pity the tree,"--
+     "The Prelude," Bk. V, lines 298-329.
+
+On the other hand if those who have to bring up children, fear too
+much to cross their inclinations, and so seek always the line of least
+resistance, teaching lessons in play, and smoothing over every rough
+peace of the road, the result is a weak, slack will, a mind without
+power of concentration, and in later life very little resourcefulness
+in emergency or power of bearing up under difficulties or privations.
+We are at present more inclined to produce these soft characters
+than to develop paragons. But such movements go in waves and the
+wave-lengths are growing shorter; we seem now to be reaching the end
+of a period when, as it has been expressed, "the teacher learns the
+lessons and says them to the child." We are beginning to outgrow too
+fervid belief in methods, and pattern lessons, and coming back to
+value more highly the habit of effort, individual work, and even the
+saving discipline of drudgery. _We_ are beginning, that is those who
+really care for children, and for character, and for life; it takes
+the State and its departments a long time to come up with the
+experience of those who actually know living children--a generation is
+not too much to allow for its coming to this knowledge, as we may see
+at present, when the drawbacks of the system of 1870 are becoming
+apparent at last in the eyes of the official world, having been
+evident for years to those whose sympathies were with the children and
+not with codes. America, open-minded America, is aware of all this,
+and is making generous educational experiments with the buoyant
+idealism of a young nation, an idealism that is sometimes outstripping
+its practical sense, quite able to face its disappointments if they
+come, as undoubtedly they will, and to begin again. In one point it is
+far ahead of us--in the understanding that a large measure of freedom
+is necessary for teachers. Whereas we are, let us hope, at the most
+acute stage of State interference in details.
+
+But in spite of the systems the children live, and come up year after
+year, to give us fresh opportunities; and in spite of the systems
+something can be done with them if we take the advice of Archbishop
+Ullathorne--"trust in God and begin as you can."
+
+Let us begin by learning to know them, and the knowledge of their
+characters is more easily gained if some cardinal points are marked,
+by which the unknown country may be mapped out. The selection of these
+cardinal points depends in part on the mind of the observer, which has
+more or less insight into the various manifestations of possibility
+and quality which may occur. It is well to observe without seeming to
+do so, for as shy wild creatures fly off before a too observant eye,
+but may be studied by a naturalist who does not appear to look at
+them, so the real child takes to flight if it is too narrowly watched,
+and leaves a self conscious little person to take its place, making
+off with its true self into the backwoods of some dreamland, and
+growing more and more reticent about its real thoughts as it gets
+accustomed to talk to an appreciative audience. With weighing and
+measuring, inspecting and reporting, exercising and rapid forcing, and
+comparing, applauding and tabulating results, it is difficult to see
+how children can escape self-consciousness and artificiality, and the
+enthusiasts for "child study" are in danger of making the specimen of
+the real child more and more rare and difficult to find, as
+destructive sportsmen in a new country exterminate the choice species
+of wild animals.
+
+Too many questions put children on their guard or make them unreal;
+they cannot give an account of what they think and what they mean and
+how far they have understood, and the greater the anxiety shown to get
+at their real mind the less are they either able or willing to make it
+known; so it is the quieter and less active observers who see the
+most, and those who observe most are best aware how little can be
+known.
+
+Yet there are some things which may serve as points of the compass,
+especially in the transitional years when the features both of face
+and character begin to accentuate themselves. One of these is the
+level of friendships. There are some who look by instinct for the
+friendship of those above them, and others habitually seek a lower
+level, where there is no call to self-restraint. Boys who hang about
+the stables, girls who like the conversation of servants; boys and
+girls who make friends in sets at school, among the less desirable,
+generally do so from a love of ease and dislike of that restraint and
+effort which every higher friendship calls for; they can be _somebody_
+at a very cheap cost where the standard of talk is not exacting,
+whereas to be with those who are striving for the best in any station
+makes demands which call for exertion, and the taste for this higher
+level, the willingness to respond to its claims, give good promise
+that those who have it will in their turn draw others to the things
+that are best.
+
+The attitude of a child towards books is also indicative of the whole
+background of a mind; the very way in which a book is handled is often
+a sign in itself of whether a child is a citizen born, or an alien, in
+the world for which books stand. Taste in reading, both as to quality
+and quantity, is so obviously a guiding line that it need scarcely be
+mentioned.
+
+Play is another line in which character shows itself, and reveals
+another background against which the scenes of life in the future will
+stand out, and in school life the keenest and best spirits will
+generally divide into these two groups, the readers and the players,
+with a few, rarely gifted, who seem to excel in both. From the readers
+will come those who are to influence the minds of others here, if they
+do not let themselves be carried out too far to keep in touch with
+real life. From the players will come those whose gift is readiness
+and decision in action, if they on their side do not remain mere
+players when life calls for something more.
+
+There are other groups, the born artists with their responsive minds,
+the "home children" for whom everything centres in their own home-world,
+and who have in them the making of another one in the future; the
+critics, standing aloof, a little peevish and very self-conscious,
+hardly capable of deep friendship and fastidiously dissatisfied with
+people and things in general; the cheerful and helpful souls who have
+no interests of their own but can devote themselves to help anyone;
+the opposite class whose life is in their own moods and feelings. Many
+others might be added, each observer's experience can supply them, and
+will probably close the list with the same little group, the very few,
+that stand a little apart, but not aloof, children of privilege,
+with heaven in their eyes and a little air of mystery about them,
+meditative and quiet, friends of God, friends of all, loved and
+loving, and asking very little from the outer world, because they have
+more than enough within. They are classed as the dreamers, but they
+are really the seers. They do not ask much and they do not need much
+beyond a reverent guardianship, and to be let alone and allowed to
+grow; they will find their way for they are "taught of God."
+
+It is impossible to do more than to throw out suggestions which
+any child-naturalist might multiply or improve upon. The next
+consideration for all concerned is what to do with the acquired
+knowledge, and how to "bring up" in the later stages of childhood and
+early youth.
+
+What do we want to bring up? Not good nonentities, who are merely good
+because they are not bad. There are too many of them already, no
+trouble to anyone, only disappointing, so good that they ought to be
+so much better, if only they _would_. But who can make them will to be
+something more, to become, as Montalembert said, "a _fact_, instead of
+remaining but a shadow, an echo, or a ruin?" Those who have to educate
+them to something higher must themselves have an idea of what they
+want; they must believe in the possibility of every mind and character
+to be lifted up to something better than it has already attained; they
+must themselves be striving for some higher excellence, and must
+believe and care deeply for the things they teach. For no one can be
+educated by maxim and precept; it is the life lived, and the things
+loved and the ideals believed in, by which we tell, one upon another.
+If we care for energy we call it out; if we believe in possibilities
+of development we almost seem to create them. If we want integrity of
+character, steadiness, reliability, courage, thoroughness, all the
+harder qualities that serve as a backbone, we, at least, make others
+want them also, and strive for them by the power of example that is
+not set as deliberate good example, for that is as tame as a precept,
+but the example of the life that is lived, and the truths that are
+honestly believed in.
+
+The gentler qualities which are to adorn the harder virtues may be
+more explicitly taught. It is always more easy to tone down than to
+brace up; there must fist be something to moderate, before moderation
+can be a virtue; there must be strength before gentleness can be
+taught, as there must be some hardness in material things to make them
+capable of polish. And these are qualities which are specially needed
+in our unsteady times, when rapid emancipation of unknown forces makes
+each one more personally responsible than in the past. It is an
+impatient age: we must learn patience; it is an age of sudden social
+changes: we have to make ready for adversity; it is an age of
+lawlessness: each one must stand upon his own guard and be his own
+defence; it is a selfish age, and never was unselfishness more
+urgently needed; love of home and love of country seem to be cooling,
+one as rapidly as the other: never was it more necessary to learn the
+spirit of self-sacrifice both for family life and the love and honour
+due to one's country which is also "piety" in its true sense.
+
+All these things come with our Catholic faith and practice if it is
+rightly understood. Catholic family life, Catholic citizenship,
+Catholic patriotism are the truest, the only really true, because the
+only types of these virtues that are founded on truth. But they do not
+come of themselves. Many will let themselves be carried to heaven, as
+they hope, in the long-suffering arms of the Church without either
+defending or adorning her by their virtues, and we shall but add to
+their number if we do not kindle in the minds of children the ambition
+to do something more, to devote themselves to the great Cause, by
+self-sacrifice to be in some sort initiated into its spirit, and
+identified with it, and thus to make it worth while for others as well
+as for themselves that they have lived their life on earth. There is a
+price to be paid for this, and they must face it; a good life cannot
+be a soft life, and a great deal, even of innocent pleasure, has to be
+given up, voluntarily, to make life worth living, if it were only as a
+training in _doing without_.
+
+Independence is a primary need for character, and independence can
+only be learnt by doing without pleasant things, even unnecessarily.
+Simplicity of life is an essential for greatness of life, and the very
+meaning of the simple life is the laying aside of many things which
+tend to grow by habit into necessities. The habit of work is another
+necessity in any life worth living, and this is only learnt by
+refraining again and again from what is pleasant for the sake of what
+is precious. Patience and thoroughness are requirements whose worth
+and value never come home to the average mind until they are seen in
+startling excellence, and it is apparent what a price must have been
+paid to acquire their adamant perfection, a lesson which might be the
+study of a lifetime. The value of time is another necessary lesson of
+the better life, a hard lesson, but one that makes an incalculable
+difference between the expert and the untried. We are apt to be always
+in a hurry now, for obvious reasons which hasten the movement of life,
+but not many really know how to use time to the full. Our tendency is
+to alternate periods of extreme activity with intervals of complete
+prostration for recovery. Perhaps our grandparents knew better in a
+slower age the use of time. The old Marquise de Gramont, aged 93,
+after receiving Extreme Unction, asked for her knitting, for the poor.
+"Mais Madame la Marquise a ete administree, elle va mourir!" said the
+maid, who thought the occupation of dying sufficient for a lady of her
+age. "Ma chere, ce n'est pas une raison pour perdre son temps,"
+answered the indomitable Marquise. It is told of her also that when
+one of her children asked for some water in summer, between meals, she
+replied: "Mon enfant, vous ne serez jamais qu'un etre manque, une
+pygmee, si vous prenez ces habitudes-la, pensez, mon petit coeur, au
+fiel de Notre Seigneur Jesus Christ, et vous aurez le courage
+d'attendre le diner." She had learned for herself the strength of
+_going without_.
+
+One more lesson must be mentioned, the hardest of all to be
+learnt--perfect sincerity. It is so hard not to pose, for all but the
+very truest and simplest natures--to pose as independent, being eaten
+up with human respect; to pose as indifferent though aching with the
+wish to be understood; to pose as flippant while longing to be in
+earnest; to hide an attraction to higher things under a little air of
+something like irreverence. It is strange that this kind of pose is
+considered as less insincere than the opposite class, which is rather
+out of fashion for this very reason, yet to be untrue to one's better
+self is surely an unworthier insincerity than to be ashamed of the
+worst. Perhaps the best evidence of this is the costliness of the
+effort to overcome it, and the more observation and reflection we
+spend on this point the more shall we be convinced that it is very
+hard to learn to be quite true, and that it entails more personal
+self-sacrifice than almost any other virtue.
+
+In conclusion, the means for training character may be grouped under
+the following headings:--
+
+1. Contact with those who have themselves attained to higher levels,
+either parent, or teacher, or friend. Perhaps at present the influence
+of a friend is greater than that of any power officially set over us,
+so jealous are we of control. So much the better chance for those
+who have the gift even in mature age of winning the friendship of
+children, and those who have just outgrown childhood. In these
+friendships the great power of influence is hopefulness, to believe in
+possibilities of good, and to expect the best.
+
+2. Vigilance, not the nervous vigilance, unquiet and anxious, which
+rouses to mischief the sporting instinct of children and stings the
+rebellious to revolt, but the vigilance which, open and confident
+itself, gives confidence, nurtures fearlessness, and brings a steady
+pressure to be at one's best. Vigilance over children is no insult to
+their honour, it is rather the right of their royalty, for they are of
+the blood royal of Christianity, and deserve the guard of honour which
+for the sake of their royalty does not lose sight of them.
+
+3. Criticism and correction. To be used with infinite care, but never
+to be neglected without grave injustice. It is not an easy thing to
+reprove in the right time, in the right tone, without exasperation,
+without impatience, without leaving a sting behind; to dare to give
+pain for the sake of greater good; to love the truth and have courage
+to tell it; to change reproof as time goes on to the frank criticism
+of friendship that is ambitious for its friend. To accept criticism is
+one of the greatest lessons to be learnt in life. To give it well is
+an art which requires more study and more self-denial than either the
+habit of being easily satisfied and requiring little, or the querulous
+habit of "scolding" which is admirably described by Bishop Hedley as
+"the resonance of the empty intelligence and of the hollow heart of
+the man who has nothing to give, nothing to propose, nothing to
+impart."
+
+4. Discipline and obedience. If these are to be means of training they
+must be living and not dead powers, and they must lead up to gradual
+self-government, not to sudden emancipation. Obedience must be
+first of all to persons, prompt and unquestioning, then to laws, a
+"reasonable service," then to the wider law which each one must
+enforce from within--the law of love which is the law of liberty of
+the kingdom of God.
+
+These are the means which in her own way, and through various channels
+of authority, the Church makes use of, and the Church is the great
+Mother who educates us all. She takes us into her confidence, as we
+make ourselves worthy of it, and shows us out of her treasures things
+new and old. She sets the better things always before us, prays for
+us, prays with us, teaches us to pray, and so "lifts up our minds to
+heavenly desires." She watches over us with un anxious, but untiring
+vigilance, setting her Bishops and pastors to keep watch over the
+flock, collectively and individually, "with that most perfect care"
+that St. Francis of Sales describes as "that which approaches
+the nearest to the care God has of us, which is a care full of
+tranquillity and quietness, and which, in its highest activity, has
+still no emotion, and being only one, yet condescends to make itself
+all to all things."
+
+Criticism and correction, discipline and obedience--these things are
+administered by the Church our Mother, gently but without weakness,
+so careful is she in her warnings, so slow in her punishments, so
+unswervingly true to what is of principle, and asking so persuasively
+not for the sullen obedience of slaves, but for the free and loving
+submission of sons and daughters.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+CHARACTER II.
+
+ "The Parts and Signes of Goodnesse are many. If a Man be
+Gracious and Curteous to Strangers, it shewes he is a
+Citizen of the World, And that his Heart is no Island cut
+off from other Lands, but a Continent that joynes to them.
+If he be Compassionate towards the Afflictions of others,
+it shewes that his Heart is like the noble Tree, that is
+wounded to selfe when it gives Balme. If he easily Pardons
+and Remits Offences, it shewes that his minde is planted
+above Injuries, So that he cannot be shot. If he be
+Thankfull for small Benefits, it shewes that he weighes
+Men's Mindes, and not their Trash. But above all, if he
+have St. Paul's Perfection, that he would wish to be an
+Anathema from Christ, for the Salvation of his Brethren, it
+shewes much of a Divine Nature, and a kinde of Conformity
+with Christ himselfe."--BACON, "Of Goodnesse."
+
+No one who has the good of children at heart, and the training of
+their characters, can leave the subject without some grave thoughts on
+the formation of their own character, which is first in order of
+importance, and in order of time must go before, and accompany their
+work to the very end.
+
+"What is developed to perfection can make other things like unto
+itself." So saints develop sanctity in others, and truth and
+confidence beget truth and confidence, and the spirit of enterprise
+calls out the spirit of enterprise, and constancy trains to endurance
+and perseverance, and wise kindness makes others kind, and courage
+makes them courageous, and in its degree each good quality tends to
+reproduce itself in others. Children are very delicately sensitive to
+these influences, they respond unconsciously to what is expected of
+them, and instinctively they imitate the models set before them. They
+catch a tone, a gesture, a trick of manner with a quickness that is
+startling. The influence of mind and thought on mind and thought
+cannot be so quickly recognized, but tells with as much certainty, and
+enters more deeply into the character for life. The consideration of
+this is a great incentive to the acquirement of self-knowledge and
+self-discipline by those who have to do with children. The old codes
+of conventionality in education, which stood for a certain system in
+their time, are disappearing, and the worth of the individual becomes
+of greater importance. This is true of those who educate and of those
+whom they bring up. As the methods of modern warfare call for more
+individual resourcefulness, so do the methods of the spiritual
+warfare, now that we are not supported by big battalions, but each one
+is thrown back on conscience and personal responsibility. Girls as
+well as boys have to be trained to take care of themselves and be
+responsible for themselves, and if they are not so trained, no one can
+now be responsible for them or protect them in spite of themselves.
+Therefore, the first duty of those who are bringing up Catholic
+girls is to be themselves such as Catholic girls must be later on.
+This example is a discourse "in the vulgar tongue" which cannot
+be misunderstood, and example is not resented unless it seems
+self-conscious and presented of set purpose. The one thing necessary
+is to be that which we ought to be, and that is to say, in other
+words, that the fundamental virtue in teaching children is a great and
+resolute sincerity. Sincerity is a difficult virtue to practise and is
+too easily taken for granted. It has more enemies than appear at first
+sight. Inertness of mind, the desire to do things cheaply, dislike of
+mental effort, the tendency to be satisfied with appearances, the wish
+to shine, impatience for results, all foster intellectual insincerity;
+just as, in conduct, the wish to please, the spirit of accommodation
+and expediency, the fear of blame, the instinct of concealment, which
+is inborn in many girls, destroy frankness of character and make
+people untrue who would not willingly be untruthful. Yet even
+truthfulness is not such a matter of course as many would be willing
+to assume. To be inaccurate through thoughtless laziness in the use of
+words is extremely common, to exaggerate according to the mood of the
+moment, to say more than one means and cover one's retreat with "I
+didn't mean it," to pull facts into shape to suit particular ends, are
+demoralizing forms of untruthfulness, common, but often unrecognized.
+If a teacher could only excel in one high quality for training girls,
+probably the best in which she could excel would be a great sincerity,
+which would train them in frankness, and in the knowledge that to be
+entirely frank means to lay down a great price for that costly
+attainment, a perfectly honourable and fearless life. [1--"A woman,
+if it be once known that she is deficient in truth, has no resource.
+Have, by a misuse of language, injured or lost her only means of
+persuasion, nothing can preserve her from falling into contempt of
+nonentity. When she is no longer to be believed no on will take the
+trouble to listen to her...no one can depend on her, no on rests
+any hope on her, the words of which she makes use have no meaning."
+--Madame Necker de Saussure, "Progressive Education."]
+
+It sometimes happens that the realization of this truth comes
+comparatively late in life to those who ought to have recognized it
+years before. Thinking along the surface of things, and in particular
+repeating catchwords and platitudes and trite maxims on the subject of
+sincerity, is apt to make us believe that we possess the quality we
+talk about, and as it is impossible to have anything to do with the
+education of children without treating of sincerity and truthfulness,
+it is comparatively easy to slip into the happy assumption that one is
+truthful, because one would not deliberately be otherwise. But it
+takes far more than this to acquire real sincerity of life in the
+complexity and artificiality of the conditions in which we live.
+
+"And we have been on many thousand lines,
+And we have shown, on each, spirit and power;
+But hardly have we, for one little hour,
+Been on our own line, have we been ourselves.
+
+     *     *     *     *
+
+"Our hidden self, and what we say and do
+Is eloquent, is well--but 'tis not true!"
+          MATTHEW ARNOLD, "The Buried Life."
+
+Sincerity requires the recognition that to be honestly oneself is more
+impressive for good than to be a very superior person by imitation. It
+requires the renunciation of some claims to consideration and esteem,
+and the acceptance of limitations (a different thing from acquiescence
+in them, for it means the acceptance of a lifelong effort to be what
+we aspire to be, with a knowledge that we shall never fully attain
+it). It requires that we should bear the confusion of defeat without
+desisting from the struggle, that we should accept the progressive
+illumination of what is still unaccomplished, and keep the habitual
+lowliness of a beginner with the unconquerable hopefulness which comes
+of a fixed resolution to win what is worth winning. Let those who have
+tried say whether this is easy.
+
+But in guiding children along this difficult way it is not wise to
+call direct attention to it, lest their inexperience and sensitiveness
+should turn to scrupulosity and their spontaneity be paralysed. It is
+both more acceptable and healthier to present it as a feat of courage,
+a habit of fearlessness to be acquired, of hardihood and strength of
+character. The more subtle forms of self-knowledge belong to a later
+period in life.
+
+Another quality to be desired in those who have to do with children
+is what may--for want of a better word--be called vitality, not
+the fatiguing artificial animation which is sometimes assumed
+professionally by teachers, but the keenness which shows forth a
+settled conviction that life is worth living. The expression of this
+is not self asserting or controversial, for it is not like a garment
+put on, but a living grace of soul, coming from within, born of
+straight thinking and resolution, and so strongly confirmed by faith
+and hope that nothing can discourage it or make it let go. It is a
+bulwark against the faults which sink below the normal line of life,
+dullness, depression, timidity, procrastination, sloth and sadness,
+moodiness, unsociability--all these it tends to dispel, by its quiet
+and confident gift of encouragement. And though so contrary to the
+spirit of childhood, these faults are found in children--often in
+delicate children who have lost confidence in themselves from being
+habitually outdone by stronger brothers and sisters, or in slow minds
+which seem "stupid" to others and to themselves, or in natures too
+sensitive to risk themselves in the melee. To these, one who brings
+the gift of encouragement comes as a deliverer and often changes the
+course of their life, leading them to believe in themselves and their
+own good endowments, making them taste success which rouses them to
+better efforts, giving them the strong comfort of knowing that
+something is expected of them, and that if they will only try, in one
+way if not in another, they need not be behind the best. At some
+stage in life, and especially in the years of rapid growth, we all
+need encouragement, and often characters that seem to require only
+repression are merely singing out of tune from the effort to hold out
+against blank discouragement at their failures to "be good," or to
+divert their mind forcibly from their fits of depression. To be
+scolded accentuates their trouble and tends to harden them; to grow
+a shell of hardness seems for the moment their only defence; but if
+some one will meet their efforts half-way, believing in them with a
+tranquil conviction that they will live through these difficulties and
+_find themselves_ in due time, they can be saved from much unhappiness
+of their own making, though not of their own fault, and their growth
+will not be arrested behind an unnatural shell of defence.
+
+The strong vitality and gift of encouragement which can give this
+help are also of value in saving from the morbid and exaggerated
+friendships which sometimes spoil the best years of a girl's
+education. If the character of those who teach them has force enough
+not only to inspire admiration but to call out effort, it may rouse
+the mind and will to a higher plane and make the things of which it
+disapproves seem worthless. There are moments when the leading mind
+must have strength enough for two, but this must not last. Its glory
+is to raise the mind of the learner to equality with itself, not to
+keep it in leading strings, but to make it grow so that, as the master
+has often been outstripped by the scholar, the efforts of the younger
+may even stimulate the achievements of the elder, and thus a noble
+friendship be formed in the pursuit of what is best.
+
+Educators of youth are exposed to certain professional dangers, which
+lie very close to professional excellences of character. There is the
+danger of remaining young for the sake of children, so that something
+of mature development will be lacking. If there is not a stimulus from
+outside, and it is not supplied for by an inward determination to
+grow, the mental development may be arrested and contented-ness at a
+low level be mistaken for the limit of capacity. A great many people
+are mentally lazy, and only too ready to believe that they can do no
+more.
+
+Many teachers are yoked to an examination programme sufficiently
+loaded to call for a great deal of pressure along a low level, and
+they may easily mistake this harassing activity for real mental work,
+and either be indeed hindered, or consider themselves absolved from
+anything more. The penalty of it is a gradual decline of the unused
+powers, growing difficulty of sustained attention, dislike for what
+requires effort of mind, loss of wider interests, restlessness and
+superficiality in reading, and other indications of diminution of
+power in the years when it ought to be on the increase. Is this the
+fault of those who so decline in power? It would be hard to say that
+it is so universally, for some no doubt are pressed through necessity
+to the very limits of their time and of their endurance. Yet
+experience goes to prove that if a mental awakening really takes
+place the most unfavourable circumstances will not hinder a rapid
+development of power. Abundance of books and leisure and fostering
+conditions are helps but not essentials for mental growth. If few
+books can be had, but these are of the best, they will do more for the
+mind by continued reading than abundance for those who have not yet
+learned to use it. If there is little leisure the value of the
+hardly-spared moments is enhanced; we may convince ourselves of this
+in the lives of those who have reached eminence in learning, through
+circumstances apparently hopeless. If the conditions of life are
+unfavourable, it is generally possible to find one like-minded friend
+who will double our power by quickening enthusiasm or by setting the
+pace at which we must travel, and leading the way. There may be side
+by side in the same calling in life persons doing similar work in like
+circumstances, with like resources, of whom one is contentedly
+stagnating, feeling satisfied all the time that duty is done and
+nothing neglected--and this may be true up to a certain point--while
+the other is haunted by a blessed dissatisfaction, urged from within
+to seek always something better, and compelling circumstances to
+minister to the growth of the mind. One who would meet these two again
+after the interval of a few months would be astonished at the distance
+which has been left between them by the stagnation of one and the
+advance of the other.
+
+Another danger is that of becoming dogmatic and dictatorial from the
+habit of dealing with less mature intelligences, from the absence of
+contradiction and friction among equals, and the want of that most
+perfect discipline of the mind--intercourse with intellectual
+superiors. Of course it is a mark of ignorance to become oracular and
+self-assured, but it needs watchfulness to guard against the tendency
+if one is always obliged to take the lead. Teaching likewise exposes
+to faults perhaps less in themselves but far reaching in their effect
+upon children; a little observation will show how the smallest
+peculiarities tell upon them, either by affecting their dispositions
+or being caught by them and reproduced. To take one example among
+many, the pitch and intonation of the voice often impress more than
+the words. A nurse with a querulous tone has a restless nursery; she
+makes the high-spirited contradictory and the delicate fretful. In
+teaching, a high-pitched voice is exciting and wearing to children;
+certain cadences that end on a high note rouse opposition, a
+monotonous intonation wearies, deeper and more ample tones are
+quieting and reassuring, but if their solemnity becomes exaggerated
+they provoke a reaction. Most people have a certain cadence which
+constantly recurs in their speaking and is characteristic of them, and
+the satisfaction of listening to them depends largely upon this
+characteristic cadence. It is also a help in the understanding of
+their characters. Much trouble of mind is saved by recognizing that a
+certain cadence which sounds indignant is only intended to be
+convincing, and that another which sounds defiant is only giving to
+itself the signal for retreat. Again, for the teacher's own sake,
+it is good to observe that there are tones which dispose towards
+obedience, and others which provoke remonstrance and, as Mme.
+Necker de Saussure remarks: "It is of great consequence to prevent
+remonstrances and not allow girls to form a habit of contradicting and
+cavilling, or to prolong useless opposition which annoys others and
+disturbs their own peace of mind."
+
+There are "teacher's manners" in many varieties, often spoiling
+admirable gifts and qualities, for the professional touch in this is
+not a grace but puts both children and "grown-ups" on the defensive.
+There is the head mistress's manner which is a signal to proceed with
+caution, the modern "form mistress's" or class mistress's manner, with
+an off-hand tone destined to reassure by showing that there is nothing
+to be afraid of, the science mistress's manner with a studied
+quietness and determination that the knife-edge of the balance shall
+be the standard of truthfulness, the professionally encouraging
+manner, the "stimulating" manner, the manner of those whose ambition
+is to be "an earnest teacher," the strained tone of one whose ideal
+is to to be overworked, the kindergarten manner, scientifically
+"awakening," giving the call of the decoy-duck, confidentially
+inviting co operation and revealing secrets--these are types, but
+there are many others.
+
+Such mannerisms would seem to be developed by reliance on books of
+method, by professional training imparted to those who have not enough
+originality to break through the mould, and instead of following out
+principles as lines for personal experiment and discovery, deaden them
+into rules and abide by them. The teacher's manner is much more
+noticeable among those who have been trained than among the now
+vanishing class of those who have had to stand or fall by their own
+merits, and find out their own methods. The advantage is not always
+with the trained teacher even now, and the question of manner is not
+one of minor importance. The true instinct of children and the
+sensitiveness of youth detect very quickly and resent a professional
+tone; a child looks for freedom and simplicity, and feels cramped if
+it meets with something even a little artificial. Children like to
+find _real people_, not anxiously careful to improve them, but able
+to take life with a certain spontaneity as they like to take it
+themselves. They are frightened by those who take themselves too
+seriously, who are too acute, too convincing or too brilliant; they do
+not like people who appear to be always on the alert, nor those of
+extreme temperatures, very ardent or very frigid. The people whom they
+like and trust are usually quiet, simple people, who have not
+startling ways, and do not manifest those strenuous ideals which
+destroy all sense of leisure in life.
+
+Not only little children but those who are growing up resent these
+mannerisms and professional ways. They, too, ask for a certain
+spontaneity and like to find a _real person_ whom they can understand.
+Abstract principles do not appeal to them, but they can understand and
+appreciate character, not in one type and pattern alone, for every
+character that has life and truth commands their respect and is
+acceptable in one way if not in another. It is not the bright colours
+of character alone which attract them, they often keep a lifelong
+remembrance of those whose qualities are anything but showy. They look
+for fairness in those who govern them, but if they find this they
+can accept a good measure of severity. They respect unflinching
+uprightness and are quick to detect the least deviation from it. They
+prefer to be taken seriously on their own ground; things in general
+are so incomprehensible that it only makes matters worse to be
+approached with playful methods and facetious invitations into
+the unknown, for who can tell what educational ambush for their
+improvement may be concealed behind these demonstrations. They give
+their confidence more readily to grave and quiet people who do not
+show too rapturous delight in their performances, or surprise at their
+opinions, or--especially--distress at their ignorance. They admire
+with lasting admiration those who are hard on themselves and take
+their troubles without comment or complaint. They admire courage, and
+they can appreciate patience if it does not seem to be conscious of
+itself. But they do not look up to a character in which mildness so
+predominates that it cannot be roused to indignation and even anger in
+a good cause. A power of being roused is felt as a force in reserve,
+and the knowledge that it is there is often enough to maintain peace
+and order without any need for interference or remonstrance. They are
+offended by a patience which looks like weariness, determined if it
+were at the last gasp to "improve the occasion" and say something of
+educational profit. To "improve the occasion" really destroys the
+opportunity; it is like a too expansive invitation to birds to come
+and feed, which drives them off in a nutter. Birds come most willingly
+when crumbs are thrown as it were by accident while the benefactor
+looks another way; and young minds pick up gratefully a suggestion
+which seems to fall by the way, a mere hint that things are understood
+and cared about, that there is safety beyond the thin ice if one
+trusts and believes, that "all shall be well" if people will be true
+to their best thoughts. They can understand these assurances and
+accept them when something more explicit would drive them back to bar
+the door against intruders. All these are truisms to those who have
+observed children. The misfortune is that in spite of the prominence
+given to training of teachers, of the new name of "Child Study" and
+its manuals, there are many who teach children without reaching their
+real selves. If the children could combine the result of their
+observations and bring out a manual of "Teacher Study" we should have
+strange revelations as to how it looks from the other side. We should
+be astonished at the shrewdness of the small juries that deliberate,
+and the insight of the judges that pronounce sentence upon us, and we
+should be convinced that to obtain a favourable verdict we needed very
+little subtlety, and not too much theory, but as much as possible of
+the very things we look for as the result and crown of our work. We
+labour to produce character, we must have it. We look for courage and
+uprightness, we must bring them with us. We want honest work, we have
+to give proof of it ourselves. And so with the Christian qualities
+which we hope to build on these foundations. We care for the faith of
+the children, it must abound in us. We care for the innocence of their
+life, we must ourselves be heavenly minded, we want them to be
+unworldly and ready to make sacrifices for their religion, they must
+understand that it is more than all the world to us. We want to secure
+them as they grow up against the spirit of pessimism, our own
+imperturbable hope in God and confidence in the Church will be more
+convincing than our arguments. We want them to grow into the fulness
+of charity, we must make charity the most lovable and lovely thing in
+the world to them.
+
+The Church possesses the secrets of these things; she is the great
+teacher of all nations and brings out of her treasury things new and
+old for the training of her children. A succession of teaching orders
+of religious, representing different patterns of education, has gone
+forth with her blessing to supply the needs of succeeding generations
+in each class of the Christian community. When children cannot be
+brought up in their own homes, religious seem to be designated as
+their natural guardians, independent as they are by their profession
+from the claims of personal interest and self-advancement, and
+therefore free to give their full sympathy and devotion to the
+children under their charge. They have also the independence of their
+corporate life, a great power behind the service of the schoolroom in
+which they find mutual support, an "Upper Boom" to which they can
+withdraw and build up again in prayer and intercourse with one another
+their ideals of life and duty in an atmosphere which gives a more
+spiritual re-renewal of energy than a holiday of entire forgetfulness.
+
+It is striking to observe that while the so-called Catholic countries
+are banishing religious from their schools, there is more and more
+inclination among non-Catholic parents who have had experience of
+other systems to place their children under the care of religious. And
+it was strange to hear one of His Majesty's Inspectors express his
+conviction that "it would be ideal if all England could be taught by
+nuns!" Thus indirect testimony comes from friendly or hostile sources
+to the fact that the Church holds the secret of education, and every
+Catholic teacher may gain courage from the knowledge of having that
+which is beyond all price in the education of children, that which all
+the world is seeking for, and which the Church alone knows that she
+possesses in its fulness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE ELEMENTS OF CATHOLIC PHILOSOPHY.
+
+"E quosto ti sia sempre piombo ai piedi,
+  Per farti mover lento, com' uom lasso,
+  Ed al si ed al no, che tu non vedi;
+Che quegli e tra gli stolti bene abbasso,
+  Che senza disfcinzion afferma o nega,
+  Nell' un cosi come nell' altro passo;
+Perch' egl' incontra che piu volte piega
+  L' opinion corrente in falsa parte,
+  E poi l' affetto lo intelletto lega.
+Vie piu che indarno da riva si parte,
+  Perche non toma tal qual ei si move,
+  Chi pesca per lo vero e noil ha l' arte."
+          DANTE, "Paradiso," Canto XIII.
+
+The elements of Catholic philosophy may no longer be looked upon as
+out of place in the education of our girls, or as being reserved for
+the use of learned women and girlish oddities. They belong to every
+well-grounded Catholic education, and the need for them will be felt
+more and more. They are wanted to balance on the one hand the
+unthinking impulse of living for the day, which asks no questions so
+long as the "fun" holds out, and on the other to meet the urgency of
+problems which press upon the minds of the more thoughtful as they
+grow up. When this teaching has been long established as part of an
+educational plan it has been found to give steadiness and unity to the
+whole; something to aim at from the beginning, and in the later years
+of a girl's education something which will serve as foundation for all
+branches of future study, so that each will find its place among the
+first principles, not isolated from the others but as part of a whole.
+The value of these elements for the practical guidance of life is
+likewise very great. A hold is given in the mind to the teaching of
+religion and conduct which welds into one defence the best wisdom of
+this world and of the next. For instance, the connexion between reason
+and faith being once established, the fear of permanent disagreement
+between the two, which causes so much panic and disturbance of mind,
+is set at rest.
+
+There is a certain risk at the outset of these studies that girls
+will take the pose of philosophical students, and talk logic and
+metaphysics, to the confusion of their friends and of their own
+feelings later on, when they come to years of discretion and realize
+the absurdity of these "lively sallies," as they would have been
+called in early Victorian times--the name alone might serve as
+a warning to the incautious! They may perhaps go through an
+argumentative period and trample severely upon the opinions of those
+who are not ready to have their majors "distinguished" and their
+minors "conceded," and, especially, their conclusions denied. But
+these phases will be outlived and the hot-and-cold remembrance of them
+will be sufficient expiation, with the realization that they did not
+know much when they had taken in the "beggarly elements" which dazzled
+them for a moment. The more thoughtful minds will escape the painful
+phase altogether.
+
+There are three special classes among girls whose difficulties of mind
+call for attention. There are those who frisk playfully along, taking
+the good things of life as they come--"the more the better"--whom, as
+children, it is hard to call to account. They are lightly impressed
+and only for a moment by the things they feel, and scarcely moved
+at all by the things they understand. The only side which seems
+troublesome in their early life is that there is so little hold upon
+it. They are unembarrassed and quite candid about their choice; it is
+the enjoyable good, life on its pleasantest side. And this disposition
+is in the mind as well as in the will; they cannot see it in any other
+way. Restraint galls them, and their inclination is not to resist but
+to evade it. These are kitten-like children in the beginning, and they
+appear charming. But when the kitten in them is overgrown, its playful
+evasiveness takes an ugly contour and shows itself as want of
+principle. The tendency to snatch at enjoyment hardens into a grasping
+sense of market values, and conscience, instead of growing inexorable,
+learns to be pliant to circumstances. Debts weigh lightly, and duties
+scarcely weigh at all. Concealment and un-truthfulness come in very
+easily to save the situation in a difficulty, and once the conduct of
+life is on the down-grade it slides quickly and far, for the sense of
+responsibility is lacking and these natures own no bond of obligation.
+They have their touch of piety in childhood, but it soon wears off,
+and in its best days cannot stand the demands made upon it by duty; it
+fails of its hold upon the soul, like a religion without a sacrifice.
+In these minds some notions of ethics leave a barbed arrow of remorse
+which penetrates further than piety. They may soothe themselves with
+the thought that God will easily forgive, later on, but they cannot
+quite lose consciousness of the law which does not forgive, of the
+responsibility of human acts and the inevitable punishment of
+wrong-doing which works itself out, till it calls for payment of the
+last farthing. And by this rough way of remorse they may come back to
+God. Pope Leo XIII spoke of it as their best hope, an almost certain
+means of return. The beautiful also may make its appeal to these
+natures on their best side, and save them preventively from
+themselves, but only if the time of study is prolonged enough for the
+laws of order and beauty to be made comprehensible to them, so that if
+they admire the best, remorse may have another hold and reproach them
+with a lowered ideal.
+
+In opposition to these are the minds to which, as soon as they become
+able to think for themselves, all life is a puzzle, and on every side,
+wherever they turn, they are baffled by unanswerable questions. These
+questions are often more insistent and more troublesome because they
+cannot be asked, they have not even taken shape in the mind. But they
+haunt and perplex it. Are they the only ones who do not know? Is it
+clear to every one else? This doubt makes it difficult even to hint at
+the perplexity. These are often naturally religious minds, and outside
+the guidance of the Catholic Church, in search of truth, they easily
+fall under the influence of different schools of thought which take
+them out of their depth, and lead them further and further from the
+reasonable certainty about first principles which they are in search
+of. Within the Church, of course, they can never stray so far, and the
+truths of faith supply their deepest needs. But if they want to know
+more, to know something of themselves, and to have at least some
+rational knowledge of the universe, then to give them a hold on the
+elements of philosophical knowledge is indeed a mental if not a
+spiritual work of mercy, for it enables them to set their ideas in
+order by the light of a few first principles, it shows them on what
+plane their questions lie, it enables them to see how all knowledge
+and new experience have connexions with what has gone before, and
+belong to a whole with a certain fitness and proportion. They learn
+also thus to take themselves in hand in a reasonable way; they gain
+some power of attributing effects to their true causes, so as neither
+to be unduly alarmed nor elated at the various experiences through
+which they will pass.
+
+Between these two divisions lies a large group, that of the "average
+person," not specially flighty and not particularly thoughtful. But
+the average person is of very great importance. The greatest share in
+the work of the world is probably done by "average" people, not only
+for the obvious reason that there are more of them, but also because
+they are more accessible, more reliable, and more available for all
+kinds of responsibility than those who have made themselves useless by
+want of principle, or those whose genius carries them away from the
+ordinary line. They are accessible because their fellow-creatures are
+not afraid of them; they are not too fine for ordinary wear, nor too
+original to be able to follow a line laid down for them, and if they
+take a line of their own it is usually intelligible to others.
+
+To these valuable "average" persons the importance of some study of
+the elements of philosophy is very great. They can hardly go through
+an elementary course of mental science without wishing to learn more,
+and being lifted to a higher plane. The weak point in the average
+person is a tendency to sink into the commonplace, because the
+consciousness of not being brilliant induces timidity, and timidity
+leads to giving up effort and accepting a fancied impossibility of
+development which from being supposed, assumed, and not disturbed,
+becomes in the end real.
+
+On the other hand the strong point of the average person is very often
+common sense, that singular, priceless gift which gives a touch of
+likeness among those who possess it in all classes, high or low--in
+the sovereign, the judge, the ploughman, or the washerwoman, a
+likeness that is somewhat like a common language among them and makes
+them almost like a class apart. Minds endowed with common sense are an
+aristocracy among the "average," and if this quality of theirs is
+lifted above the ordinary round of business and trained in the domain
+of thought it becomes a sound and wide practical judgment. It will
+observe a great sobriety in its dealings with the abstract; the
+concrete is its kingdom, but it will rule the better for having its
+ideas systematized, and its critical power developed. Self-diffidence
+tends to check this unduly, and it has to be strengthened in
+reasonably supporting its own opinion which is often instinctively
+true, but fails to find utterance. It is a help to such persons if
+they can learn to follow the workings of their own mind and gain
+confidence in their power to understand, and find some intellectual
+interest in the drudgery which in every order of things, high or low,
+is so willingly handed over to their good management. These results
+may not be showy, but it is a great thing to strengthen an "average"
+person, and the reward of doing so is sometimes the satisfaction of
+seeing that average mind rise in later years quite above the average
+and become a tower of steady reflection; while to itself it is a new
+life to gain a view of things as a whole, to find that nothing stands
+alone, but that the details which it grasps in so masterly a manner
+have their place and meaning in the scheme of the universe.
+
+It is evident that even this elementary knowledge cannot be given in
+the earliest years of the education of girls, and that it is only
+possible to attempt it in schools and school-rooms where they can be
+kept on for a longer time of study. Every year that can be added to
+the usual course is of better value, and more appreciated, except by
+those who are restless to come out as soon as possible. No reference
+is made here to those exceptional cases in which girls are allowed to
+begin a course of study at a time when the majority have been obliged
+to finish their school life.
+
+As the elements of philosophy are not ordinarily found in the
+curriculum of girls' schools or schoolroom plans, it may not be out of
+place to say a few words on the method of bringing the subject within
+their reach.
+
+In the first place it should be kept in view from the beginning, and
+some preparation be made for it even in teaching the elements of
+subjects which are most elementary. Thus the study of any grammar may
+serve remotely as an introduction to logic, even English grammar
+which, beyond a few rudiments, is a most disinterested study, valuable
+for its by-products more than for its actual worth. But the practice
+of grammatical analysis is certainly a preparation for logic, as logic
+is a preparation for the various branches of philosophy. Again some
+preliminary exercises in definition, and any work of the like kind
+which gives precision in the use of language, or clear ideas of the
+meanings of words, is preparatory work which trains the mind in the
+right direction. In the same way the elements of natural science may
+at least set the thoughts and inquiries of children on the right track
+for what will later on be shown to them as the "disciplines" of
+cosmology and pyschology.
+
+To make preparatory subjects serve such a purpose it is obviously
+required that the teachers of even young children should have been
+themselves trained in these studies, so far at least as to know what
+they are aiming at, to be able to lay foundations which will not
+require to be reconstructed. It is not the matter so much as the
+habits of mind and work that are remotely prepared in the early
+stages, but without some knowledge of what is coming afterwards this
+preparation cannot be made. In order of arrangement it is not possible
+for the different branches to be taught to girls according to their
+normal sequence; they have to be adapted to the capacity of the minds
+and their degree of development. Some branches cannot even be
+attempted during the school-room years, except so far as to prepare
+the mind incidentally during the study of other branches. The
+explanation of certain terms and fundamental notions will serve as
+points of departure when opportunities for development are accessible
+later on, as architects set "toothings" at the angles of buildings
+that they may be bonded into later constructions. By this means the
+names of the more abstruse branches are kept out of sight, and it is
+emphasized that the barest elements alone are within reach at present,
+so that the permanent impression may be--not "how much I have
+learned," but "how little I know and how much there is to learn." This
+secures at least a fitting attitude of mind in those who will never go
+further, and increases the thirst of those who really want more.
+
+The most valuable parts of philosophy in the education of
+girls are:--
+
+1. Those which belong to the practical side--logic, for thought;
+ethics, for conduct; aesthetics, for the study of the arts.
+
+2. In speculative philosophy the "disciplines" which are most
+accessible and most necessary are psychology, and natural theology
+which is the very crown of all that they are able to learn.
+
+General metaphysics and cosmology, and in pyschology the subordinate
+treatises of criteriology and idealogy are beyond their scope.
+
+Logic, as a science, is not a suitable introduction, though some
+general notions on the subject are necessary as preliminary
+instructions. Cardinal Mercier presents these under "propaedeutics,"
+even for his grown-up scholars, placing logic properly so called in
+its own rank as the complement of the other treatises of speculative
+philosophy, seen in retrospect, a science of rational order amongst
+sciences.
+
+The "notions of logic" with which he introduces the other branches
+are, says the Cardinal, so plain that it is almost superfluous to
+enumerate them, "_tant elles sont de simple bon sens_," [1--"Traite
+Elfementaire de Philosophie," Vol. I, Introduction.] and he disposes
+of them in two pages of his textbook. Obviously this is not so simple
+when it comes to preparing the fallow ground of a girl's mind; but it
+gives some idea of the proportion to be observed in the use of this
+instrument at the outset, and may save both the teacher and the child
+from beguiling themselves to little purpose among the moods and
+figures of the syllogism. The preliminary notions of logic must be
+developed, extended, and supplemented through the whole course as
+necessity arises, just as they have been already anticipated through
+the preparatory work done in every elementary subject. This method is
+not strictly scientific nor in accordance with the full-grown course
+of philosophy; it only claims to have "_le simple bon sens_" in its
+favour, and the testimony of experience to prove that it is of use.
+And it cannot be said to be wholly out of rational order if it follows
+the normal development of a growing mind, and answers questions as
+they arise and call for solution. It may be a rustic way of learning
+the elements of philosophy, but it answers its purpose, and does not
+interfere with more scientific and complete methods which may come
+later in order of time.
+
+The importance of the "discipline" of psychology can scarcely be
+over-estimated. With that of ethics it gives to the minds of women
+that which they most need for the happy attainment of their destiny in
+any sphere of life and for the fulfilment of its obligations. They
+must know themselves and their own powers in order to exercise control
+and direction on the current of their lives. The complaint made of
+many women is that they are wanting in self-control, creatures of
+impulse, erratic, irresponsible, at the mercy of chance influences
+that assume control of their lives for the moment, subject to
+"nerves," carried away by emotional enthusiasm beyond all bounds, and
+using a blind tenacity of will to land themselves with the cause they
+have embraced in a dead-lock of absurdity.
+
+Such is the complaint. It would seem more pardonable if this tendency
+to extremes and impulsiveness were owned to as a defect. But
+to be erratic is almost assumed as a pose. It is taken up as if
+self-discipline were dull, and control reduced vitality and killed
+the interest of life. The phase may not last, stronger counsels may
+prevail again. In a few years it may be hoped that this school of
+"impressionism" in conduct will be out of vogue, but for the moment it
+would seem as if its weakness and mobility, and restlessness were
+rather admired. It has created a kind of automobilism--if the word may
+be allowed--of mind and manners, an inclination to be perpetually "on
+the move," too much pressed for time to do anything at all,
+permanently unsettled, in fact to be _unsettled_ is its habitual
+condition if not its recognized plan of life.
+
+It is not contended that psychology and ethics would of themselves
+cure this tendency, but they would undoubtedly aid in doing so, for
+the confusion of wanting to do better and yet not knowing what to do
+is a most pathetic form of helplessness. A little knowledge of
+psychology would at least give an idea of the resources which the
+human soul has at its command when it seeks to take itself in hand. It
+would allow of some response to a reasonable appeal from outside. And
+all the time the first principles of ethics would refuse to be killed
+in the mind, and would continue to bear witness against the waste of
+existence and the diversion of life from its true end.
+
+Rational principles of aesthetics belong very intimately to the
+education of women. Their ideas of beauty, their taste in art,
+influence very powerfully their own lives and those of others, and may
+transfigure many things which are otherwise liable to fall into the
+commonplace and the vulgar. If woman's taste is trained to choose
+the best, it upholds a standard which may save a generation from
+decadence. This concerns the beautiful and the fitting in all things
+where the power of art makes itself felt as "the expression of
+an ideal in a concrete work capable of producing an impression
+and attaching the beholder to that ideal which it presents for
+admiration." [1--Cardinal Mercier, "General Metaphysics," Part iv.,
+Ch. iv.] It touches on all questions of taste, not only in the fine
+arts but in fiction, and furniture, and dress, and all the minor arts
+of life and adaptation of human skill to the external conditions of
+living. The importance of all these in their effect on the happiness
+and goodness of a whole people is a plea for not leaving out the
+principles of aesthetics, as well as the practice of some form of art
+from the education of girls.
+
+The last and most glorious treatise in philosophy of which some
+knowledge can be given at the end of a school course is that of
+natural theology. If it is true, as they say, that St. Thomas Aquinas
+at the age of five years used to go round to the monks of Monte
+Cassino pulling them down by the sleeve to whisper his inquiry, "quid
+est Deus"? it may be hoped that older children are not incapable of
+appreciating some of the first notions that may be drawn from reason
+about the Creator, those truths "concerning the existence of God which
+are the supreme conclusion and crown of the department of physics, and
+those concerning His nature which apply the truths of general
+metaphysics to a determinate being, the Absolutely Perfect."
+[1--Cardinal Mercier, "Natural Theology," Introduction.] It is in the
+domain of natural theology that they will often find a safeguard
+against difficulties which may occur later in life, when they meet
+inquirers whose questions about God are not so ingenuous as that of
+the infant St. Thomas. The armour of their faith will not be so easily
+pierced by chance shots as if they were without preparation, and at
+the same time they will know enough of the greatness of the subject
+not to challenge "any unbeliever" to single combat, and undertake to
+prove against all opponents the existence and perfections of God.
+
+For instruction as well as for defence the relation of philosophy to
+revealed truth should be explained. It is necessary to point out that
+while science has its own sphere within which it is independent,
+having its own principles and methods and means of certitude, [1--De
+Bonald and others were condemned and reproved by Gregory XVI for
+teaching that reason drew its first principles and grounds of
+certitude from revelation.] yet the Church as the guardian of revealed
+truth is obliged to prosecute for trespass those who in teaching any
+science encroach by affirmation or contradiction on the domain of
+revelation.
+
+To sum up, therefore, logic can train the students to discriminate
+between good and bad arguments, which few ordinary readers can do, and
+not even every writer. Ethics teaches the rational basis of morals
+which it is useful for all to know, and psychology can teach to
+discriminate between the acts of intellect and will on the one hand
+and imagination and emotion on the other, and so furnish the key to
+many a puzzle of thought that has led to false and dangerous
+theorizing.
+
+The method of giving instruction in the different branches of
+philosophy will depend so much on the preparation of the particular
+pupils, and also on the cast of mind of the teachers, that it is
+difficult to offer suggestions, except to point out this very fact
+that each mind needs to be met just where it is--with its own mental
+images, vocabulary, habit of thought and attention, all calling for
+consideration and adaptation of the subject to their particular case.
+It depends on the degree of preparation of the teachers to decide
+whether the form of a lecture is safest, or whether they can risk
+themselves in the arena of question and answer, the most useful in
+itself but requiring a far more complete training in preparation. If
+it can be obtained that the pupils state their own questions and
+difficulties in writing, a great deal will have been gained, for a
+good statement of a question is half-way to the right solution. If,
+after hearing a lecture or oral lesson, they can answer in writing
+Borne simple questions carefully stated, it will be a further advance.
+It is something to grasp accurately the scope of a question. The
+plague of girls' answers is usually irrelevancy from want of thought
+as to the scope of questions or even from inattention to their
+wording. If they can be patient in face of unanswered difficulties,
+and wait for the solution to come later on in its natural course, then
+at least one small fruit of their studies will have been brought to
+maturity; and if at the end of their elementary course they are
+convinced of their own ignorance, and want to know more, it may be
+said that the course has not been unsuccessful.
+
+It is not, however, complete unless they know something of the history
+of philosophy, the great schools, and the names which have been held
+in honour from the beginning down to our own days. They will realize
+that it is good to have been born in their own time, and to learn such
+lessons now that the revival of scholastic philosophy under Leo XIII
+and the development of the neo-scholastic teaching have brought fresh
+life into the philosophy of tradition, which although it appears to
+put new wine into old bottles, seems able to preserve the wine and the
+bottles together.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE REALITIES OF LIFE.
+
+"He fixed thee mid this dance
+Of plastic circumstance,
+This Present, thou, forsooth, wouldst fain arrest:
+Machinery just meant
+To give thy soul its bent,
+Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently impressed."
+                        BROWNING, "Rabbi Ben Ezra."
+"Eh, Dieu! nous marchons trop en enfants--cela me fache!"
+                        ST. JANE FRANCES DE CHANTAL.
+
+One of the problems which beset school education, and especially
+education in boarding schools, is the difficulty of combining the good
+things it can give with the best preparation for after life. This
+preparation has to be made under circumstances which necessarily keep
+children away from many of the realities that have to be faced in the
+future.
+
+To be a small member of a large organization has an excellent effect
+upon the mind. From the presence of numbers a certain dignity gathers
+round many things that would in themselves be insignificant. Ideas of
+corporate life with its obligations and responsibilities are gained.
+Honoured traditions and ideals are handed down if the school has a
+history and spirit of its own. There are impressive and solemn moments
+in the life of a large school which remain in the memory as something
+beautiful and great. The close of a year, with its retrospect and
+anticipation, its restrained emotion from the pathos which attends all
+endings and beginnings in life, fills even the younger children with
+some transient realization of the meaning of it all, and lifts them
+up to a dim sense of the significance of existence, while for the
+elder ones such days leave engraven upon the mind thoughts which
+can never be effaced. These deep impressions belong especially to
+old-established schools, and are bound up with their past, with their
+traditional tone, and the aims that are specially theirs. In this they
+cannot be rivalled. The school-room at home is always the school-room,
+it has no higher moods, no sentiment of its own.
+
+There are diversities of gifts for school and for home education; for
+impressiveness a large school has the advantage. It is also, in
+general, better off in the quality of its teachers, and it can turn
+their rifts to better account. A modern governess would require to be
+a host in herself to supply the varied demands of a girl's education,
+in the subjects to be taught, in companionship and personal influence,
+in the training of character, in watching over physical development,
+and even if she should possess in herself all that would be needed,
+there is the risk of "incompatibility of temperament" which makes a
+_tete-a-tete_ life in the school-room trying on both sides. School has
+the advantage of bringing the influence of many minds to bear, so that
+it is rare that a child should pass through a school course without
+coming in contact with some who awaken and understand and influence
+her for good. It offers too the chance of making friends, and though
+"sets" and cliques, plagues of school life, may give trouble and
+unsettle the weaker minds from time to time, yet if the current of the
+school is healthy it will set against them, and on the other hand the
+choicest and best friendships often begin and grow to maturity in the
+common life of school. The sodalities and congregations in Catholic
+schools are training grounds within the general system of training, in
+which higher ideals are aimed at, the obligation of using influence
+for good is pressed home, and the instincts of leadership turned to
+account for the common good. Lastly, among the advantages of school
+may be counted a general purpose and plan in the curriculum, and
+better appliances for methodical teaching than are usually available
+in private school-rooms, and where out-door games are in honour they
+add a great zest to school life.
+
+But, as in all human things, there are drawbacks to school education,
+and because it is in the power of those who direct its organization to
+counteract some of these drawbacks, it is worth while to examine them
+and consider the possible remedies.
+
+In the first place it will probably be agreed that boarding-school
+life is not desirable for very young children, as their well-being
+requires more elasticity in rule and occupations than is possible if
+they are together in numbers. Little children, out of control and
+excited, are a misery to themselves and to each other, and if they are
+kept in hand enough to protect the weaker ones from the exuberant
+energy of the stronger, then the strictness chafes them all, and
+spontaneity is too much checked. The informal play which is possible
+at home, with the opportunities for quiet and even solitude, are much
+better for young children than the atmosphere of school, though a
+day-school, with the hours of home life in between, is sometimes
+successfully adapted to their wants. But the special cases which
+justify parents in sending young children to boarding schools are
+numerous, now that established home life is growing more rare, and
+they have to be counted with in any large school. It can only be said
+that the yoke ought to be made as light as possible--short lessons,
+long sleep, very short intervals of real application of mind, as much
+open air as possible, bright rooms, and a mental atmosphere that tends
+to calm rather than to excite them. They should be saved from the
+petting of the elder girls, in whom this apparent kindness is often a
+selfish pleasure, bad on both sides.
+
+For older children the difficulties are not quite the same, and
+instead of forcing them on too fast, school life may even keep them
+back. When children are assembled together in considerable numbers the
+intellectual level is that of the middle class of mind and does not
+favour the best, the outlook and conversation are those of the
+average, the language and vocabulary are on the same level, with a
+tendency to sink rather than to rise, and though emulation may urge on
+the leading spirits and keep them at racing speed, this does not
+quicken the interest in knowledge for its own sake, and the work is
+apt to slacken when the stimulus is withdrawn. And all the time there
+is comfort to the easy-going average in the consciousness of how many
+there are behind them.
+
+The necessity for organization and foresight in detail among large
+numbers is also unfavourable to individual development. For children
+to find everything prepared for them, to feel no friction in the
+working of the machinery, so that all happens as it ought to, without
+effort and personal trouble on their part, to be told what to do, and
+only have to follow the bells for the ordering of their time--all this
+tends to diminish their resourcefulness and their patience with the
+unforeseen checks and cross-purposes and mistakes that they will have
+to put up with on leaving school. As a matter of fact the more perfect
+the school machinery, the smoother its working, the less does it
+prepare for the rutty road afterwards, and in this there is some
+consolation when school machinery jars from time to time in the
+working; if it teaches patience it is not altogether regrettable, and
+the little trouble which may arise in the material order is perhaps
+more educating than the regularity which has been disturbed.
+
+We are beginning to believe what has never ceased to be said, that
+lessons in lesson-books are not the whole of education. The whole system
+of teaching in the elementary schools has been thrown off its balance by
+too many lesson-books, but it is righting itself again, and some of the
+memoranda on teaching, issued by the Board of Education within the last
+few years, are quite admirable in their practical suggestions for
+promoting a more efficient preparation for life. The Board now insists
+on the teaching of handicrafts, training of the senses in observation,
+development of knowledge, taste, and skill in various departments which
+are useful for life, and for girls especially on things which make the
+home. The same thing is wanted in middle-class education, though parents
+of the middle-class still look a little askance at household employments
+for their daughters. But children of the wealthier and upper classes
+take to them as a birthright, with the cordial assent of their parents
+and the applause of the doctors. It is for these children, so
+well-disposed for a practical education, and able to carry its influence
+so far, that we may consider what can be done in school life.
+
+We ourselves who have to do with children must first appreciate the
+realities of life before we can communicate this understanding to others
+or give the right spirit to those we teach. And "the realities of life"
+may stand as a name for all those things which have to be learned in
+order to live, and which lesson-books do not teach. The realities of
+life are not material things, but they are very deeply wrought in with
+material things. There are things to be done, and things to be made, and
+things to be ordered and controlled, belonging to the primitive wants of
+human life, and to all those fundamental cares which have to support it.
+They are best learned in the actual doing from those who know how to do
+them; for although manuals and treatises exist for every possible
+department of skill and activity, yet the human voice and hand go much
+further in making knowledge acceptable than the textbook with diagrams.
+The dignity of manual labour comes home from seeing it well done, it is
+shown to be worth doing and deserving of honour.
+
+Something which cannot be shown to children, but it will come to them
+later on as an inheritance, is the effect of manual work upon their
+whole being. Manual work gives balance and harmony in the development of
+the growing creature. A child does not attain its full power unless
+every faculty is exercised in turn, and to think that hard mental work
+alternated with hard physical exercise will give it full and wholesome
+development is to ignore whole provinces of its possessions. Generally
+speaking, children have to take the value of their mental work on the
+faith of our word. They must go through a great deal in mastering the
+rudiments of, say, Latin grammar (for the honey is not yet spread so
+thickly over this as it is now over the elements of modern languages).
+They must wonder why "grown-ups" have such an infatuation for things
+that seem out of place and inappropriate in life as they consider it
+worth living. Probably it is on this account that so many artificial
+rewards and inducements have had to be brought in to sustain their
+efforts. Physical exercise is a joy to healthy children, but it leaves
+nothing behind as a result. Children are proud of what they have done
+and made themselves. They lean upon the concrete, and to see as the
+result of their efforts something which lasts, especially something
+useful, as a witness to their power and skill, this is a reward in
+itself and needs no artificial stimulus, though to measure their own
+work in comparative excellence with that of others adds an element that
+quickens the desire to do well. Children will go quietly back again and
+again to look, without saying anything, at something they have made with
+their own hands, their eyes telling all that it means to them, beyond
+what they can express.
+
+With its power of ministering to harmonious development of the faculties
+manual work has a direct influence on fitness for home and social life.
+It greatly develops good sense and aptitude for dealing with ordinary
+difficulties as they arise. In common emergencies it is the "handy"
+member of the household whose judgment and help are called upon, not the
+brilliant person or one who has specialized in any branch, but the one
+who can do common things and can invent resources when experience fails.
+When the specialist is at fault and the artist waits for inspiration,
+the handy person conies in and saves the situation, unprofessionally,
+like the bone-setter, without much credit, but to the great comfort of
+every one concerned.
+
+Manual work likewise saves from eccentricity or helps to correct it.
+Eccentricity may appear harmless and even interesting, but in practice
+it is found to be a drawback, enfeebling some sides of a character,
+throwing the judgment at least on some points out of focus. In children
+it ought to be recognized as a defect to be counteracted. When people
+have an overmastering genius which of itself marks out for them a
+special way of excellence, some degree of eccentricity is easily
+pardoned, and almost allowable. But eccentricity unaccompanied by genius
+is mere uncorrected selfishness, or want of mental balance. It is
+selfishness if it could be corrected and is not, because it makes
+exactions from others without return. It will not adapt itself to them
+but insists on being taken as it is, whether acceptable or not. At best,
+eccentricity is a morbid tendency liable to run into extremes when its
+habits are undisturbed. An excuse sometimes made for eccentricity is
+that it is a security against any further mental aberration, perhaps on
+the same principle that inoculation producing a mild form of diseases is
+sometimes a safeguard against their attacks. But if the mind and habits
+of life can be brought under control, so as to take part in ordinary
+affairs without attracting attention or having exemptions and allowance
+made for them, a result of a far higher order will have been attained.
+To recognize eccentricity as selfishness is a first step to its cure,
+and to make oneself serviceable to others is the simplest corrective.
+Whatever else they may be, "eccentrics" are not generally serviceable.
+
+Children of vivid imagination, nervously excitable and fragile in
+constitution, rather easily fall into little eccentric ways which grow
+very rapidly and are hard to overcome. One of the commonest of these is
+talking to themselves. Sitting still, making efforts to apply their
+minds to lessons for more than a short time, accentuates the tendency by
+nerve fatigue. In reaction against fatigue the mind falls into a vacant
+state and that is the best condition for the growth of eccentricities
+and other mental troubles. If their attention is diverted from
+themselves, and yet fixed with the less exhausting concentration which
+belongs to manual work, this diversion into another channel, with its
+accompany bodily movement, will restore the normal balance, and the
+little eccentric pose will be forgotten; this is better than being
+noticed and laughed at and formally corrected.
+
+Manual employments, especially if varied, and household occupations
+afford a great variety, give to children a sense of power in knowing
+what to do in a number of circumstances; they take pleasure in this, for
+it is a thing which they admire in others. Domestic occupations also
+form in them a habit of decision, from the necessity of getting through
+things which will not wait. For domestic duties do not allow of waiting
+for a moment of inspiration or delaying until a mood of depression or
+indifference has passed. They have a quiet, imperious way of commanding,
+and an automatic system of punishing when they are neglected, which are
+more convincing that exhortations. Perhaps in this particular point lies
+their saving influence against nerves and moodiness and the
+demoralization of "giving way." Those who have no obligations, whose
+work will wait for their convenience, and who can if they please let
+everything go for a time, are more easily broken down by trouble than
+those whose household duties still have to be done, in the midst of
+sorrow and trial. There is something in homely material duties which
+heals and calms the mind and gives it power to come back to itself. And
+in sudden calamities those who know how to make use of their hands do
+not helplessly wring them, or make trouble worse by clinging to others
+for support.
+
+Again, circumstances sometimes arise in school life which make light
+household duties an untold boon for particular children. Accidental
+causes, troubles of eyesight, or too rapid growth, etc., may make
+regular study for a time impossible to them. These children become
+_exempt_ persons, and even if they are able to take some part in the
+class work the time of preparation is heavy on their hands. Exempt
+persons easily develop undesirable qualities, and their apparent
+privileges are liable to unsettle others. As a matter of fact those who
+are able to keep the common life have the best of it, but they are apt
+to look upon the exemption of others as enviable, as they long for gipsy
+life when a caravan passes by. With the resource of household employment
+to give occupation it becomes apparent that exemption does not mean
+holiday, but the substitution of one duty or lesson for another, and
+this is a principle which holds good in after life--that except in case
+of real illness no one is justified in having nothing to do.
+
+Lastly, the work of the body is good for the soul, it drives out
+silliness as effectually as the rod, since that which was of old
+considered as the instrument for exterminating the "folly bound up in
+the heart of a child," has been laid aside in the education of girls. It
+is a great weapon against the seven devils of whom one is Sloth and
+another Pride, and it prepares a sane mind in a sound body for the
+discipline of after life.
+
+Experience bears its own testimony to the failure of an education which
+is out of touch with the material requirements of life. It leaves an
+incomplete power of expression, and some dead points in the mind from
+which no response can be awakened. To taste of many experiences seems to
+be necessary for complete development. When on the material side all is
+provided without forethought, and people are exempt from all care and
+obligation, a whole side of development is wanting, and on that side the
+mind remains childish, inexperienced, and unreal. The best mental
+development is accomplished under the stress of many demands. One claim
+balances the other; a touch of hardness and privation gives strength of
+mind and makes self-denial a reality; a little anxiety teaches foresight
+and draws out resourcefulness, and the tendency to fret about trifles is
+corrected by the contact of the realities of life.
+
+To come to practice--What can be done for girls during their years at
+school?
+
+In the first place the teaching of the fundamental handicraft of women,
+needlework, deserves a place of honour. In many schools it has almost
+perished by neglect, or the thorns of the examination programme have
+grown up and choked it. This misfortune has been fairly common where the
+English "University Locals" and the Irish "Intermediate" held sway.
+There literally was not time for it, and the loss became so general that
+it was taken as a matter of course, scarcely regretted; to the children
+themselves, so easily carried off by _vogue_, it became almost a matter
+for self-complacency, "not to be able to hold a needle" was accepted as
+an indication of something superior in attainments. And it must be owned
+that there were certain antiquated methods of teaching the art which
+made it quite excusable to "hate needlework." One "went through so much
+to learn so little"; and the results depending so often upon help from
+others to bring them to any conclusion, there was no sense of personal
+achievement in a work accomplished. Others planned, cut out and prepared
+the work, and the child came in as an unwilling and imperfect sewing
+machine merely to put in the stitches. The sense of mastery over
+material was not developed, yet that is the only way in which a child's
+attainment of skill can be linked on to the future. What cannot be done
+without help always at hand drops out of life, and likewise that which
+calls for no application of mind.
+
+To reach independence in the practical arts of life is an aim that will
+awaken interests and keep up efforts, and teachers have only a right to
+be satisfied when their pupils can do without them. This is not the
+finishing point of a course of teaching, it is a whole system, beginning
+in the first steps and continuing progressively to the end. It entails
+upon teachers much labour, much thought, and the sacrifice of showy
+results. The first look of finish depends more upon the help of the
+teacher than upon the efforts of children. Their results must be waited
+for, and they will in the early years have a humbler, more rough-hewn
+look than those in which expert help has been given. But the educational
+advantages are not to be compared.
+
+A four years' course, two hours per week, gives a thorough   grounding
+in plain needlework, and girls are then capable of beginning
+dressmaking, in they can reach a very reasonable proficiency when they
+leave school. Whether they turn this to practical account in their own
+homes, or make use of it in Clothing Societies and Needlework Guilds for
+the poor, the knowledge is of real value. If fortune deals hardly with
+them, and they are thrown on their own resources later in life, it is
+evident that to make their own clothes is a form of independence for
+which they will be very thankful. Another branch of needlework that
+ought to form part of every Catholic girl's education is that of work
+for the Church in which there is room for every capacity, from the
+hemming of the humblest _lavabo_ towel to priceless works of art
+embroidered by queens for the popes and bishops of their time.
+
+"First aid," and a few practical principles of nursing, can sometimes be
+profitably taught in school, if time is made for a few lessons, perhaps
+during one term. The difficulty of finding time even adds to the
+educational value, since the conditions of life outside do not admit of
+uniform intervals between two bells. Enough can be taught to make girls
+able to take their share helpfully in cases of illness in their homes,
+and it is a branch of usefulness in which a few sensible notions go a
+long way.
+
+General self-help is difficult to define or describe, but it can be
+taught at school more than would appear at first sight, if only those
+engaged in the education of children will bear in mind that the triumph
+of their devotedness is to enable children to do without them. This is
+much more laborious than to do things efficiently and admirably for
+them, but it is real education. They can be taught as mothers would
+teach them at home, to mend and keep their things in order, to prepare
+for journeys, pack their own boxes, be responsible for their labels and
+keys, write orders to shops, to make their own beds, dust their private
+rooms, and many other things which will readily occur to those who have
+seen the pitiful sight of girls unable to do them.
+
+Finally, simple and elementary cooking comes well within the scope of
+the education of elder girls at school. But it must be taught seriously
+to make it worth while, and as in the teaching of needlework, the
+foundations must be plain. To begin by fancy-work in one case and
+bonbons in the other turns the whole instruction into a farce. In this
+subject especially, the satisfaction of producing good work, well done,
+without help, is a result which justifies all the trouble that may be
+spent upon it. When girls have, by themselves, brought to a happy
+conclusion the preparation of a complete meal, their very faces bear
+witness to the educational value of the success. They are not elated nor
+excited, but wear the look of quiet contentment which seems to come from
+contact with primitive things. This look alone on a girl's face gives a
+beauty of its own, something becoming, and fitting, and full of promise.
+No expression is equal to it in the truest charm, for quiet contentment
+is the atmosphere which in the future, whatever may be her lot, ought to
+be diffused by her presence, an atmosphere of security and rest.
+
+Perhaps at first sight it seems an exaggeration to link so closely
+together the highest natural graces of a woman with those lowliest
+occupations, but let the effects be compared by those who have examined
+other systems of instruction. If they have considered the outcome of an
+exclusively intellectual education for girls, especially one loaded with
+subjects in sections to be "got up" for purposes of examination, and
+compared it with one into which the practical has largely entered, they
+can hardly fail to agree that the latter is the best preparation for
+life, not only physically and morally but mentally. During the stress of
+examinations lined foreheads, tired eyes, shallow breathing, angular
+movements tell their own story of strain, and when it is over a want of
+resourcefulness in finding occupation shows that a whole side has
+remained undeveloped. The possibility of turning to some household
+employments would give rest without idleness; it would save from two
+excesses in a time of reaction, from the exceeding weariness of having
+nothing to do, the real misery of an idle life, and on the other hand
+from craving for excitement and constant change through fear of this
+unoccupied vacancy.
+
+One other point is worth consideration. The "servant question" is one
+which looms larger and larger as a household difficulty. There are
+stories of great and even royal households being left in critical
+moments at the mercy of servants' tempers, of head cooks "on strike" or
+negligent personal attendants. And from these down to the humblest
+employers of a general servant the complaint is the same--servants so
+independent, so exacting, good servants not to be had, so difficult to
+get things properly done, etc. These complaints give very strong warning
+that helpless dependence on servants is too great a risk to be accepted,
+and that every one in ordinary stations of life should be at least able
+to be independent of personal service. The expansion of colonial life
+points in the same direction. The "simple life" is talked of at home,
+but it is really lived in the colonies. Those who brace themselves to
+its hardness find a vigour and resourcefulness within them which they
+had never suspected, and the pride of personal achievement in making a
+home brings out possibilities which in softer circumstances might have
+remained for ever dormant, with their treasure of happiness and hardy
+virtues. It is possible, no doubt, in that severe and plain life to lose
+many things which are not replaced by its self-reliance and hardihood.
+It is possible to drop into merely material preoccupation in the
+struggle for existence. But it is also possible not to do so, and the
+difference lies in having an ideal.
+
+To Catholics even work in the wilderness and life in the backwoods are
+not dissociated from the most spiritual ideals. The pioneers of the
+Church, St. Benedict's monks, have gone before in the very same labour
+of civilization when Europe was to a great extent still in backwoods.
+And, when they sanctified their days in prayer and hard labour, poetry
+did not forsake them, and learning even took refuge with them in their
+solitude to wait for better times. It was religion which attracted both.
+Without their daily service of prayer, the _Opus Dei_, and the assiduous
+copying of books, and the desire to build worthy churches for the
+worship of God, arts and learning would not have followed the monks into
+the wilderness, but their life would have dropped to the dead level of
+the squatter's existence. In the same way family life, if toilsome,
+either at home or in a new country, may be inspired by the example of
+the Holy Family in Nazareth; and in lonely and hard conditions, as well
+as in the stress of our crowded ways of living, the influence of that
+ideal reaches down to the foundations and transfigures the very humblest
+service of the household.
+
+These primitive services which are at the foundation of all home life
+are in themselves the same in all places and times. There is in them
+something almost sacred; they are sane, wholesome, stable, amid the
+weary perpetual change of artificial additions which add much to the
+cares but little to the joys of life. There is a long distance between
+the labours of Benedictine monks and the domestic work possible for
+school girls, but the principles fundamental to both are the
+same--happiness in willing work, honour to manual labour, service of God
+in humble offices. The work of lay-sisters in some religious houses,
+where they understand the happiness of their lot, links the two extremes
+together across the centuries. The jubilant onset of their company in
+some laborious work is like an anthem rising to God, bearing witness to
+the happiness of labour where it is part of His service. They are the
+envy of the choir religious, and in the precincts of such religious
+houses children unconsciously learn the dignity of manual labour, and
+feel themselves honoured by having any share in it. Such labour can be
+had for love, but not for money.
+
+One word must be added before leaving the subject of the realities of
+life. Worn time to time a rather emphatic school lifts up its voice in
+the name of plain speaking and asks for something beyond reality--for
+realism, for anticipated instruction on the duties and especially on the
+dangers of grown-up life. It will be sufficient to suggest three points
+for consideration in this matter: (1) That these demands are not made by
+fathers and mothers, but appear to come from those whose interest in
+children is indirect and not immediately or personally responsible. This
+may be supposed from the fact that they find fault with what is omitted,
+but do not give their personal experience of how the want may be
+supplied. (2) Those priests who have made a special study of children do
+not seem to favour the view, or to urge that any change should be made
+in the direction of plain speaking. (3) The answer given by a great
+educational authority, Miss Dorothea Beale, the late Principal of
+Cheltenham College, may appeal to those who are struck by the theory if
+they do not advocate it in practice. When this difficulty was laid
+before her she was not in favour of departing from the usual course, or
+insisting on the knowledge of grown-up life before its time, and she
+pointed out that in case of accidents or surgical operations it was not
+the doctors nor the nurses actively engaged who turned faint and sick,
+but those who had nothing to do, and in the same way she thought that
+such instruction, cut off from the duties and needs of the present, was
+not likely to be of any real benefit, but rather to be harmful.
+Considering how wide was her experience of educational work this opinion
+carries great weight.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+LESSONS AND PLAY.
+
+   "What think we of thy soul?
+
+     *     *     *     *
+
+"Born of full stature, lineal to control;
+   And yet a pigmy's yoke must undergo.
+Yet must keep pace and tarry, patient, kind,
+With its unwilling scholar, the dull, tardy mind;
+Must be obsequious to the body's powers,
+Whose low hands mete its paths, set ope and close its ways,
+   Must do obeisance to the days,
+And wait the little pleasure of the hours;
+   Yea, ripe for kingship, yet must be
+Captive in statuted minority!"
+            "Sister Songs," by FRANCIS THOMPSON.
+
+Lessons and play used to be as clearly marked off one from the other as
+land and water on the older maps. Now we see some contour maps in which
+the land below so many feet and the sea within so many fathoms' depth
+are represented by the same marking, or left blank. In the same way the
+tendency in education at present is almost to obliterate the line of
+demarcation, at least for younger children, so that lessons become a
+particular form of play, "with a purpose," and play becomes a sublimated
+form of lessons, as the druggists used to say, "an elegant preparation"
+of something bitter. If the Board of Education were to name a commission
+composed of children, and require it to look into the system, it is
+doubtful whether they would give a completely satisfactory report. They
+would probably judge it to be too uniform in tone, poor in colour and
+contrast, deficient in sparkle. They like the exhilaration of bright
+colour, and the crispness of contrast. Of course they would judge it
+from the standpoint of play, not of lessons. But play which is not quite
+play, coming after something which has been not quite lessons, loses the
+tingling delight of contrast. The funereal tolling of a bell for real
+lessons made a dark background against which the rapture of release for
+real play shone out with a brilliancy which more than made up for it. At
+home, the system of ten minutes' lessons at short intervals seems to
+answer well for young children; it exerts just enough pressure to give
+rebound in the intervals of play. Of course this is not possible at
+school.
+
+But the illusion that lessons are play cannot be indefinitely kept up,
+or if the illusion remains it is fraught with trouble. Duty and
+endurance, the power to go through drudgery, the strength of mind to
+persist in taking trouble, even where no interest is felt, the
+satisfaction of holding on to the end in doing something arduous, these
+things must be learned at some time during the years of education. If
+they are not learned then, in all probability they will never be
+acquired at all; examples to prove the contrary are rare. The question
+is how--and when. If pressed too soon with obligations of lessons,
+especially with prolonged attention, little anxious faces and round
+shoulders protest. If too long delayed the discovery comes as a shock,
+and the less energetic fall out at once and declare that they "can't
+learn"--"never could."
+
+Perhaps in one way the elementary schools with their large classes have
+a certain advantage in this, because the pressure is more self-adjusting
+than in higher class education, where the smaller numbers give to each
+child a greater share in the general work, for better or for worse. In
+home education this share becomes even greater when sometimes one child
+alone enjoys or endures the undivided attention of the governess. In
+that case the pressure does not relax. But out of large classes of
+infants in elementary schools it is easy to see on many vacant restful
+faces that after a short exertion in "qualifying to their teacher" they
+are taking their well-earned rest. They do not allow themselves to be
+strung up to the highest pitch of attention all through the lesson, but
+take and leave as they will or as they can, and so they are carried
+through a fairly long period of lessons without distress. As they grow
+older and more independent in their work the same cause operates in a
+different way. They can go on by themselves and to a certain extent they
+must do so, as o n account of the numbers teachers can give less time
+and less individual help to each, and the habit of self-reliance is
+gradually acquired, with a certain amount of drudgery, leading to
+results proportionate to the teacher's personal power of stimulating
+work. The old race of Scottish schoolmaster in the rural schools
+produced--perhaps still produces--good types of such self-reliant
+scholars, urged on by his personal enthusiasm for knowledge. Having no
+assistant, his own personality was the soul of the school, both boys and
+girls responding in a spirit which was worthy of it. But the boys had
+the best of it; "lassies" were not deemed worthy to touch the classics,
+and the classics were everything to him. In America it is reported that
+the best specimens of university students often come from remote schools
+in which no external advantages have been available; but the tough
+unyielding habit of study has been developed in grappling with
+difficulties without much support from a teacher.
+
+With those who are more gently brought up the problem is how to obtain
+this habit of independent work, that is practically--how to get the will
+to act. There is drudgery to be gone through, however it may be
+disguised, and as a permanent acquisition the power of going through it
+is one of the most lasting educational results that can be looked for.
+Drudgery is labour with toil and fatigue. It is the long penitential
+exercise of the whole human race, not limited to one class or
+occupation, but accompanying every work of man from the lowest
+mechanical factory hand or domestic "drudge" up to the Sovereign
+Pontiff, who has to spend so many hours in merely receiving,
+encouraging, blessing, and dismissing the unending processions of his
+people as they pass before him, imparting to them graces of which he can
+never see the fruit, and then returning to longer hours of listening to
+complaints and hearing of troubles which often admit of no remedy: truly
+a life of labour with toil and fatigue, in comparison with which most
+lives are easy, though each has to bear in its measure the same stamp.
+Pius X has borne the yoke of labour from his youth. His predecessor took
+it up with an enthusiasm that burned within him, and accepted training
+in a service where the drudgery is as severe though generally kept out
+of sight. The acceptance of it is the great matter, whatever may be the
+form it takes.
+
+Spurs and bait, punishment and reward, have been used from time
+immemorial to set the will in motion, and the results have been
+variable--no one has appeared to be thoroughly satisfied with either, or
+even with a combination of the two. Some authorities have stood on an
+eminence, and said that neither punishment nor reward should be used,
+that knowledge should be loved for its own sake. But if it was not
+loved, after many invitations, the problem remained. As usual the real
+solution seems to be attainable only by one who really loves both
+knowledge and children, or one who loves knowledge and can love
+children, as Vittorino da Feltre loved them both, and also Blessed
+Thomas More. These two affections mingled together produce great
+educators--great in the proportion in which the two are possessed--as
+either one or the other declines the educational power diminishes, till
+it dwindles down to offer trained substitutes and presentable
+mediocrities for living teachers. The fundamental principle reasserts
+itself, that "love feels no labour, or if it does it loves the labour."
+
+Here is one of our Catholic secrets of strength. We have received so
+much, we have so much to give, we know so well what we want to obtain.
+We have the Church, the great teacher of the world, as our prototype,
+and by some instinct a certain unconscious imitation of her finds its
+way into the mind and heart of Catholic teachers, so that, though often
+out of poorer material, we can produce teachers who excel in personal
+hold over children, and influence for good by their great affection and
+the value which they set on souls. Their power of obtaining work is
+proportioned to their own love of knowledge, and here--let it be owned--we
+more often fail. Various theories are offered in explanation of this;
+people take one or other according to their personal point of view. Some
+say we feel so sure of the other world that our hold on this is slack.
+Some that in these countries we have not yet made up for the check of
+three centuries when education was made almost impossible for us. And
+others say it is not true at all. Perhaps they know best.
+
+Next to the personal power of the teacher to influence children in
+learning lessons comes an essential condition to make it possible, and
+that is a simple life with quiet regular hours and unexciting pleasures.
+Amid a round of amusements lessons must go to the wall, no child can
+stand the demands of both at a time. All that can be asked of them is
+that they should live through the excitement without too much weariness
+or serious damage. The place to consider this is in London at the
+children's hour for riding in the park, contrasting the prime condition
+of the ponies with the "illustrious pallor" of so many of their riders.
+They have courage enough left to sit up straight in their saddles, but
+it would take a heart of stone to think of lesson books. This extreme of
+artificial life is of course the portion of the few. Those few, however,
+are very important people, influential in the future for good or evil,
+but a protest from a distance would not reach their schoolrooms, any
+more than legislation for the protection of children; they may be
+protected from work, but not from amusement. The conditions of simple
+living which are favourable for children have been so often enumerated
+that it is unnecessary to go over them again; they may even be procured
+in tabular form or graphical representation for those to whom these
+figures and curves carry conviction.
+
+But a point that is of more practical interest to children and teachers,
+struggling together in the business of education, and one that is often
+overlooked, is that children do not know how to learn lessons when the
+books are before them, and that there is a great waste of good power,
+and a great deal of unnecessary weariness from this cause. If the cause
+of imperfectly learned lessons is examined it will usually be found
+there, and also the cause of so much dislike to the work of preparation.
+Children do not know by instinct how to set about learning a lesson from
+a book, nor do they spontaneously recognize that there are different
+ways of learning, adapted to different lessons. It is a help to them to
+know that there is one way for the multiplication table and another for
+history and another for poetry, as the end of the lesson is different.
+They can understand this if it is put before them that one is learnt
+most quickly by mere repetition, until it becomes a sing-song in the
+memory that cannot go wrong, and that afterwards in practice it will
+allow itself to be taken to pieces; they will see that they can grasp a
+chapter of history more intelligently if they prepare for themselves
+questions upon it which might be asked of another, than in trying by
+mechanical devices of memory to associate facts with something to hold
+them by; that poetry is different from both, having a body and a soul,
+each of which has to be taken account of in learning it, one of them
+being the song and the other the singer. Obviously there is not one only
+way for each of these or for other matters which have to be learnt, but
+one of the greatest difficulties is removed when it is understood that
+there is something intelligible to be done in the learning of lessons
+beyond reading them over and over with the hope that they will go in.
+
+The hearing of lessons is a subject that deserves a great deal of
+consideration. It is an old formal name for what has been often an
+antiquated mechanical exercise. A great deal more trouble is expended
+now on the manner of questioning and "hearing" the lessons; but even yet
+it may be done too formally, as a mere function, or in a way that kills
+the interest, or in a manner that alarms--with a mysterious face as if
+setting traps, or with questions that are easy and obvious to ask, but
+for children almost impossible to answer. Children do not usually give
+direct answers to simple questions. Experience seems to have taught them
+that appearances are deceptive in this matter, and they look about for
+the spring by which the trap works before they will touch the bait. It
+is a pity to set traps, because it destroys confidence, and children's
+confidence in such matters as lessons is hard to win.
+
+The question of aids to study by stimulants is a difficult one. On the
+one hand it seems to some educators a fundamental law that reward should
+follow right-doing and effort, and so no doubt it is; but the reward
+within one's own mind and soul is one thing and the calf-bound book is
+another--scarcely even a symbol of the first, because they are not
+always obtained by the same students. This is a fruitful subject for
+discourse or reflection at distributions of prizes. Those who are behind
+the scenes know that the race is not to the swift nor the battle to the
+strong, and the children know it themselves, and prize-winners often
+become the object of the "word in season," pointing out how rarely they
+will be found to distinguish themselves in after life; while the steady
+advance of the plodding and slow mind is dwelt upon, and those who have
+failed through idleness drink up the encouragement which was not
+intended for them, and feel that they are the hope of the future because
+they have won no prizes. It is difficult on those occasions to make the
+conflicting conclusions clear to everybody.
+
+Yet the system of prize distributions is time honoured and traditional,
+and every country is not yet so disinterested in study as to be able to
+do without it; under its sway a great deal of honest effort is put out,
+and the taste of success which is the great stimulant of youth is first
+experienced.
+
+There is also the system of certificates, which has the advantage of
+being open to many instead of to one. It is likewise a less material
+testimonial, approaching more nearly to the merited word of approval
+which is in itself the highest human reward, and the one nearest to the
+heart of things, because it is the one which belongs to home. For if the
+home authorities interest themselves in lessons at all, their grown-up
+standard and the paramount weight of their opinion gives to one word of
+their praise a dignity and worth which goes beyond all prizes. Beyond
+this there is no natural satisfaction to equal the inner consciousness
+of having done one's best, a very intimate prize distribution in which
+we ourselves make the discourse, and deliver the certificate to
+ourselves. This is the culminating point at which educators aim; they
+are all agreed that prizes in the end are meant to lead up to it, but
+the way is long between them. And both one and the other are good in so
+far as they lead us on to the highest judgment that is day by day passed
+on our work. When prizes, and even the honour of well-deserved praise,
+fail to attract, the thought of God the witness of our efforts, and of
+the value in His sight of striving which is never destined to meet with
+success, is a support that keeps up endurance, and seals with an evident
+mark of privilege the lives of many who have made those dutiful efforts
+not for themselves but in the sight of God.
+
+The subject of play has to be considered from two points of view, that
+of the children and ours. Theirs is concerned chiefly with the present
+and ours with the future, far although we do not want every play-hour to
+be haunted with a spectral presence that speaks of improvement and
+advancement, yet we cannot lose sight of the fact that every hour of
+play is telling on the future, deepening the mark of the character,
+strengthening the habits, and guiding the lines of after life into this
+or that channel.
+
+Looking at it from this point of view of the future, there seems to be
+something radically wrong at present with the play provided for children
+of nursery age. In a very few years we shall surely look back and wonder
+how we could have endured, for the children, the perverse reign of the
+Golliwog dynasty and the despotism of Teddy-bears. More than that, it is
+pitiful to hear of nurseries for Catholic children sometimes without
+shrine or altar or picture of the Mother of God, and with one of these
+monsters on every chair. Something even deeper than the artistic sense
+must revolt before long against this barbarous rule. The Teddy-bear, if
+he has anything to impart, suggests his own methods of life and defence,
+and the Golliwog, far worse--limp, hideous, without one characteristic
+grace, or spark of humour--suggests the last extremity of what is
+embodied in the expression "letting oneself go." And these things are
+loved! Pity the beautiful soul of the child, made for beautiful things.
+_II y a toujours en nous quelque chose qui veut ramper_, said Pere de
+Ravignan, and to this the Golliwog makes strong appeal. It is only too
+easy to _let go_, and the Golliwog playfellow says that it is quite
+right to do so--he does it himself. It takes a great deal to make him
+able to sit up at all--only in the most comfortable chair can it be
+accomplished--if the least obstacle is encountered he can only give way.
+And yet this pitiable being makes no appeal to the spirit of
+helpfulness. Do what you can for him it is impossible to raise him up,
+the only thing is to go down with him to his own level and stay there.
+The Golliwog is at heart a pessimist.
+
+In contrast with this the presence of an altar or nursery shrine, though
+not a plaything, gives a different tone to play--a tone of joy and
+heavenliness that go down into the soul and take root there to grow into
+something lasting and beautiful. There are flowers to be brought, and
+lights, and small processions, and evening recollection with quietness
+of devotion, with security in the sense of heavenly protection, with the
+realization of the "great cloud of witnesses" who are around to make
+play safe and holy, and there is through it all the gracious call to
+things higher, to be strong, to be unselfish, to be self-controlled, to
+be worthy of these protectors and friends in heaven.
+
+There is another side also to the question of nursery play, and that is
+what may be called the play-values of the things provided. Mechanical
+toys are wonderful, but beyond an artificial interest which comes mostly
+from the elders, there is very little lasting delight in them for
+children. They belong to the system of over-indulgence and
+over-stimulation which measures the value of things by their price.
+Their worst fault is that they do all there is to be done, while the
+child looks on and has nothing to do. The train or motor rushes round
+and round, the doll struts about and bleats "papa," "mama," the
+Teddy-bear growls and dances, and the owner has but to wind them up,
+which is very poor amusement. Probably they are better after they have
+been over-wound and the mechanical part has given way, and they have
+come to the hard use that belongs to their proper position as
+playthings. If a distinction may be drawn between toys and playthings,
+toys are of very little play-value, they stand for fancy play, to be
+fiddled with; while playthings stand as symbols of real life, the harder
+and more primitive side of life taking the highest rank, and all that
+they do is really done by the child. This is the real play-value. Even
+things that are not playthings at all, sticks and stones and shells,
+have this possibility in them. Things which have been found have a
+history of their own, which gives them precedence over what comes from a
+shop; but the highest value of all belongs to the things which children
+have made entirely themselves--bows and arrows, catapults, clay marbles,
+though imperfectly round, home-made boats and kites. The play-value
+grows in direct proportion to the amount of personal share which
+children have in the making and in the use of their playthings. And in
+this we ought cordially to agree with them.
+
+After the nursery age, in the school or school-room, play divides into
+two lines--organized games, of which we hear a great deal in school at
+present, and home play. They are not at all the same thing. Both have
+something in their favour. So much has been written of late about the
+value of organized games, how they bring out unselfishness, prompt and
+unquestioning obedience, playing for one's side and not for oneself,
+etc., that it seems as if all has been said better than it could be said
+again, except perhaps to point out that there is little relaxation in
+the battle of life for children who do their best at books indoors and
+at games out of doors--so that in self-defence a good many choose an
+"elective course" between the two lines of advantages that school
+offers, and do not attempt to serve two masters; they will do well at
+books or games, but not at both. If the interest in games is keen, they
+require a great deal of will-energy, as well as physical activity, a
+great deal of self-control and subordination of personal interest to the
+good of the whole. In return for these requirements they give a great
+deal, this or that, more or less, according to the character of the
+game; they give physical control of movement, quickness of eye and hand,
+promptitude in decision, observance of right moments, command of temper,
+and many other things. In fact, for some games the only adverse
+criticism to offer is that they are more of a discipline than real play,
+and that certainly for younger children who have no other form of
+recreation than play, something more restful to the mind and less
+definite in purpose is desirable.
+
+For these during playtime some semblance of solitude is exceedingly
+desirable at school where the great want is to be sometimes alone. It is
+good for them not to be always under the pressure of competition--going
+along a made road to a definite end--but to have their little moments of
+even comparative solitude, little times of silence and complete freedom,
+if they cannot be by themselves. Hoops and skipping-ropes without races
+or counted competitions will give this, with the possibility of a moment
+or two to do nothing but live and breathe and rejoice in air and
+sunshine. Without these moments of rest the conditions of life at
+present and the constitutions for which the new word "nervy" has had to
+be invented, will give us tempers and temperaments incapable of repose
+and solitude. A child alone in a swing, kicking itself backwards and
+forwards, is at rest; alone in its little garden it has complete rest of
+mind with the joy of seeing its own plants grow; alone in a field
+picking wild flowers it is as near to the heart of primitive existence
+as it is possible to be. Although these joys of solitude are only
+attainable in their perfection by children at home, yet if their value
+is understood, those who have charge of them at school can do something
+to give them breathing spaces free from the pressure of corporate life,
+and will probably find them much calmer and more manageable than if they
+have nothing but organized play.
+
+There are plenty of indoor occupations too for little girls which may
+give the same taste of solitude and silence, approaching to those
+simpler forms of home play which have no definite aim, no beginning and
+ending, no rules. The fighting instinct is very near the surface in
+ambitious and energetic children, and in the play-grounds it asserts
+itself all the more in reaction after indoor discipline, then excitement
+grows, and the weaker suffer, and the stronger are exasperated by
+friction. If unselfish, they feel the effort to control themselves; if
+selfish, they exhaust themselves and others in the battle to impose
+their own will. In these moods solitude and silence, with a hoop or
+skipping-rope, are a saving system, and restore calmness of mind. All
+that is wanted is freedom, fresh air, and spontaneous movement. This is
+more evident in the case of younger children, but if it can be obtained
+for elder girls it is just as great a relief. They have usually acquired
+more self-control, and the need does not assert itself so loudly, but it
+is perhaps all the greater; and in whatever way it can best be
+ministered to, it will repay attention and the provision that may be
+made for it.
+
+One word may be merely suggested for consideration concerning games in
+girls' schools, and that is the comparative value of them as to physical
+development. The influence of the game in vogue in each country will
+always be felt, but it is worth attention that some games, as hockey,
+conduce to all the attitudes and movements which are least to be
+desired, and that others, as basket-ball, on the contrary tend--if
+played with strict regard to rules--to attitudes which are in themselves
+beautiful and tending to grace of movement. This word belongs to our
+side of the question, not that of the children. It belongs to our side
+also to see that hoops are large, and driven with a stick, not a hook,
+for the sake of straight backs, which are so easily bent crooked in
+driving a small hoop with a hook.
+
+In connexion with movement comes the question of dancing. Dancing comes,
+officially, under the heading of lessons, most earnest lessons if the
+professor has profound convictions of its significance. But dancing
+belongs afterwards to the playtime of life. We have outlived the grim
+puritanical prejudice which condemned it as wrong, and it is generally
+agreed that there is almost a natural need for dancing as the expression
+of something very deep in human nature, which seems to be demonstrated
+by its appearance in one form or another, amongst all races of mankind.
+There is something in co-ordinated rhythmical movement, in the grace of
+steps, in the buoyancy of beautiful dancing which seems to make it a
+very perfect exercise for children and young people. But there are
+dances and dances, steps and steps, and about the really beautiful there
+is always a touch of the severe, and a hint of the ideal. Without these,
+dancing drops at once to the level of the commonplace and below it. In
+general, dances which embody some characteristics of a national life
+have more beauty than cosmopolitan dances, but they are only seen in
+their perfection when performed by dancers of the race to whom their
+spirit belongs, or by the class for whom they are intended: which is
+meant as a suggestion that little girls should not dance the hornpipe.
+
+In conclusion, the question of play, and playtime and recreation is
+absorbing more and more attention in grown-up life. We have heard it
+said over and over again of late years that we tire a nation at play,
+and that "the athletic craze" has gone beyond all bounds. Many facts are
+brought forward in support of this criticism from schools, from
+newspapers, from general surveys of our national life at present. And
+those who study more closely the Catholic body say that we too are
+sharing in this extreme, and that the Catholic body though small in
+number is more responsible and more deserving of reproof if it falls
+from its ideals, for it has ideals. It is only Catholic girls who
+concern us here, but our girls among other girls, and Catholic women
+among other women have the privilege as well as the duty of upholding
+what is highest. We belong by right to the graver side of the human
+race, for those who know must be in an emergency graver, less reckless
+on the one hand, less panic-stricken on the other, than those who do not
+know. We can never be entirely "at play." And if some of us should be
+for a time carried away by the current, and momentarily completely "at
+play," it must be in a wave of reaction from the long grinding of
+endurance under the penal times. Cardinal Newman's reminiscences of the
+life and ways of "the Roman Catholics" in his youth showy the temper of
+mind against which our present excess of play is a reaction.
+
+"A few adherents of the Old Religion, moving silently and sorrowfully
+about, as memorials of what had been. 'The Roman Catholics'--not a sect,
+not even an interest, as men conceived of it--not a body, however small,
+representative of the Great Communion abroad, but a mere handful of
+individuals, who might be counted, like the pebbles and detritus of the
+great deluge, and who, forsooth, merely happened to retain a creed
+which, in its day indeed, was the profession of a Church. Here a set of
+poor Irishmen, coining and going at harvest time, or a colony of them
+lodged in a miserable quarter of the vast metropolis. There, perhaps, an
+elderly person, seen walking in the streets, grave and solitary, and
+strange, though noble in bearing, and said to be of good family, and 'a
+Roman Catholic.' An old-fashioned house of gloomy appearance, closed in
+with high walls, with an iron gate, and yews, and the report attaching
+to it that 'Roman Catholics' lived there; but who they were, or what
+they did, or what was meant by calling them Roman Catholics, no one
+could tell, though it had an unpleasant sound, and told of form and
+superstition. And then, perhaps, as we went to and fro, looking with a
+boy's curious eyes through the great city, we might come to-day upon
+some Moravian chapel, or Quaker's meeting-house, and to-morrow on a
+chapel of the 'Roman Catholics': but nothing was to be gathered from it,
+except that there were lights burning there, and some boys in white,
+swinging censers: and what it all meant could only be learned from
+books, from Protestant histories and sermons; but they did not report
+well of the 'Roman Catholics,' but, on the contrary, deposed that they
+had once had power and had abused it. ... Such were the Catholics in
+England, found in corners, and alleys, and cellars, and the housetops,
+or in the recesses of the country; cut off from the populous world
+around them, and dimly seen, as if through a mist or in twilight, as
+ghosts flitting to and fro, by the high Protestants, the lords of the
+earth." ("The Second Spring.")
+
+This it is from which we are keeping holiday; but for us it can be only
+a half holiday, the sifting process is always at work, the opposition of
+the world to the Church only sleeps for a moment, and there are many who
+tell us that the signs of the times point to new forms of older
+conflicts likely to recur, and that we may have to go, as they went on
+the day of Waterloo, straight from the dance to the battlefield.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+MATHEMATICS, NATURAL SCIENCE, AND NATURE STUDY.
+
+     "The Arab told me that the stone
+(To give it in the language of the dream)
+Was "Euclid's Elements"; and "This," said he,
+"Is something of more worth"; and at the word
+Stretched forth the shell, so beautiful in shape,
+In colour so resplendent, with command
+That I should hold it to my ear. I did so,
+And heard that instant in an unknown tongue,
+Which yet I understood, articulate sounds,
+A loud prophetic blast of harmony."
+              WORDSWORTH, "The Prelude," Bk. V.
+
+Mathematics, natural science, and nature study may be conveniently
+grouped together, because in a study of educational aims, in so far as
+they concern Catholic girls, there is not much that is distinctive which
+practically affects these branches; during the years of school life they
+stand, more or less, on common ground with others. More advanced studies
+of natural science open up burning questions, and as to these, it is the
+last counsel of wisdom for girls leaving school or school-room to
+remember that they have no right to have any opinion at all. It is well
+to make them understand that after years of specialized study the really
+great men of science, in very gentle tones and with careful utterance,
+give to the world their formed opinions, keeping them ever open to
+readjustment as the results of fresh observations come in year after
+year, and new discoveries call for correction and rearrangement of what
+has been previously taught. It is also well that they should know that
+by the time the newest theory reaches the school-room and textbook it
+may be already antiquated and perhaps superseded in the observatory and
+laboratory, so that in scientific matters the school-room must always be
+a little "behind the times."     And likewise that when scientific
+teaching has to be brought within the compass of a text-book for young
+students, it is mere baby talk, as much like the original theory as a
+toy engine is like an express locomotive. From which they may conclude
+that it is wiser to be listeners or to ask deferential questions than to
+have light-hearted opinions of their own on burning questions such as we
+sometimes hear: "Do you believe in evolution?--I do." "No, I don't, I
+think there is very little evidence for it." And that if they are
+introduced to a man of science it is better not to ask his opinion about
+the latest skeleton that has been discovered, or let him see that they
+are alarmed lest there might be something wrong with our pedigree after
+all, or with the book of Genesis. One would be glad, however, that they
+should know the names and something of the works and reputation of the
+Catholic men of science, as Ampere, Pasteur, and Wassmann, etc., I Who
+have been or are European authorities in special aches of study, so that
+they may at least be ready with an answer to the frequent assertion that
+"Catholics have done nothing for science."
+
+But in connexion with these three subjects, not as to the teaching of
+them but as to their place in the education of girls, some points
+regarding education in general are worth considering:--
+
+1. Mathematics in the curriculum of girls' schools has been the subject
+of much debate. Cool and colourless as mathematics are in themselves,
+they have produced in discussion a good deal of heat, being put forward
+to bear the brunt of the controversy as to whether girls were equal to
+boys in understanding and capable of following the same course of study,
+and to enter into competition with them in all departments of learning.
+Even taking into consideration many brilliant achievements and an
+immense amount of creditable, and even distinguished work, the answer of
+those who have no personal bias in the matter for the sake of a Cause--is
+generally that they are not. Facts would seem to speak for themselves if
+only on the ground that the strain of equal studies is too great for the
+weaker physical organization. Girls are willing workers, exceedingly
+intense when their heart is set upon success; but their staying power is
+not equal to their eagerness, and the demands made upon them sometimes
+leave a mortgage on  their mental and physical estate which cannot be
+paid off in the course of a whole lifetime. In support of this,
+reference may be made to the [1 Appendix to "Final Report of the
+Commissioners (Irish Intermediate Education)," Pt. I, 1899.] report of a
+commission of Dublin physicians on the effects of the Intermediate
+Education system in Ireland, which has broken down many more girls than
+boys.
+
+Apart from the question of over-pressure it is generally recognized--let
+it be said again, by those who have not a position to defend or a theory
+to advance in the matter--that the aptitude of girls for mathematical
+work is generally less than that of boys, and unless one has some
+particular view or plan at stake in the matter there is no grievance in
+recognizing this. There is more to be gained in recognizing diversities
+of gifts than in striving to establish a level of uniformity, and life
+is richer, not poorer for the setting forth of varied types of
+excellence. Competition destroys cooperation, and in striving to prove
+ability to reach an equal standard in competition, the wider and more
+lasting interests which are at stake may be lost sight of, and in the
+end sacrificed to limited temporary success.
+
+The success of girls in the field of mathematics is, in general,
+temporary and limited, it means much less in their after life than in
+that of boys. For the few whose calling in life is teaching, mathematics
+have some after use; for those, still fewer, who take a real interest in
+them, they keep a place in later life; but for the many into whose
+life-work they do not enter, beyond the mental discipline which is
+sometimes evaded, very little remains. The end of school means for them
+the end of mathematical study, and the Complete forgetfulness in which
+the whole subject is soon buried gives the impression that too much may
+have been sacrificed to it. From the point of view of practical value it
+proves of little use, and as mental discipline something of more
+permanent worth might have taken its place to strengthen the reasoning
+powers. The mathematical teacher of girls has generally to seek
+consolation in very rare success for much habitual disappointment.
+
+The whole controversy about equality in education involves less
+bitterness to Catholics than to others, for this reason, that we have
+less difficulty than those of other persuasions in accepting a
+fundamental difference of ideals for girls and boys. Our ideals of
+family life, of spheres of action which co-operate and complete each
+other, without interference or competition, our masculine and feminine
+types of holiness amongst canonized saints, give a calmer outlook upon
+the questions involved in the discussion. The Church puts equality and
+inequality upon such a different footing that the result is harmony
+without clash of interests, and if in some countries we are drawn into
+the arena now, and forced into competition, the very slackness of
+interest which is sometimes complained of is an indirect testimony to
+the truth that we know of better things. And as those who know of better
+things are more injured by following the less good than those who know
+them not, so our Catholic girls seem to be either more indifferent about
+their work or more damaged by the spirit of competition if they enter
+into it, than those who consider it from a different plane.
+
+2. Natural science has of late years assumed a title to which it has no
+claim, and calls itself simply "_Science_"--presumably "_for short,_" but
+to the great confusion of young minds, or rather with the effect of
+contracting their range of vision within very narrow limits, as if
+theology and Biblical study, and mental and moral, and historical and
+political science, had no place of mention in the rational order where
+things are studied in their causes.
+
+Inquiry was made in several schools where natural science was taught
+according to the syllabuses of the Board of Education. The question was
+asked, "What is science?"--and without exception the answers indicated
+that science was understood to mean the study of the phenomena of the
+physical world in their causes. The name "Science" used by itself has
+been the cause of this, and has led to the usual consequences of the
+assumption of unauthorized titles.
+
+Things had been working up in England during the last few years towards
+this misconception in the schools. On the one hand there was the great
+impetus given to physical research and experimental science in recent
+years, so that its discoveries absorbed more and more attention, and
+this filtered down to the school books.
+
+On the other hand, especially since the South African war, there had
+been a great stir in reaction against mere lessons from books, and it
+was seen that we wanted more personal initiative and thought, and
+resourcefulness, and self-reliance, and many other qualities which our
+education had not tended to develop. It was seen that we were
+unpractical in our Instruction, that minds passed under the discipline
+of school and came out again, still slovenly, unobservant, unscientific
+in temper, impatient, flippant, inaccurate, tending to guess and to jump
+at conclusions, to generalize hastily, etc. It was observed that many
+unskilful hands came out of the schools, clumsy ringers, wanting in
+neatness, untidy in work, inept in measuring and weighing, incapable of
+handling things intelligently. There had come an awakening from the
+dreams of 1870, when we felt so certain that all England was to be made
+good and happy through books. A remedy was sought in natural science,
+and the next educational wave which was to roll over us began to rise.
+It was thought that the temper of the really scientific man, so patient
+in research, so accurate and conscientious, so slow to dogmatize, so
+deferential to others, might be fostered by experimental science in the
+schools, acquiring "knowledge at first hand," making experiments,
+looking with great respect at balances, weighing and measuring, and
+giving an account of results. So laboratories were fitted up at great
+expense, and teachers with university degrees in science were sought
+after. The height of the tide seemed to be reached in 1904 and 1905--to
+judge by the tone of Regulations for the Curricula of Secondary Schools
+issued by the Board of Education--for in these years it is most insistent
+and exacting for girls as well as boys, as to time and scope of the
+syllabus in this branch. Then disillusion seems to have set in and the
+tide began to ebb. It appeared that the results were small and poor in
+proportion to expectation and to the outlay on laboratories. The
+desirable qualities did not seem to develop as had been hoped, the
+temper of mind fostered was not entirely what had been desired. The
+conscientious accuracy that was to come of measuring a millimetre and
+weighing a milligramme was disappointing, and also the fluent readiness
+to give an account of observations made, the desired accuracy of
+expression, the caution in drawing inferences. The links between this
+teaching and after life did not seem to be satisfactorily established.
+The Board of Education showed the first signs of a change of outlook by
+the readjustment in the curriculum giving an alternative syllabus for
+girls, and the latitude in this direction is widening by degrees. It
+begins to be whispered that even in some boys' schools the laboratory is
+only used under compulsion or by exceptional students, and the wave
+seems likely to go down as rapidly as it rose.
+
+Probably for girls the strongest argument against experimental science
+taught in laboratories is that it has so little connexion with after
+life. As a discipline the remedy did not go deeply enough into the
+realities of life to reach the mental defects of girls; it was
+artificial, and they laid it aside as a part of school life when they
+went home. Latitude is now given by the Board of Education for "an
+approved course in a combination of the following subjects: needlework,
+cooking, laundry-work, housekeeping, and household hygiene for girls
+over fifteen years of age, to be substituted partially or wholly for
+science and for mathematics other than arithmetic." Comparing this with
+the regulations of five or six years ago when the only alternative for
+girls was a "biological subject" instead of physics, and elementary
+hygiene as a substitute for chemistry, it would seem as if the Board of
+Education had had reason to be dissatisfied with the "science" teaching
+for girls, and was determined to seek a more practical system.
+
+This practical aspect of things is penetrating into every department,
+and when it is combined with some study of first principles nothing
+better can be desired. For instance, in the teaching of geography, of
+botany, etc., there is a growing inclination to follow the line of
+reality, the middle course between the book alone and the laboratory
+alone, so that these subjects gather living interest from their many
+points of contact with human life, and give more play to the powers of
+children. As the text-book of geography is more and more superseded by
+the use of the atlas alone, and the botanical chart by the children's
+own drawings, and by the beautiful illustrations in books prepared
+especially for them, the way is opened before them to worlds of beauty
+and wonder which they may have for their own possession by the use of
+their eyes and ears and thoughts and reasonings.
+
+3. But better than all new apparatus and books of delight is the
+informal study of the world around us which has grown up by the side of
+organized teaching of natural science. The name of "nature study" is the
+least attractive point about it; the reality escapes from all
+conventionalities of instruction, and looks and listens and learns
+without the rules and boundaries which belong to real lessons. Its range
+is not restricted within formal limits; it is neither botany, nor
+natural history, nor physics; neither instruction on light nor heat nor
+sound, but it wanders on a voyage of discovery into all these domains.
+And in so far as it does this, it appeals very strongly to children.
+Children usually delight in flowers and dislike botany, are fond of
+animals and rather indifferent to natural history. Life is what awakens
+their interest; they love the living thing as a whole and do not care
+much for analysis or classification; these interests grow up later.
+
+The object of informal nature study is to put children directly in touch
+with the beautiful and wonderful things which are within their reach.
+Its lesson-book is everywhere, its time is every time, its spirit is
+wonder and delight. This is for the children. Those who teach it have to
+look beyond, and it is not so easy to teach as it is to learn. It
+cannot, properly speaking, be learned by teachers out of books, though
+books can do a great deal. But a long-used quiet habit of observation
+gives it life and the stored-up sweetness of years--"the old is better."
+The most charming books on nature study necessarily give a second-hand
+tone to the teaching. But the point of it all is knowledge at
+first-hand; yet, for children knowledge at first-hand is so limited that
+some one to refer to, and some one to guide them is a necessity, some
+one who will say at the right moment "look" and "listen," and who has
+looked and listened for years. Perhaps the requirement of knowledge at
+firsthand for children has sometimes been pushed a little too far, with
+a deadening effect, for the progress of such knowledge is very slow and
+laborious. How little we should know if we only admitted first-hand
+knowledge, but the stories of wonder from those who have seen urge us on
+to see for ourselves; and so we swing backwards and forwards, from the
+world outside to the books, to find out more, from the books to the
+world outside to see for ourselves. And a good teacher, who is an
+evergreen learner, goes backwards and forwards, too, sharing the work
+and heightening the delight. All the stages come in turn, over and over
+again, observation, experiment, inquiry from others whether orally or in
+books, and in this subject books abound more fascinating than fairy
+tales, and their latest charm is that they are laying aside the pose of
+a fairy tale and tell the simple truth.
+
+The love of nature, awakened early, is a great estate with which to
+endow a child, but it needs education, that the proprietor of the estate
+may know how to manage it, and not--with the manners of a _parvenu_--miss
+either the inner spirit or the outward behaviour belonging to the
+property. This right manner and spirit of possession is what the
+informal "nature study" aims at; it is a point of view. Now the point of
+view as to the outside world means a great deal in life. Countrymen do
+not love nature as townsmen love it. Their affection is deeper but less
+emotional, like old friendships, undemonstrative but everlasting.
+Countrymen see without looking, and say very little about it. Townsmen
+in the country look long and say what they have seen, but they miss many
+things. A farmer stands stolidly among the graces of his frisky lambs
+and seems to miss their meaning, but this is because the manners
+cultivated in his calling do not allow the expression of feeling. It is
+all in his soul somewhere, deeply at home, but impossible to utter. The
+townsman looks eagerly, expresses a great deal, expresses it well, but
+misses the spirit from want of a background to his picture. One must
+know the whole round of the year in the country to catch the spirit of
+any season and perceive whence it comes and whither it goes.
+
+On the other hand, the countryman in town thinks that there is no beauty
+of the world left for him to see, because the spirit there is a spirit
+of the hour and not of the season, and natural beauty has to be caught
+in evanescent appearances--a florist's window full of orchids in place of
+his woodlands--and his mind is too slow to catch these. This too quick or
+too slow habit of seeing belongs to minds as well as to callings; and
+when children are learning to look around them at the world outside, it
+has to be taken into account. Some will see without looking and be
+satisfied slowly to drink in impressions, and they are really glad to
+learn to express what they see. Others, the quick, so-called "clever"
+children, look, and judge, and comment, and overshoot the mark many
+times before they really see. These may learn patience in waiting for
+their garden seeds, and quietness from watching birds and beasts, and
+deliberation, to a certain extent, from their constant mistakes. To have
+the care of plants may teach them a good deal of watchfulness and
+patience; it is of greater value to a child to have grown one perfect
+flower than to have pulled many to pieces to examine their structure.
+And the care of animals may teach a great deal more if it learns to keep
+the balance between silly idolatry of pets and cruel negligence--the hot
+and cold extremes of selfishness.
+
+Little gardens of their own are perhaps the best gifts which can be
+given to children. To work in them stores up not only health but joy.
+Every flower in their garden stands for so much happiness, and with that
+happiness an instinct for home life and simple pleasures will strike
+deep roots. From growing the humblest annual out of a seed-packet to
+grafting roses there is work for every age, and even in the dead season
+of the year the interest of a garden never dies.
+
+In new countries gardens take new aspects. A literal version of a
+_garden party_ in the Transvaal suggests possibilities of emancipation
+from the conventionalities which weary the older forms of entertainment
+with us. Its object was not to play in a garden, but to plant one.
+Guests came from afar, each one bringing a contribution of plants. The
+afternoon was spent in laying out the beds and planting the offerings,
+in hard, honest, dirty work. And all the guests went home feeling that
+they had really lived a day that was worth living, for a garden had been
+made, in the rough, it is true; but even in the rough in such a new
+country a garden is a great possession.
+
+The outcome of these considerations is that the love of nature is a
+great source of happiness for children, happiness of the best kind in
+taking possession of a world that seems to be in many ways designed
+especially for them. It brings their minds to a place where many ways
+meet; to the confines of science, for they want to know the reasons of
+things; to the confines of art, for what they can understand they will
+strive to interpret and express; to the confines of worship, for a
+child's soul, hushed in wonder, is very near to God.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+ENGLISH.
+
+  "If Chaucer, as has been said, is Spring, it is a modern, premature
+Spring, followed by an interval of doubtful weather. Sidney is the very
+Spring--the later May. And in prose he is the authentic, only Spring. It
+is a prose full of young joy, and young power, and young inexperience,
+and young melancholy, which is the wilfulness of joy; . . .
+
+  "Sidney's prose is treasureable, not only for its absolute merits, but
+as the bud from which English prose, that gorgeous and varied flower,
+has unfolded."--FRANCIS THOMPSON, "The Prose of Poets."
+
+The study of one's own language is the very heart of a modern education;
+to the study of English, therefore, belongs a central place in the
+education of English-speaking girls. It has two functions: one is to
+become the instrument by which almost all the other subjects are
+apprehended; the other, more characteristically its own, is to give that
+particular tone to the mind which distinguishes it from others. This is
+a function that is always in process of further development; for the
+mind of a nation elaborates its language, and the language gives tone to
+the mind of the new generation. The influences at work upon the English
+language at present are very complex, and play on it with great force,
+so that the changes are startling in their rapidity. English is not only
+the language of a nation or of a race, not even of an empire; and the
+inflowing elements affirm this. We have kindred beyond the empire, and
+their speech is more and more impressing ours, forging from the common
+stock, which they had from us, whole armouries full of expressive words,
+words with edge and point and keen directness which never miss the mark.
+Some are unquestionably an acquisition, those which come from States
+where the language is honoured and studied with a carefulness that puts
+to shame all except our very best. They have kept some gracious and rare
+expressions, now quaint to our ear, preserved out of Elizabethan English
+in the current speech of to-day. These have a fragrance of the olden
+time, but we cannot absorb them again into our own spoken language. Then
+they have their incisive modern expressions so perfectly adapted for
+their end that they are irresistible even to those who cling by
+tradition to the more stable element in English. These also come from
+States in which language is conscious of itself and looks carefully to
+literary use, and they do us good rather than harm. Other importations
+from younger States are too evidently unauthorized to be in any way
+beautiful, and are blamed on both sides of the ocean as debasing the
+coinage. But these, too, are making their way, so cheap and convenient
+are they, and so expressive.
+
+It is needful in educating children to remember that this strong
+inflowing current must be taken into account, and also to remember that
+it does not belong to them. They must first be trained in the use of the
+more lasting elements of English; later on they may use their discretion
+in catching the new words which are afloat in the air, but the
+foundations must be laid otherwise. It takes the bloom off the freshness
+of young writers if they are determined to exhibit the last new words
+that are in, or out of season. New words have a doubtful position at
+first. They float here and there like thistle-down, and their future
+depends upon where they settle. But until they are established and
+accepted they are out of place for children's use. They are contrary to
+the perfect manner for children. We ask that their English should be
+simple and unaffected, not that it should glitter with the newest
+importations, brilliant as they may be. It is from the more permanent
+element in the language that they will acquire what they ought to have,
+the characteristic traits of thought and manner which belong to it. It
+is not too much to look for such things in children's writing and
+speaking. The first shoots and leaves may come up early though the full
+growth and flower may be long waited for. These characteristics are
+often better put into words by foreign critics than by ourselves, for we
+are inclined to take them as a whole and to take them for granted; hence
+the trouble experienced by educated foreigners in catching the
+characteristics of English style, and their surprise in finding that we
+have no authentic guides to English composition, fend that the court of
+final appeal is only the standard Of the best use. The words of a German
+critic on a Collection of English portraits in Berlin are very happily
+pointed and might be as aptly applied to writing as to painting.
+
+"English, utterly English! Nothing on God's earth could be more English
+than this whole collection. The personality of the artist (_it happened
+that he was an Irishman_), the countenances of the subjects, their
+dress, the discreetly suggestive backgrounds, all have the
+characteristic touch of British culture, very refined, very high-bred,
+very quiet, very much clarified, very confident, very neat, very
+well-appointed, a little dreamy and just a little wearisome--the precise
+qualities which at the same time impress and annoy us in the English."
+
+This is exactly what might be said of Pater's writing, but that is
+full-grown English. Pater is not a model for children, they would find
+him more than "just a little wearisome." If anyone could put into words
+what Sir Joshua Reynolds' portraits of children express, that would be
+exactly what we want for the model of their English. They can write and
+they can speak in a beautiful way of their own if they are allowed a
+little liberty to grow wild, and trained a little to climb. Their charm
+is candour, as it is the charm of Sir Joshua's portraits, with a quiet
+confidence that all is well in the world they know, and that everyone is
+kind; this gives the look of trustful innocence and unconcern. Their
+writing and talking have this charm, as long as nothing has happened to
+make them conscious of themselves. But these first blossoms drop off,
+and there is generally an intermediate stage in which they can neither
+speak nor write, but keep their thoughts close, and will not give
+themselves away. Only when that stage is past do they really and with
+full consciousness seek to express themselves, and pay some attention to
+the self-expression of others. This third stage has its May-day, when
+the things which have become hackneyed to our minds from long use come
+to them with the full force of revelations, and they astonish us by
+their exuberant delight. But they have a right to their May-day and it
+ought not to be cut short; the sun will go down of itself, and then June
+will come in its own time and ripen the green wood, and after that will
+come pruning time, in another season, and then the phase of severity and
+fastidiousness, and after that--if they continue to write--they will be
+truly themselves.
+
+In every stage we have our duty to do, encouraging and pruning by turns,
+and, as in everything else, we must begin with ourselves and go on with
+ourselves that there may be always something living to give, and some
+growth; for in this we need never cease to grow, in knowledge, in taste,
+and in critical power. The means are not far to seek; if we really care
+about these things, the means are everywhere, in reading the best
+things, in taking notes, in criticising independently and comparing with
+the best criticism, in forming our own views and yet keeping a
+willingness to modify them, in an attitude of mind that is always
+learning, always striving, always raising its standard, never impatient
+but permanently dissatisfied.
+
+We have three spheres of action in the use of the language--there is
+English to speak, English to write, And the wide field of English to
+read, and there are vital interests bound up in each for the after life
+of children. As they speak, so will be the tone of their intercourse; as
+they write, so will be the standard of their habits of thought; and as
+they read so will be the atmosphere of their life, and the preparation
+of their judgment for those critical moments of choice which are the
+pivots upon which its whole action moves.
+
+If practice alone would develop it to perfection, speaking ought to be
+easy to learn, but it does not prove so, and especially when children
+are together in schools the weeds grow faster than the crop, and the
+crop is apt to be thin. The language of the majority holds its own;
+children among children can express with a very small vocabulary what
+they want to say to each other, whereas an only child who lives with its
+elders has usually a larger vocabulary than it can manage, which makes
+the sayings of only children quaint and almost weird, as the perfection
+of the instrument persuades us that there is a full-grown thought within
+it, and a child's fancy suddenly laughs at us from under the disguise.
+
+There is general lamentation at present because the art of conversation
+has fallen to a very low ebb; there is, in particular, much complaint of
+the conversation of girls whose education is supposed to have been
+careful. The subjects they care to talk of are found to be few and poor,
+their power of expressing themselves very imperfect, the scanty words at
+their command worked to death in supplying for all kinds of things to
+which they are not appropriate. We know that we have a great deal of
+minted gold in the English language, but little of it finds its way into
+our general conversation, most of our intercourse is carried on with
+small change, a good deal of it even in coppers, and the worst trouble
+of all is that so few seem to care or to regret it. Perhaps the young
+generation will do so later in life, but unless something is done for
+them during the years of their education it does not seem probable,
+except in the case of the few who are driven by their professional work
+to think of it, or drawn to it by some influence that compels them to
+exert themselves in earnest.
+
+Listening to the conversation of girls whose thoughts and language are
+still in a fluid state, say from the age of 17 to 25, gives a great deal
+of matter for thought to those who are interested in education, and this
+point of language is of particular interest. There are the new
+catch-words of each year; they had probably a great _piquancy_ in the
+mouth of the originator but they very soon become flat by repetition,
+then they grow jaded, are more and more neglected and pass away
+altogether. From their rising to their setting the arc is very
+short--about five years seems to be the limit of their existence, and no
+one regrets them. We do not seem to be in a happy vein of development at
+present as to the use of words, and these short-lived catch-words are
+generally poor in quality. Our girl talkers are neither rich nor
+independent in their language, they lay themselves under obligations to
+anyone who will furnish a new catch-word, and especially to boys from
+whom they take rather than accept contributions of a different kind. It
+is an old-fashioned regret that girls should copy boys instead of
+developing themselves independently in language and manners; but though
+old-fashioned, it will never cease to be true that what was made to be
+beautiful on its own line is dwarfed and crippled by straining it into
+imitation of something else which it can never be.
+
+What can be done for the girls to give them first more independence in
+their language and then more power to express themselves? Probably the
+best cure, food and tonic in one, is reading; a taste for the best
+reading alters the whole condition of mental life, and without being
+directly attacked the defects in conversation will correct themselves.
+But we could do more than is often done for the younger children, not by
+talking directly about these things, but by being a little harder to
+please, and giving when it is possible the cordial commendation which
+makes them feel that what they have done was worth working for.
+
+Recitation and reading aloud, besides all their other uses, have this
+use that they accustom children to the sound of their own voices
+uttering beautiful words, which takes away the odd shyness which some of
+them feel in going beyond their usual round of expressions and extending
+their vocabulary. We owe it to our language as well as to each
+individual child to make recitation and reading aloud as beautiful as
+possible. Perhaps one of the causes of our conversational slovenliness
+is the neglect of these; critics of an older generation have not ceased
+to lament their decay, but it seems as if better times were coming
+again, and that as the fundamentals of breathing and voice-production
+are taught, we shall increase the scope of the power acquired and give
+it more importance. There is a great deal underlying all this, beyond
+the acquirement of voice and pronunciation. If recitation is cultivated
+there is an inducement to learn by heart; this in its turn ministers to
+the love of reading and to the formation of literary taste, and enriches
+the whole life of the mind. There is an indirect but far-reaching gain
+of self-possession, from the need for outward composure and inward
+concentration of mind in reciting before others. But it is a matter of
+importance to choose recitations so that nothing should be learnt which
+must be thrown away, nothing which is not worth remembering for life. It
+is a pity to make children acquire what they will soon despise when they
+might learn something that they will grow up to and prize as long as
+they live. There are beautiful things that they can understand, if
+something is wanted for to-day, which have at the same time a life that
+will never be outgrown. There are poems with two aspects, one of which
+is acceptable to a child and the other to the grown-up mind; these, one
+is glad to find in anthologies for children. But there are many poems
+about children of which the interest is so subtle as to be quite
+unsuitable for their collection. Such a poem is "We are seven." Children
+can be taught to say it, even with feeling, but their own genuine
+impression of it seems to be that the little girl was rather weak in
+intellect for eight years old, or a little perverse. Whereas Browning's
+"An incident of the French camp" appeals to them by pride of courage as
+it does to us by pathos. It may not be a gem, poetically speaking, but
+it lives. As children grow older it is only fair to allow them some
+choice in what they learn and recite, to give room for their taste to
+follow its own bent; there are a few things which it is well that every
+one should know by heart, but beyond these the field is practically
+without limits.
+
+Perfect recitation or reading aloud is very rare and difficult to
+acquire. For a few years there was a tendency to over-emphasis in both,
+and, in recitation, to teach gesture, for which as a nation we are
+singularly inapt. This is happily disappearing, simplicity and restraint
+are regaining their own, at least in the best teaching for girls. As to
+reading aloud to children it begins to be recognized that it should not
+be too explicit, nor too emphatic, nor too pointed; that it must leave
+something for the natural grace of the listener's intelligence to supply
+and to feel. There is a didactic tone in reading which says, "you are
+most unintelligent, but listen to ME and there may yet be hope that you
+will understand." This leaves the "poor creatures" of the class still
+unmoved and unenlightened; "the child is not awakened," while the more
+sensitive minds are irritated; they can feel it as an impertinence
+without quite knowing why they are hurt. It is a question of manners and
+consideration which is perceptible to them, for they like what is
+best--sympathy and suggestiveness rather than hammering in. They can help
+each other by their simple insight into these things when they read
+aloud, and if a reading lesson in class is conducted as an exercise in
+criticism it is full of interest. The frank good-nature and gravity of
+twelve-year-old critics makes their operations quite painless, and they
+are accepted with equal good humour and gravity, no one wasting any
+emotion and a great deal of good sense being exchanged.
+
+Conversation, as conversation, is hard to teach, we can only lead the
+way and lay down a few principles which keep it in the right path. These
+commonplaces of warning, as old as civilization itself, belong to
+manners and to fundamental unselfishness, but obvious as they are they
+have to be said and to be repeated and enforced until they become
+matters of course. Not to seem bored, not to interrupt, not to
+contradict, not to make personal remarks, not to talk of oneself (some
+one was naive enough to say "then what is there to talk of"), not to get
+heated and not to look cold, not to do all the talking and not to be
+silent, not to advance if the ground seems uncertain, and to be
+sensitively attentive to what jars--all these and other things are
+troublesome to obtain, but exceedingly necessary. And even observing
+them all we may be just as far from conversation as before; how often
+among English people, through shyness or otherwise, it simply faints
+from inanition. We can at least teach that a first essential is to have
+something to say, and that the best preparation of mind is thought and
+reading and observation, to be interested in many things, and to give
+enough personal application to a few things as to have something worth
+saying about them.
+
+By testing in writing every step of an educational course a great deal
+of command over all acquired materials may be secured. As our girls grow
+older, essay-writing becomes the most powerful means for fashioning
+their minds and bringing out their individual characteristics.
+
+It is customary now to begin with oral composition,--quite rightly, for
+one difficulty at a time is enough. But when children have to write for
+themselves the most natural beginning is by letters. A great difference
+in thought and power is observable in their first attempts, but in the
+main the structure of their letters is similar, like the houses and the
+moonfaced persons which they draw in the same symbolic way. Perhaps both
+are accepted conventions to which they conform--handed down through
+generations of the nursery tradition--though students of children are
+inclined to believe that these symbolical drawings represent their real
+mind in the representation of material things. Their communications move
+in little bounds, a succession of happy thoughts, the kind of things
+which birds in conversation might impart to one another, turning their
+heads quickly from side to side and catching sight of many things
+unrelated amongst themselves. It is a pity that this manner is often
+allowed to last too long, for in these stages of mental training it is
+better to be on the stretch to reach the full stature of one's age
+rather than to linger behind it, and early promise in composition means
+a great deal.
+
+To write of the things which belong to one's age in a manner that is
+fully up to their worth or even a little beyond it, is better than to
+strain after something to say in a subject that is beyond the mental
+grasp. The first thing to learn is how to write pleasantly about the
+most simple and ordinary things. But a common fault in children's
+writing is to wait for an event, "something to write about," and to
+dispose of it in three or four sentences like telegrams.
+
+The influences which determine these early steps are, first, the natural
+habit of mind, for thoughtful children see most interesting and strange
+things in their surroundings; secondly, the tone of their ordinary
+conversation, but especially a disposition that is unselfish and
+affectionate. Warm-hearted children who are gifted with sympathy have an
+intuition of what will give pleasure, and that is one of the great
+secrets of letter-writing. But the letters they write will always depend
+in a great measure on the letters they receive, and a family gift for
+letter-writing is generally the outcome of a happy home-life in which
+all the members are of interest to each other and their doings of
+importance.
+
+What sympathy gives to letter-writing, imagination gives to the first
+essays of children in longer compositions. Imagination puts them in
+sympathy with all the world, with things as well as persons, as
+affection keeps them in touch with every detail of the home world. But
+its work is not so simple. Home affection is true and is a law to
+itself; if it is present it holds all the little child's world in a
+right proportion, because all heavenly affection is bound up with it.
+But the awakening and the rapid development of imagination as girls grow
+up needs a great deal of guidance and training. Fancy may overgrow
+itself, and take an undue predominance, so that life is tuned to the
+pitch of imagination and not imagination to the pitch of life. It is
+hardly possible and hardly to be desired that it should never overflow
+the limits of perfect moderation; if it is to be controlled, there must
+be something to control, in pruning there must be some strong shoots to
+cut back, and in toning down there must be some over-gaudy colours to
+subdue. It is better that there should be too much life than too little,
+and better that criticism should find something vigorous enough to lay
+hold of, rather than something which cannot be felt at all. This is the
+time to teach children to begin their essays without preamble, by
+something that they really want to say, and to finish them leaving
+something still unsaid that they would like to have expressed, so as not
+to pour out to the last drop their mind or their fancy on any subject.
+This discipline of promptitude in beginning and restraint at the end
+will tell for good upon the quality of their writing.
+
+But the work of the imagination may also betray something unreal and
+morbid--this is a more serious fault and means trouble coming. It
+generally points to a want of focus in the mind; because self
+predominates in the affections feeling and interest are self-centred.
+Then the whole development of mind comes to a disappointing check--the
+mental power remains on the level of unstable sixteen years old, and the
+selfish side develops either emotionally or frivolously--according to
+taste, faster than it can be controlled.
+
+There are cross-roads at about sixteen in a girl's life. After two or
+three troublesome years she is going to make her choice, not always
+consciously and deliberately, but those who are alive to what is going
+on may expect to hear about this time her speech from the throne,
+announcing what the direction of her life is going to be. It is not
+necessarily the choice of a vocation in life, that belongs to an order
+of things that has neither day nor hour determined for it, but it is
+when the mental outlook takes a direction of its own, literary, or
+artistic, or philosophical, or worldly, or turning towards home; it may
+sometimes be the moment of decisive vocation to leave all things for
+God, or, as has so often happened in the lives of the Saints, the time
+when a child's first desire, forgotten for a while, asserts itself
+again. In any case it is generally a period of new awakenings, and if
+things are as they ought to be, generally a time of deep happiness--the
+ideal hour in the day of our early youth. All this is faithfully
+rendered in the essays of that time; we unsuspectingly give ourselves
+away.
+
+After this, for those who are going to write at all, comes the "viewy"
+stage, and this is full of interest. We are so dogmatic, so defiant, so
+secure in our persuasions. It is impossible to believe that they will
+ever alter. Yet who has lived through this phase of abounding activity
+and has not found that, at first with the shock of disappointment, and
+afterwards without regret, a memorial cross had to be set by our
+wayside, here and there, marking the place of rest for our most
+enthusiastic convictions. In the end one comes to be glad of it, for if
+it means anything it means a growth in the truth.
+
+The criticism of essays is one of the choice opportunities which
+education offers, for then the contact of mind with mind is so close
+that truth can be told under form of criticism, which as exhortation
+would have been less easily accepted. It is evident that increasing
+freedom must be allowed as the years go on, and that girls have a right
+to their own taste and manner--and within the limits of their knowledge
+to form their own opinions; but it is in this period of their
+development that they are most sensitive to the mental influence of
+those who are training them, and their quick responsiveness to the best
+is a constant stimulus to go on for their sakes, discovering and tasting
+and training one's discernment in what is most excellent.
+
+From this point we may pass to what is first in the order of things--but
+first and last in this department of an English education--and that is
+reading, with the great field of literature before us, and the duty of
+making the precious inheritance all that it ought to be to this young
+generation of ours--heiresses to all its best.
+
+English literature will be to children as they grow up, what we have
+made it to them in the beginning. There will always be the exceptional
+few, privileged ones, who seem to have received the key to it as a
+personal gift. They will find their way without us, but if we have the
+honour of rendering them service we may do a great deal even for them in
+showing where the best things lie, and the way to make them one's own.
+But the greater number have to be taken through the first steps with
+much thought and discernment, for taste in literature is not always easy
+to develop, and may be spoiled by bad management at the beginning. We
+are not very teachable as a nation in this matter--our young taste is
+wayward, and sometimes contradictory, it will not give account of
+itself, very likely it cannot. We have inarticulate convictions that
+this is right, and suits us, and something else is wrong as far as our
+taste is concerned, and that we have rights to like what we like and
+condemn what we do not like, and we have gone a considerable way along
+the road before we can stop and look about us and see the reason of our
+choice. English literature itself fosters this independent spirit of
+criticism by its extraordinary abundance, its own wide liberty of
+spirit, its surpassing truthfulness. Our greatest poets and our truest
+do not sing to an audience but to their Maker and to His world, and let
+anyone who can understand it catch the song, and sing it after them. No
+doubt many have fallen from the truth and piped an artificial tune, and
+they have had their following. But love for the real and true is very
+deep and in the end it prevails, and as far as we can obtain it with
+children it must prevail.
+
+Their first acquaintance with beautiful things is best established by
+reading aloud to them, and this need not be limited entirely to what
+they can understand at the time. Even if we read something that is
+beyond them, they have listened to the cadences, they have heard the
+song without the words, the words will come to them later. If there is
+good ground for the seed to fall upon, and we sow good seed, it will
+come up with its thirtyfold or more, as seed sown in the mind seems
+always to come up, whether it be good or bad, and even if it has lain
+dormant for years. There are good moments laid up in store for the
+future when the words, which have been familiar for years, suddenly
+awake to life, and their meaning, full-grown, at the moment when we need
+it, or at the moment when we are able to understand its value, dawns
+upon the mind. Then we are grateful to those who invested these revenues
+for us though we knew it not. We are not grateful to those who give us
+the less good though pleasant and easy to enjoy. A little severity and
+fastidiousness render us better service. And this is especially true for
+girls, since for them it is above all important that there should be a
+touch of the severe in their taste, and that they should be a little
+exacting, for if they once let themselves go to what is too
+light-heartedly popular they do not know where to draw the line and they
+go very far, with great loss to themselves and others.
+
+One of the beautiful things of to-day in England is the wealth of
+children's literature. It is a peculiar grace of our time that we are
+all trying to give the best to the children, and this is most of all
+remarkable in the books published for them. We had rather a silly moment
+in which we kept them babies too long and thought that rhymes without
+reason would please them, and another moment when we were just a little
+morbid about them; but now we have struck a very happy vein, free from
+all morbidness, very innocent and very happy, abounding in life and in
+no way unfitting for the experiences that have to be lived through
+afterwards. No one thinks it waste of time to write and illustrate books
+for children, and to do their very best in both, and the result of
+historical research and the most critical care of texts is put within
+the children's reach with a real understanding of what they can care
+for. A true appreciation of the English classics must result from this,
+and the mere reading of what is choice is an early safeguard against the
+less good.
+
+Reading, without commentary, is what is best accepted; we are beginning
+to come back to this belief. It is agreed almost generally that there
+has been too much comment and especially too much analysis in our
+teaching of literature, and that the majesty or the loveliness of our
+great writers' works have not been allowed to speak for themselves. We
+have not trusted them enough, and we have not trusted the children so
+much as they deserved. The little boy who said he could understand if
+only they would not explain has become historical, and his word of
+warning, though it may not have sounded quite respectful, has been taken
+into account. We have now fewer of the literary Baedeker's guides who
+stopped us at particular points, to look back for the view, and gave the
+history and date of the work with its surrounding circumstances, and the
+meaning of every word, while they took away the soul of the poem, and
+robbed us of our whole impression. We realize now that by reading and
+reading again, until they have mastered the music, and the meaning dawns
+of itself, children gain more than the best annotations can give them;
+these will be wanted later on, but in the beginning they set the
+attitude of mind completely wrong for early literary study in which
+reverence and receptiveness and delight are of more account than
+criticism. The memory of these things is so much to us in after life,
+and if the living forms of beautiful poems have been torn to pieces to
+show us the structure within, and the matter has been shaken out into
+ungainly paraphrase and pursued with relentless analysis until it has
+given up the last secret of its meaning, the remembrance of this
+destructive process will remain and the spirit will never be the same
+again. The best hope for beautiful memories is in perfect reading aloud,
+with that reverence of mind and reticence of feeling which keeps itself
+in the background, not imposing a marked per-Bonal interpretation, but
+holding up the poem with enough support to make it speak for itself and
+no more. There is a vexed question about the reading allowed to girls
+which cannot be entirely passed over. It is a point on which authorities
+differ widely among themselves, according to the standard of their
+family, the whole early training which has given their mind a particular
+bent, the quality of their own taste and their degree of sensitiveness
+and insight, the views which they hold about the character of girls,
+their ideas of the world and the probable future surroundings of those
+whom they advise, as well as many other considerations. It is quite
+impossible to arrive at a uniform standard, or at particular precepts or
+at lists of books or authors which should or should not be allowed. Even
+if these could be drawn up, it would be more and more difficult to
+enforce them or to keep the rules abreast of the requirements of each
+publishing season. In reading, as in conduct, each one must bear more
+and more of their own personal responsibility, and unless the law is
+within themselves there is no possibility of enforcing it.
+
+The present Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, when rector of St.
+John's Seminary, Wonersh, used to lay down the following rules for his
+students, and on condition of their adhering to these rules he allowed
+them great freedom in their reading, but if they were disregarded, it
+was understood that the rector took no responsibility about the books
+they read:--
+
+1. "Be perfectly conscientious, and if you find a book is doing you harm
+stop reading it at once. If you know you cannot stop you must be most
+careful not to read anything you don't know about."
+
+2. "Be perfectly frank with your confessor and other superiors. Don't
+keep anything hidden from them."
+
+3. "Don't recommend books to others which, although they may do no harm
+to you, might do harm to them."
+
+These rules are very short but they call for a great deal of
+self-control, frankness, and discretion. They set up an inward standard
+for the conscience, and, if honestly followed, they answer in practice
+any difficulty that is likely to arise as to choice of reading. [1--In
+the Appendix will be found a pastoral letter by Cardinal Bourne,
+Archbishop of Westminster, then Bishop of Southwark, bearing on this
+subject and full of instruction for all who have to deal with it.]
+
+But the application of these rules presupposes a degree of judgment and
+self-restraint which are hardly to be found in girls of school-room
+years, and before they can adjust themselves to the relative standard
+and use the curb for themselves, it is necessary to set before them some
+fixed rules by which to judge. While life is young and character plastic
+and personal valuations still in formation, the difficulty is to know
+what is harmful. "How am I to know," such a one may ask, "whether what
+seems harmful to me may not be really a gain, giving me a richer life, a
+greater expansion of spirit, a more independent and human character? May
+not this effect which I take to be harm, be no more than necessary
+growing pains; may it not be bringing me into truer relation with life
+as it is, and as a whole?"
+
+There will always be on one side timid and mediocre minds, satisfied to
+shut themselves up and safeguard what they already have; and on the
+other more daring and able spirits who are tempted beyond the line of
+safety in a thirst for discovery and adventure, and are thus swept out
+beyond their own immature control. Books that foster the spirit of
+rebellion, of doubt and discontent concerning the essentials and
+inevitable elements of human life, that tend to sap the sense of
+personal responsibility, and to disparage the cardinal virtues and the
+duty of self-restraint as against impulse, are emphatically bad. They
+are particularly bad for girls with their impressionable minds and
+tendency to imitation, and inclination to be led on by the glamour of
+the old temptation; "Your eyes shall be opened; you shall be as gods,
+knowing good and evil."
+
+To follow a doubt or a lie or a by-way of conduct with the curiosity to
+see what comes of it in the end, is to prepare their own minds for
+similar lines of thought and action, and in the crises of life, when
+they have to choose for themselves, often unadvised and without time to
+deliberate, they are more likely to fall by the doubt or the lie or the
+spirit of revolt which has become familiar to them in thought and
+sympathy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+MODERN LANGUAGES.
+
+"All nations have their message from on high,
+Each the messiah of some central thought,
+For the fulfilment and delight of Man:
+One has to teach that Labour is divine;
+Another Freedom and another Mind;
+And all, that God is open-eyed and just,
+The happy centre and calm heart of all."
+             JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
+
+We cannot have a perfect knowledge even of our own language without some
+acquaintance with more than one other, either classical or modern. This
+is especially true of English because it has drawn its strength and
+wealth from so many sources, and absorbed them into itself. But this
+value is usually taken indirectly, by the way, and the understanding of
+it only comes to us after years as an appreciable good. It is, however,
+recognized that no education corresponding to the needs of our own time
+can be perfected or even adequately completed in one language alone. Not
+only do the actual conditions of life make it imperative to have more
+than one tongue at our command from the rapid extension of facilities
+for travelling, and increased intercourse with other nations; but in
+proportion to the cooling down of our extreme ardour for experimental
+science in the school-room we are returning to recognize in language a
+means of education more adapted to prepare children for life, by fitting
+them for intercourse with their fellow-creatures and giving them some
+appreciative understanding of the works of man's mind. Thus languages,
+and especially modern languages, are assuming more and more importance
+in the education of children, not only with us, but in most other
+countries of Europe. In some of them the methods are distinctly in
+advance of ours.
+
+Much has been written of late years in the course of educational
+discussions as to the value of classical studies in education. As the
+best authorities are not yet in agreement among themselves it would be
+obviously out of place to add anything here on the subject. But the
+controversy principally belongs to classics in boys' schools; as to the
+study of Latin by girls, and in particular to its position in Catholic
+schools, there is perhaps something yet to be said.
+
+In non-Catholic schools for girls Latin has not, even now, a great hold.
+It is studied for certain examinations, but except for the few students
+whose life takes a professional turn it scarcely outlives the
+school-room. Girl students at universities cannot compete on equal terms
+with men in a classical course, and the fact is very generally
+acknowledged by their choosing another. Except in the rarest
+instances--let us not be afraid to own it--our Latin is that of amateurs,
+brilliant amateurs perhaps, but unmistakable. Latin, for girls, is a
+source of delight, a beautiful enrichment of their mental life, most
+precious in itself and in its influence, but it is not a living power,
+nor a familiar instrument, nor a great discipline; it is deficient in
+hardness and closeness of grain, so that it cannot take polish; it is
+apt to betray by unexpected transgressions the want of that long,
+detailed, severe training which alone can make classical scholarship. It
+is usually a little tremulous, not quite sure of itself, and indeed its
+best adornment is generally the sobriety induced by an overshadowing
+sense of paternal correction and solicitude always present to check
+rashness and desultoriness, and make it at least "gang warily" with a
+finger on its lip; and their attainments in Latin are, at the best,
+receptively rather than actively of value.
+
+In Catholic girls' schools, however, the elements of Latin are almost
+necessity. It is wanting in courtesy, it is almost uncouth for us to
+grow up without any knowledge of the language of Holy Church. It is
+almost impossible for educated Catholics to have right taste in
+devotion, the "love and relish" of the most excellent things, without
+some knowledge of our great liturgical prayers and hymns in the
+original. We never can really know them if we only hear them halting and
+plunging and splashing through translations, wasting their strength in
+many words as they must unavoidably do in English, and at best only
+reaching an approximation to the sense. The use of them in the original
+is discipline and devotion in one, and it strengthens the Catholic
+historical hold on the past, with a sense of nearness, when we dwell
+with some understanding on the very words which have been sung in the
+Church subsisting in all ages and teaching all nations. This is our
+birthright, but it is not truly ours unless we can in some degree make
+use of what we own.
+
+It has often been pointed out that even to the most uneducated amongst
+our people Latin is never a dead language to Catholics, and that the
+familiar prayers at Mass and public devotions make them at home in the
+furthest countries of the earth as soon as they are within the church
+doors. So far as this, it is a universal language for us, and even if it
+went no further than the world-wide home feeling of the poor in our
+churches it would make us grateful for every word of Latin that has a
+familiar sound to them, and this alone might make us anxious to teach
+Catholic children at school, for the use of prayer and devotion, as much
+Latin as they can learn even if they never touch a classic.
+
+Our attitude towards the study of modern languages has had its high and
+low tides within the last century. We have had our submissive and our
+obstinate moods; at present we are rather well and affably disposed.
+French used to be acknowledged without a rival as the universal
+language; it was a necessity, and in general the older generation
+learned it carefully and spoke it well. At that time Italian was learned
+from taste and German was exceptional. Queen Victoria's German marriage
+and all the close connexion that followed from it pressed the study of
+German to the front; the influence of Carlyle told in the same
+direction, and the study of Italian declined. Then in our enthusiasm for
+physical sciences for a time we read more German, but not German of the
+best quality, and in another line we were influenced by German literary
+criticism. Now, the balance of things has altered again. For scholarship
+and criticism German is in great request; in commercial education it is
+being outrun by Spanish; for the intercourse of ordinary life Germans
+are learning English much more eagerly than we are learning German. We
+have had a fit of--let us call it--shyness, but we are trying to do
+better. We recognize that these fits of shyness are not altogether to
+our credit, not wholly reasonable, and that we are not incapable of
+learning foreign languages well. We know the story of the little boy
+reprimanded by the magistrate for his folly in running away from home
+because he was obliged to learn French, and his haughty reply that if
+foreigners wished to speak to him they might learn his language. But our
+children have outgrown him, as to his declaration if not as to his want
+of diligence, and we are in general reforming our methods of teaching so
+much that it will soon be inexcusable not to speak one or two languages
+well, besides our own.
+
+The question of pronunciation and accent has been haunted by curious
+prejudices. An English accent in a foreign tongue has been for some
+speakers a refuge for their shyness, and for others a stronghold of
+their patriotism. The first of these feared that they would not be truly
+themselves unless their personality could take shelter beneath an accent
+that was unmistakably from England, and the others felt that it was like
+hauling down the British flag to renounce the long-drawn English
+"A-o-o." And, curiously, at the other extreme, the slightest tinge of an
+English accent is rather liked in Paris, perhaps only among those
+touched with Anglomania. But now we ought to be able to acquire whatever
+accent we choose, even when living far away from every instructor,
+having the gramophone to repeat to us untiringly the true Spanish
+"manana" and the French "ennui." And the study of phonetics, so much
+developed within the last few years, makes it unpardonable for teachers
+of modern languages to let the old English faults prevail.
+
+We have had our succession of methods too. The old method of learning
+French, with a _bonne_ in the nursery first, and then a severely
+academic governess or tutor, produced French of unsurpassed quality-But
+it belonged to home education, it required a great deal of leisure, it
+did not adapt itself to school curricula in which each child, to use the
+expressive American phrase, "carries" so many subjects that the hours
+and minutes for each have to be jealously counted out. There have been a
+series of methods succeeding one another which can scarcely be called
+more than quack methods of learning languages, claiming to be the
+natural method, the maternal method, the only rational method, etc.
+Educational advertisements of these have been magnificent in their
+promise, but opinions are not entirely at one as to the results.
+
+The conclusions which suggest themselves after seeing several of these
+methods at work are:--
+
+1. That good teachers can make use of almost any method with excellent
+results but that they generally evolve one of their own.
+
+2. That if the teachers and the children take a great deal of trouble
+the progress will be very remarkable, whatever method is employed, and
+that without this both the classical and the "natural" methods can
+accomplish very little.
+
+3. That teachers with fixed ideas about children and about methods
+arrest development.
+
+4. That the self-instruction courses which "work out at a penny a
+lesson" (the lesson lasts ten minutes and is especially recommended for
+use in trams), and the gramophone with the most elaborate records, still
+bear witness to the old doctrine that there is no royal road to the
+learning of languages, and that it is not cheap in the end. In
+proportion to the value we set upon perfect acquirement of them will be
+our willingness to spend much labour upon foundations. By this road we
+arrive again at the fundamentals of an educator's calling, love and
+labour.
+
+The value to the mind of acquiring languages is so great that all our
+trouble is repaid. It is not utilitarian value: what is merely for
+usefulness can be easily acquired, it has very little beauty. It is not
+for the sake of that commonplace usefulness that we should care to spend
+trouble upon permanent foundations in any tongue. The mind is satisfied
+only by the genius of the language, its choicest forms, its
+characteristic movement, and, most of all, the possession of its
+literature from within, that is to say of the spirit as it speaks to its
+own, and in which the language is most completely itself.
+
+The special fitness of modern languages in a girl's education does not
+appear on the surface, and it requires more than a superficial,
+conversational knowledge to reap the fruit of their study. The social,
+and at present the commercial values are obvious to every one, and of
+these the commercial value is growing very loud in its assertions, and
+appears very exacting in its demands. For this the quack methods promise
+the short and easy way, and perhaps they are sufficient for it. A
+knowledge sufficient for business correspondence is not what belongs to
+a liberal education; it has a very limited range, hard, plain, brief
+communications, supported on cast-iron frames, inelastic forms and
+crudest courtesies, a mere formula for each particular case, and a small
+vocabulary suited to the dealings of every branch of business. We know
+the parallel forms of correspondence in English, which give a means of
+communication but not properly a language. Even the social values of
+languages are less than they used to be, as the finer art of
+conversation has declined. A little goes a long way; the rush of the
+motor has cut it short; there is not time to exchange more than a few
+commonplaces, and for these a very limited number of words is enough.
+
+But let our girls give themselves time, or let time be allowed them, to
+give a year or two to the real study of languages, not in the threadbare
+phrases of the tourist and motorist, nor to mere drawing-room small
+talk; not with "matriculation standard" as an object, but to read the
+best that has been written, and try to speak according to the best that
+can be said now, and to write according to the standard of what is
+really excellent to-day; then the study of modern languages is lifted
+quite on to another plane. The particular advantage of this plane is
+that there is a view from it, wider in proportion to the number of
+languages known and to the grasp that is acquired of each, and the
+particular educational gift to be found there is width of sympathy and
+understanding. Defective sympathies, national and racial prejudices
+thrive upon a lower level. The _elect_ of all nations understand one
+another, and are strangely alike; the lower we go down in the various
+grades of each nation the more is the divergency accentuated between one
+and another. Corresponding to this is mutual understanding through
+language; the better we possess the language of any nation the closer
+touch we can acquire with all that is theirs, with their best.
+
+A superficial knowledge of languages rather accentuates than removes
+limitations, multiplies mistakes and embitters them. With a
+half-knowledge we misunderstand each other's ideals, we lose the point
+of the best things that are said, we fail to catch the aroma of the
+spices and the spirit of the living word; in fact, we are mere tourists
+in each other's mental world, and what word could better express the
+attitude of mind of one who is a stranger, but not a pilgrim, a tramp of
+a rather more civilized kind, having neither ties nor sympathies nor
+obligations, nothing to give, and more inclined to take than to receive.
+To create ties, sympathies, and obligations in the mental life, is a
+grace belonging to the study of languages, and makes it possible to give
+and receive hospitality on the best terms with the minds of those of
+other nations than our own. This is particularly a gift for the
+education of girls, since all graces of hospitality ought to be
+peculiarly theirs. To lift them above prejudices, to make them love
+other beauties than those of their own mental kindred, to afford them a
+wider possibility of giving happiness to others, and of making
+themselves at home in many countries, is to give them a power over the
+conditions of life which reaches very far into their own mental
+well-being and that of others, and makes them in the best meaning of the
+word cosmopolitan.
+
+The choice of languages to be learnt must depend upon many
+considerations, but the widest good for English girls, though not the
+most easy to attain, is to give them perfect French. German is easier to
+learn from its kinship with our own language, but its grammar is of less
+educational value than French, and it does not help as French does to
+the acquirement of the most attractive of other European languages.
+
+As a second language, however, and for a great deal that is not
+otherwise attainable, German is in general the best that can be chosen.
+Italian and Spanish have their special claims, but at present in England
+their appeal is not to the many. German gives the feeling of kindred
+minds near to us, ourselves yet not ourselves; with primitive Teutonic
+strength and directness, with a sweet freshness of spring in its more
+delicate poetry, and both of these elements blended at times in an
+atmosphere as of German forests in June. In some writers the flicker of
+French brilliancy illumines the depth of these Teutonic woods, producing
+a German which, in spite of the condemnation of the Emperor, we should
+like to write ourselves if the choice were offered to us.
+
+But, notwithstanding the depth and strength of German, it is generally
+agreed that as an instrument of thought French prose in a master-hand is
+unrivalled, by its subtlety and precision, and its epigrammatic force.
+Every one knows and laments the decadent style which is eating into it;
+and every one knows that the deplorable tone of much of its contemporary
+literature makes discernment in French reading a matter not only of
+education but of conscience and sanity; but this does not make the
+danger to be inherent in the French language; obliging translators are
+ready to furnish us, in our own language and according to taste, with
+the very worst taken, from everywhere. And these faults do not affect
+the beauty of the instrument, nor its marvellous aptitude for training
+the mind to precision of expression. The logical bent of the French
+mind, its love of rule, the elaborateness of its conventions in
+literature, its ceremonial observances dating from by-gone times, the
+custom of giving account of everything, of letting no nuance pass
+unchallenged or uncommented, have given it a power of expression and
+definiteness which holds together as a complete code of written and
+unwritten laws, and makes a perfect instrument of its kind. But the very
+completeness of it has seemed to some writers a fetter, and when they
+revolt against and break through it, their extravagance passes beyond
+all ordinary bounds. French represents the two extremes, unheard-of
+goodness, unequalled perfection, or indescribable badness and
+unrestraint. Unfortunately the unrestraint is making its way, and as
+with ourselves in England, the magazine literature in France grows more
+and more undesirable.
+
+Yet there is unlimited room for reading, and for Catholics a great
+choice of what is excellent. The modern manner of writing the lives of
+the Saints has been very successfully cultivated of late years in
+France, making them living human beings "interesting as fiction," to use
+an accepted standard of measurement, more appealingly credible and more
+imitable than those older works in which they walked remote from the
+life of to-day, angelic rather than human. There are studies in
+criticism, too, and essays in practical psychology and social science,
+which bring within the scope of ordinary readers a great deal which with
+us can only be reached over rough roads and by-ways. No doubt each
+method has its advantages; the laboriously acquired knowledge becomes
+more completely a part of ourselves, but along the metalled way it is
+obvious that we cover more ground.
+
+The comparison of these values leads to the practical question of
+translations. The Italian saying which identifies the translator with
+the traitor ought to give way to a more grateful and hopeful modern
+recognition of the services done by conscientious translations. We have
+undoubtedly suffered in England in the past by well-meaning but
+incompetent translators, especially of spiritual books, who have given
+us such impressions as to mislead us about the minds of the writers or
+even turned us against them altogether, to our own great loss. But at
+present more care is exercised, and conscientious critical exactitude in
+translating important spiritual works has given us English versions that
+are not unworthy of their originals. [1--An example of this is the late
+Canon Mackey's edition of the complete works of St. Francis of Sales,
+which has, unfortunately, to be completed without him.]
+
+There is good service to be done to the Church in England by this work
+of translation, and it is one in which grown-up girls, if they have been
+sufficiently trained, might give valuable help. It must be borne in mind
+that not every book which is beautiful or useful in its own language, is
+desirable to translate. Some depend so much upon the genius of the
+language and the mentality of their native country that they simply
+evaporate in translation; others appeal so markedly to national points
+of view that they seem anomalous in other languages, as a good deal of
+our present-day English writing would appear in French. It has also to
+be impressed on translators that their responsibility is great; that it
+takes laborious persistence to make a really good translation, doing
+justice to both sides, giving the spirit of the author as well as his
+literal meaning, and not straining the language of the translation into
+unnatural forms to make it carry a sense that it does not easily bear.
+
+The beauty of a translator's work is in the perfect accord of conscience
+and freedom, and this is not attained without unwearied search for the
+right word, the only right word which will give the true meaning and the
+true expression of any idea. To believe that this right word exists is
+one of the delights of translating; to be a lover of choice and
+beautiful words is an attraction in itself, leading to the love of
+things more beautiful still, the love of truth, and fitness, and
+transparency; the exercise of thought, and discrimination, and balance,
+and especially of a quality most rare and precious in women--mental
+patience. It is said that we excel in moral patience, but that when we
+approach anything intellectual this enduring virtue disappears, and we
+must "reach the goal in a bound or never arrive there at all." The
+sustained search for the perfect word would do much to correct this
+impatience, and if the search is aided by a knowledge of several modern
+languages so that comparative meanings and uses may be balanced against
+one another, it will be found not only to open rich veins of thought,
+but to give an ever-increasing power of working the mines and extracting
+the gold.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+HISTORY.
+
+"We have heard, O God, with our ears: our fathers have declared to us,
+'The work thou hast wrought in their days, and in the days of
+old.'"--Psalm XLIII.
+
+"Thus independent of times and places, the Popes have never found any
+difficulty, when the proper moment came, of following out a new and
+daring line of policy (as their astonished foes have called it), of
+leaving the old world to shift for itself and to disappear from the
+scene in its due season, and of fastening on and establishing themselves
+in the new.
+
+"I am led to this line of thought by St. Gregory's behaviour to the
+Anglo-Saxon race, on the break-up of the old civilisation."--Cardinal
+Newman, "Historical Sketches," III, "A Characteristic of the Popes."
+
+Of the so-called secular subjects history is the one which depends most
+for its value upon the honour in which it is held and upon the
+standpoint from which it is taught. Not that history can be truly a
+secular subject if it is taught as a whole--isolated periods 01
+subdivisions may be separated from the rest and studied in a purely
+secular spirit, or with no spirit at all--for the animating principle is
+not in the subdivided parts but in the whole, and only if it is taught
+as a whole can it receive the honour which belongs to it as the "study
+of kings," the school of experience and judgment, and one of the
+greatest teachers of truth.
+
+In modern times, since the fall of the Western Empire, European history
+has centred, whether for love or for hatred, round the Church; and it is
+thus that Catholic education comes to its own in this study, and the
+Catholic mind is more at home among the phenomena and problems of
+history than other minds for whom the ages of faith are only vaults of
+superstition, or periods of mental servitude, or at best, ages of high
+romance. Without the Church what are the ideals of the Crusades, of the
+Holy Roman Empire, of the religious spirit of chivalry, or the struggle
+concerning Investitures, the temporal power of the Popes and their
+temporal sovereignty, the misery of the "Babylonian Captivity," the
+development of the religious orders--in contemporary history--the Italian
+question during the last fifty years, or the present position of the
+Church in France? These are incomprehensible phenomena without the
+Church to give the key to the controversies and meaning to the ideals.
+Without knowing the Catholic Church from within, it is impossible to
+conceive of all these things as realities affecting conscience and the
+purpose and direction of life; their significance is lost if they have
+to be explained as the mere human struggle for supremacy of persons or
+classes, mere ecclesiastical disputes, or dreams of imperialism in
+Church matters. Take away the Church and try to draw up a course of
+lessons satisfactory to the minds even of girls under eighteen, and at
+every turn a thoughtful question may be critical, and the explanations
+in the hands of a non-Catholic teacher scarcely less futile than the
+efforts of old Kaspar to satisfy "young Peterkin" about the battle of
+Blenheim.
+
+What about Investitures?
+
+     "Now tell us all about the war,
+     And what they fought each other for?"
+
+What about Canossa?
+
+     "What they fought each other for,
+     I could not well make out.
+     But everybody said" quoth he,
+     "That 'twas a famous victory."
+
+What about Mentana or Castel-Fidardo?
+     "What good came of it at last?"
+     Quoth little Peterkin.
+     "Why that I cannot tell," said he,
+     "But 'twas a famous victory."
+
+The difficulty is tacitly acknowledged by the rare appearance of
+European history in the curriculum for non-Catholic girls' schools. But
+in any school where the studies are set to meet the requirements of
+examinations, the teaching of history is of necessity dethroned from the
+place which belongs to it by right. History deserves a position that is
+central and commanding, a scheme that is impressive when seen as a whole
+in retrospect, it deserves to be taught from a point of view which has
+not to be reconsidered in later years, and this is to be found with all
+the stability possible, and with every facility for later extension in
+the natural arrangement of all modern history round the history of the
+Church.
+
+During the great development which has taken place in the study of
+history within the last century, and especially within the last fifty
+years, the mass of materials has grown so enormous and the list of
+authors of eminence so imposing that one might almost despair of
+adapting the subject in any way to a child's world if it were not for
+this central point of view, in which the Incarnation and the Church are
+the controlling facts dominating all others and giving them their due
+place and proportion. On this commanding point of observation the child
+and the historian may stand side by side, each seeing truth according to
+their capacity, and if the child should grow into a historian it would
+be with an unbroken development--there would not be anything to unlearn.
+The method of "concentric" teaching against which there is so much to be
+said when applied to national history or to other branches of teaching
+is entirely appropriate here, because no wider vision of the world can
+be attained than from the point whence the Church views it, in her
+warfare to make the kingdoms of the world become the kingdom of God and
+His Christ that He may reign for ever and ever. The Church beholds the
+_rational_ not the _sensible_ horizon of history, and standing at her
+point of view, the great ones and the little ones of the earth,
+historians and children, can look at the same heavens, one with the
+scientific instruments of his observatory, the other with the naked eye
+of a child's faith and understanding.
+
+But the teaching of history as it has been carried on for some years,
+would have to travel a long way to arrive at this central point of view.
+As an educational subject a great deal has been done to destroy its
+value, by what was intended to give it assistance and stimulus. The
+history syllabus and requirements for University Local and other
+examinations have produced specially adapted text-books, in which facts
+and summaries have been arranged in order with wonderful care and
+forethought, to "meet all requirements"; but the kind intention with
+which every possible need has been foreseen between the covers of one
+text-book has defeated its own purpose, the living thing is no longer
+there--its skeleton remains, and after handling the dry bones and putting
+them in order and giving an account of them to the examining body, the
+children escape with relief to something more real, to the people of
+fiction who, however impossible to believe in, are at least flesh and
+blood, and have some points of contact with their own lives. "Of course
+as we go up for examinations here," wrote a child from a new school, "we
+only learn the summaries and genealogies of history and other subjects."
+A sidelight on the fruit of such a plan is often cast in the
+appreciations of its pupils. "Did you like history?" "No I hated it, I
+can't bear names and dates." "What did you think of so and so?" "He
+wasn't in my period." So history has become names and dates, genealogies
+and summaries, hard pebbles instead of bread. It is unfair to children
+thus to prejudice them against a subject which thrills with human
+interest, and touches human life at every turn, it is unfair to history
+to present it thus, it is misleading to give development to a particular
+period without any general scheme against which it may show in due
+proportion, as misleading as the old picture-books for children in which
+the bat on one page and the man on the other were of the same size.
+
+There must necessarily be a principle of selection, but one of the
+elements to be considered in making choice ought always to be that of
+proportion and of fitness in adaptation to a general scheme. It was
+pointed out by Sir Joshua Fitch in his "Lessons on Teaching" (an
+old-fashioned book now, since it was published before the deluge of
+"Pedagogics," but still valuable) that an ideal plan of teaching history
+to children might be found in the historical books of Holy Scripture,
+and in practice the idea is useful, suggesting that one aim should be
+kept in view, that at times the guiding line should contract to a mere
+clue of direction, and at others expand into very full and vivid
+narrative chiefly in biographical form. The principle may be applied in
+the teaching of any history that may be given to children, that is to
+say, in general, to Sacred history which has its own place in connexion
+with religious teaching, to ancient history within very small limits, to
+Greek and Roman history in such proportion as the years of education may
+allow, and to the two most prominent and most necessary for children,
+the history of their own country and that of modern Europe directed
+along the lines of the history of the Church.
+
+There are periods and degrees of development in the minds of children to
+which correspond different manners of teaching and even different
+objects, as we make appeal to one or other of the growing faculties. The
+first stage is imaginative, the second calls not only upon the
+imagination and memory but upon the understanding, and the third, which
+is the beginning of a period of fruition, begins to exercise the
+judgment, and to give some ideas concerning principles of research and
+criticism.
+
+The first is the period of romance, when by means of the best myths of
+many nations, from their heroic legends and later stories, the minds of
+children are turned to what is high and beautiful in the traditions of
+the past, and they learn those truths concerning human life and destiny
+which transcend the more limited truths of literal records of fact. In
+the beginning they are, to children, only stories, but we know ourselves
+that we can never exhaust the value of what came to us through the story
+of the wanderings of Ulysses, or the mysterious beauty of the Northern
+and Western myths, as the story of Balder or the children of Lir. The
+art of telling stories is beginning to be taught with wonderful power
+and beauty, the storyteller is turning into the pioneer of the
+historian, coming in advance to occupy the land, so that history may
+have "staked out a claim" before the examining bodies can arrive, in the
+dry season, to tread down the young growth.
+
+The second period makes appeal to the intelligence, as well as to the
+imagination, and to this stage belongs particularly the study of the
+national history, the history of their own race and country; for English
+girls the history of England, not yet constitutional history, but the
+history of the Constitution with that of the kings and people, and
+further the history of the Empire. To this period of education belong
+the great lessons of loyalty and patriotism, that piety towards our own
+country which is so much on the decline as the home tie grows feebler.
+We do not want to teach the narrow patriotism which only finds
+expression in antagonism to and disparagement of other countries, but
+that which is shown by self-denial and self-sacrifice for the good of
+our own. The time to teach it is in that unsettled "middle age" of
+childhood when its exuberant feeling is in search of an ideal, when
+large moral effects can be appreciated, when there is some opening
+understanding of the value of character.
+
+If the first period of childhood delights in what is strange, this
+second period gives its allegiance to what is strong, by preference to
+primitive and simple strength, to uncomplex aims and marked characters;
+it appreciates courage and endurance, and can bear to hear of sufferings
+which daunt the fastidiousness of those who are a few years older;
+perhaps it can endure so much because it realizes so little, but the
+fact remains true. This age exults in the sufferings of the martyrs and
+cannot bear the suggestion that plain duties may be heroic before God.
+There is a great deal that may be done for minds in this period of
+development by the teaching of history if it is not crippled in its
+programme. To make concrete their ideals of greatness in the right
+personalities--a work which is as easily spoiled by a word out of season
+as a fine porcelain vase is cracked in a furnace--to direct their ideas
+of the aims of life towards worthy and unselfish ends, to foster true
+loyalty because of God from whom all authority comes--and this lesson has
+its pathetic poignancy for us in the history of our English martyrs--to
+show the claims that our country has upon the devotion of its sons and
+daughters, and to inspire some feeling of responsibility for its honour,
+especially to show the supreme worth of character and self-sacrifice,
+all these things may and must be taught in this middle period of
+children's education if they are to have any strong hold upon them in
+after life. It is a stubborn age in which teaching has to be on strong
+lines and deep ones; when the evolution of character is in the critical
+period that is to make or mar its future, it needs a strong hand over
+it, with power both to control and to support, a strong mind to command
+its respect, strong convictions to impress it, and strong principles on
+which to test its own young strength; and all those who have the
+privilege of teaching history to children of this age have an
+incomparable opportunity of training mind and character. The strength of
+our own convictions, the brightness of our own ideals, the fibre of our
+patriotism and loyalty will tell in the measure of two endowments, our
+own spirit of self-sacrifice and our tact. Children will detect the
+least false note if self-sacrifice is preached without experimental
+knowledge; and as it is the most contradictory of all ages, it takes
+every resource of tact to pilot it through channels for which there is
+no chart. The masterpieces of educators are wrought in this difficult
+but most interesting material.
+
+Those who come after them will see what they have done, they cannot see
+it themselves. With less difficulty perhaps, because reason is more
+developed and the hot-headed and irritable phase of character is passing
+away, they will be able to apply the principles which have been laid
+down. With less difficulty, that is to say against less resistance, but
+not with less responsibility or even with less anxiety. For the nearer
+the work approaches to its completion and the more perfectly it has been
+begun, the more deeply must anyone approaching to lay hand upon it feel
+the need for great reverence, and self-restraint, and patience, and
+vigilance, not to spoil by careless interference that which is ready to
+receive and to give all that is best in youth, not to be unworthy of the
+confidence which a young mind is willing to place in its guidance.
+
+For although so much stress is laid upon the impressionability of first
+childhood and the ineffaceable marks that are engraven on it, yet as to
+all that belongs to the mind and judgment this third period, in the
+early years of adolescence, is more sensitive still, because real
+criticism is just beginning to be possible and appreciation is in its
+spring-tide, now for the first time fully alive and awake. A transition
+line has been passed, and the study of history, like everything else,
+enters upon a new phase. The elementary teaching which has been
+sufficient up to this, which has in fact been the only possible
+teaching, must widen out in the third period, and the relative
+importance of aims is the line on which the change to more advanced
+teaching is felt.
+
+The exercise of judgment becomes the chief object, and to direct this
+aright is the principal duty of those who teach at this age. It is not
+easy to give a right discernment and true views. To begin with one must
+have them oneself, and be able to support them with facts and arguments,
+they must have the weight of patient work behind them, and have settled
+themselves deeply in the mind; opinions freshly gathered that very day
+from an article or an essay are attractive and interesting and they
+appeal very strongly to young minds looking out for theories and clues,
+but they only give superficial help; in general, essay-writers and
+journalists do not expect to be taken too seriously, they intend to be
+suggestive rather than convincing, and it is a great matter to have the
+principle understood by girls, that it is not to the journalists that
+they must look for the last word in a controversy, nor for a permanent
+presentment of contemporary history. Again, it is necessary to remember
+the waywardness of girls' minds, and that it is conviction, not
+submission of views that we must aim at. A show of authority is out of
+place, the tone that "you must think as I do," tends without any bad
+will on the part of children to exasperate them and rouse the spirit of
+opposition, whereas a patient and even deferential hearing of their
+views and admission of their difficulties ensures at least a mind free
+from irritation and impatience, to listen and to take into account what
+we have to say. They are not to be blamed for having difficulties in
+accepting what we put before them; on the contrary we must welcome their
+independent thought even if it seems aggressive and conceited; their
+positive assurance that they see to the end of things is characteristic
+of their age, but it is better that they should show themselves thus,
+than through want of thought or courage fall in with everything that is
+set before them, or, worse still, take that pose of impartiality which
+allows no views at all, and in the end obliterates the line between
+right and wrong. The too submissive minds which give no trouble now, are
+laying it all up for the future. They accept what we tell them without
+opposition, others will come later on, telling them something different,
+and they will accept it in the same way, and correct their views day by
+day to the readings of the daily paper, or of the _vogue_ of their own
+particular set. These are the minds which in the end are absorbed by the
+world: the Church receives neither love nor service from them.
+
+Judgment may be passed upon actions as right or wrong in themselves, or
+as practically adapting means to end; the first is of great interest
+even to young children, but for them it is all black or white, and
+characters are to them entirely good or entirely bad, deserving of
+unmixed admiration or of their most excellent hatred, which they pour
+out simply and vehemently, rejoicing without qualms of pity when
+punishment overtakes the wrongdoer and retributive justice is done to
+the wicked. This is perhaps what makes them seem bloodthirsty in their
+vengeance; they feel that so it ought to be, and that the affirmation of
+principle is of more account than the individual. They detest
+half-measures and compromise. For the elder girls it is not so simple,
+and the nearer they come to our own times the more necessary is it to
+put before them that good is not always unaccompanied by evil nor evil
+by good.
+
+In the last two or three years of a girl's education all the time that
+can be spared may be most profitably spent on the study of modern
+history, since it is there that the more complex problems are found, and
+there also that they will understand how contemporary questions have
+their springs in the past, and see the rise of the forces which are at
+work now, disintegrating the nations of Europe and shaking the
+foundations of every government. There are grave lessons to be learnt,
+not in gloomy or threatening forecasts but in showing the direction of
+cause and effect and the renewal of the same struggle which has been
+from the beginning, in ever fresh phases. The outcome of historical
+teaching to Catholics can never be discouragement or depression,
+whatever the forecast. The past gives confidence, and, when the glories
+of bygone ages are weighed against their troubles, and the Church's
+troubles now against her inward strength and her new horizons of hope,
+there is great reason for gratitude that we live in our own much-abused
+time. In every age the Church has, with her roots in the past, some buds
+and blossoms in the present and some fruit coming on for the future.
+Hailstorms may cut off both blossoms and fruit, but all will not be
+lost. We can always hold up our heads; there are buds on the fig-tree
+and we know in whom we have believed.
+
+In bringing home to children these grounds for thankfulness, the quality
+of one's own mind and views tells very strongly, and this leads to the
+consideration of what is chiefly required in teaching history to
+children, and to girls growing up. The first and most essential point is
+that we ourselves should care about what we teach, not that we should
+merely like history as a school subject, but that it should be real to
+us, that we should feel something about it, joy or triumph or
+indignation, things which are not found in text-books, and we should
+believe that it all matters very much to the children and to ourselves.
+Lessons of the text-book type, facts, dates, summaries, and synopses
+matter very little to children, but people are of great importance, and
+if they grasp what often they only half believe, that what they are
+repeating as a mere lesson really took place among people who saw and
+felt it as vividly as they would themselves, then their sympathies and
+understanding are carried beyond the bounds of their school-rooms and
+respond to the touch of the great doings and sufferings of the race.
+
+It is above all in the history of the Church that this sympathetic
+understanding becomes real. The interest of olden times in secular
+history is more dramatic and picturesque than real to children; but in
+the history of the Church and especially of the personalities of the
+popes the continuity of her life is very keenly felt; the popes are all
+of to-day, they transcend the boundaries of their times because in a
+number of ways they did and had to do and bear the very same things that
+are done and have to be borne by the popes of our own day. If we give to
+girls some vivid realization, say, of the troubled Pontificate of
+Boniface VIII, with the violence and tragedy and pathos in which it
+ended, after the dust and jarring and weariness of battle in which it
+was spent; if they have entered into something of the anguish of Pius
+VII, they will more fully understand and feel deeper love and sympathy
+for the living, suffering successor now in the same chair, in another
+phase of the same conflict, with the Gentiles and peoples of the rising
+democracies taking counsel together against him, as kings and rulers did
+in the past, all imagining the same "vain thing," that they can overcome
+Christ and His Vicar.
+
+Besides this living sympathy with what we teach, we must be able to
+speak truth without being afraid of its consequences. There was at one
+time a fear in the minds of Catholic teachers that by admitting that any
+of the popes had been unworthy of their charge, or that there had ever
+been abuses which called for reforms among clergy and religious and
+Catholic laity, they would be giving away the case for the Church and
+imperilling the faith and loyalty of children; that it was better they
+should only hear these things later, with the hope that they would never
+hear them at all. The real peril is in the course thus adopted.
+Surrounded as we are by non-Catholics, and in a time when no Catholic
+escapes from questions and attacks, open or covert, upon what we
+believe, the greatest injustice to the girls themselves, and to the
+honour of the faith, was to send them out unarmed against what they must
+necessarily meet. The first challenge would be met with a flat denial of
+facts, loyal-heartedly and confidently given; then would come a
+suspicion that there might be something in it, the inquiry which would
+show that this was really the case; then a certain right indignation,
+"Why was I not told the truth?" and a sense of insecurity vaguely
+disturbing the foundations which ought to be on immovable bed-rock. At
+the best, such an experience produces what builders call a "settlement,"
+not dangerous to the fabric but unsightly in its consequences; it may,
+however, go much further, first to shake and then to loosen the whole
+spiritual building by the insinuation of doubt everywhere. It is
+impossible to forewarn children against all the charges which they may
+hear against the Church, but two points well established in their minds
+will give them confidence.
+
+1. That the evidence which is brought to light year after year from
+access to State papers and documents tells on the side of the Church, as
+we say in England, of "the old religion," and not against it. Books by
+non-Catholics are more convincing than others in this matter, since they
+are free from the suspicion of partisanship; for instance, Gairdner's
+"Lollardy and the Reformation" which disposes of many mythical monsters
+of Protestant history.
+
+2. That even if the facts were still more authentic to justify personal
+attacks on some of the popes, even if the abuses in the Church had not
+been grossly exaggerated, even putting facts at their worst, granting
+all that is assumed, it tends to strengthen faith rather than to
+undermine it, for the existence of the Church and the Papacy as they are
+to-day is a wonder only enhanced by every proof that it ought to have
+perished long ago according to all human probability. With that
+confidence and assurance even our little girls may hold their heads
+high, with their faith and trust in the Church quite unabashed, and wait
+for an answer if they cannot give it to others or to themselves at the
+moment. "We have no occasion to answer thee concerning this matter,"
+said the three holy children to Nabuchodonosor, and so may our own
+children say if they are hard pressed, "your charges do but confirm our
+faith, we have no occasion to answer."
+
+It is impossible to leave so great a subject as history without saying a
+word on the manner of teaching it (for in this a manner is needed rather
+than a method), when it is emancipated from the fetters of prescribed
+periods and programmes which attach it entirely to text-books.
+Text-books are not useless but they are very hard to find, and many
+Catholic text-books, much to be desired, are still unwritten, especially
+in England. America has made more effort in this direction than we. But
+the strength of historical teaching for children and girls at school
+lies in oral lessons, and of these it would seem that the most effective
+form is not the conversational lesson which is so valuable in other
+subjects, nor the formal lesson with "steps," but the form of a story
+for little ones; for older children the narrative leading up to a point
+of view, with conversational intervals, and encouragement for thoughtful
+questions, especially at the end of the lesson; and in the last years an
+informal kind of lecture, a transition from school-room methods to the
+style of formal lectures which maybe attended later.
+
+Lessons in history are often spoiled by futile questions put in as it
+were for conscience' sake, to satisfy the obligation of questioning, or
+to rouse the flagging attention of a child, but this is too great a
+sacrifice. It is artistically a fault to jar the whole movement of a
+good narrative for the sake of running after one truant mind. It is also
+artistically wrong and jarring to go abruptly from the climax of a
+story, or narrative, or lecture which has stirred some deep thought or
+emotion, and call with a sudden change of tone for recapitulation, or
+summary, or discussion. Silence is best; the greater lessons of history
+ought to transcend the limits of mere lessons, they are part of life,
+and they tell more upon the mind if they are dissociated from the
+harness and trappings of school work. Written papers for younger
+students and essays for seniors are the best means of calling for their
+results, and of guiding the line of reading by which all oral teaching
+of history and study of text-books must be supplemented.
+
+When school-room education is finished what we may look for is that
+girls should be ready and inclined to take up some further study of
+history, by private reading or following lectures with intelligence, and
+that they should be able to express themselves clearly in writing,
+either in the form of notes, papers, or essays, so as to give an account
+of their work and their opinions to those who may direct these later
+studies. We may hope that what they have learned of European history
+will enable them to travel with understanding and appreciation, that
+places with a history will mean something to them, and that the great
+impression of a living past may set a deep mark upon them with its
+discipline of proportion that makes them personally so small and yet so
+great, small in proportion to all that has been, great in their
+inheritance from the whole past and in expectation of all that is yet to
+be.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+ART.
+
+  "Give honour unto Luke Evangelist:
+   For he it was (the aged legends say)
+   Who first taught Art to fold her hands and pray.
+Scarcely at once she dared to rend the mist
+Of devious symbols: but soon having wist
+   How sky-breadth and field-silence and this day
+   Are symbols also in some deeper way,
+She looked through these to God, and was God's priest.
+
+"And if, past noon, her toil began to irk,
+And she sought talismans, and turned in vain
+   To soulless self-reflections of man's skill,
+   Yet now, in this the twilight, she might still
+Kneel in the latter grass to pray again,
+Ere the night cometh and she may not work."
+                 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI.
+
+When we consider how much of the direction of life depends upon the
+quality of our taste, upon right discernment in what we like and
+dislike, it is evident that few things can be more important in
+education than to direct this directing force, and both to learn and
+teach the taste for what is best as far as possible in all things. For
+in the matter of taste nothing is unimportant. Taste influences us in
+every department of life, as our tastes are, so are we. The whole
+quality of our inner and outer life takes its tone from the things in
+which we find pleasure, from our standard of taste. If we are severe in
+our requirements, hard to please, and at least honest with ourselves, it
+will mean that a spur of continual dissatisfaction pricks us, in all we
+do, into habitual striving for an excellence which remains beyond our
+reach. But on the other hand we shall have to guard against that peevish
+fastidiousness which narrows itself down until it can see nothing but
+defects and faults, and loses the power of humbly and genuinely
+admiring. This passive dissatisfaction which attempts nothing of its
+own, and only finds fault with what is done by others, grows very fast
+if it is allowed to take hold, and produces a mental habit of merely
+destructive criticism or perpetual scolding. Safe in attempting nothing
+itself, unassailable and self-righteous as a Pharisee, this spirit can
+only pull down but not build up again. In children it is often the
+outcome of a little jealousy and want of personal courage; they can be
+helped to overcome it, but if it is allowed to grow up, dissatisfaction
+allied to pusillanimity are very difficult to correct.
+
+On the other hand, if we are amiably and cheerfully inclined to admire
+things in general in a popular way, easily pleased and not exacting, we
+shall both receive and give a great deal of pleasure, but it will be all
+in a second and third and fourth-rate order of delight, and although
+this comfortable turn of mind is saved from much that is painful and
+jarring, it is not exempt from the danger of itself jarring continually
+upon the feelings of others, of pandering to the downward tendency in
+what is popular, and, in education, of debasing the standard of taste
+and discrimination for children. To be swayed by popularity in matters
+of taste is to accept mediocrity wholesale. We have left too far behind
+the ages when the taste of the people could give sound and true judgment
+in matters of art; we have left them at a distance which can be measured
+by what lies between the greatest Greek tragedies and contemporary
+popular plays. Consternation is frequently expressed at seeing how
+theatres of every grade are crowded with children of all classes in
+life, so it is from these popular plays that they must be learning the
+first lessons of dramatic criticism.
+
+There are only rare instances of taste which is instinctively true, and
+the process of educational pressure tends to level down original thought
+in children, as the excess of magazine and newspaper reading works in
+the same direction for older minds, so that true, independent taste
+becomes more rare; the result does not seem favourable to the
+development of the best discernment in those who ought to sway the taste
+of their generation. If taste in art is entirely guided by that of
+others, and especially by fashion, it cannot attain to the possession of
+an independent point of view; yet this in a modest degree every one with
+some training might aspire to. But under the sway of fashion taste is
+cowed; it becomes conventional, and falls under the dominion of the
+current price of works of art. On the other hand it is more unfortunate
+to be self-taught in matters of taste than in any other order of things.
+In this point taste ranks with manners, which are, after all, a
+department of the same region of right feeling and discernment. If taste
+is untaught and spontaneous, it is generally unreliable and without
+consistency. If self-taught it can hardly help becoming dogmatic and
+oracular, as some highly gifted minds have become, making themselves the
+supreme court of appeal for their own day.
+
+But trained taste is grounded in reverence and discipleship, a lowly and
+firm basis for departure, from which it may, if it has the power to do
+or to discern, rise in its strength, and leave behind those who have
+shown the way, or soar in great flights beyond their view. So it has
+often been seen in the history of art, and such is the right order of
+growth. It needs the living voice and the attentive mind, the influence
+of trained and experienced judgment to guide us in the beginning, but
+the guide must let us go at last and we must rely upon ourselves.
+
+The bad effect of being either self-taught or conventional is
+exclusiveness; in one case the personal bias is too marked, in the other
+the temporary aspect appeals too strongly. In the education of taste it
+is needful that the child should "eat butter and honey," not only so as
+to refuse the evil and choose the good, but also to judge between good
+and good, and to know butter from honey and honey from butter. This is
+the principal end of the study of art in early education. The _doing_ is
+very elementary, but the principles of discernment are something for
+life, feeding the springs of choice and delight, and making sure that
+they shall run clear and untroubled.
+
+Teaching concerning art which can be given to girls has to be approached
+with a sense of responsibility from conviction of the importance of its
+bearing on character as a whole. Let anyone who has tried it pass in
+review a number of girls as they grow up, and judge whether their
+instinct in art does not give a key to their character, always supposing
+that they have some inclination to reflect on matters of beauty, for
+there are some who are candidly indifferent to beauty if they can have
+excitement. They have probably been spoiled as children and find it hard
+to recover. Excitement has worn the senses so that their report grows
+dull and feeble. Imagination runs on other lines and requires
+stimulants; there is no stillness of mind in which the perception of
+beauty and harmony and fitness can grow up.
+
+There are others--may they be few--in whose minds there is little room for
+anything but success. Utilitarians in social life, their determination
+is to get on, and this spirit pervades all they do; it has the making of
+the hardest-grained worldliness: to these art has nothing to say. But
+there are others to whom it has a definite message, and their response
+to it corresponds to various schools or stages of art. There are some
+who are daring and explicit in their taste; they resent the curb, and
+rush into what is extravagant with a very feeble protest against it from
+within themselves. Beside them are simpler minds, merely exuberant, for
+whom there can never be enough light or colour in their picture of life.
+If they are gifted with enough intelligence to steady their joyful
+constitution of mind, these will often develop a taste that is fine and
+true. In the background of the group are generally a few silent members
+of sensitive temperament and deeper intuition, who see with marvellous
+quickness, but see too much to be happy and content, almost too much to
+be true. They incline towards another extreme, an ideal so high-pitched
+as to become unreal, and it meets with the penalty of unreality in
+over-balancing itself. Children nearly always pull to one side or the
+other; it is a work of long patience even to make them accept that there
+should be a golden mean. Did they ever need it so much as they do now?
+Probably each generation in turn, from Solomon's time onward, has asked
+the same question. But in the modern world there can hardly have been a
+time in which the principle of moderation needed to be more sustained,
+for there has never been a time when circumstances made man more daring
+in face of the forces of nature, and this same daring in other
+directions, less beautiful, is apt to become defiant and unashamed of
+excess. It asserts itself most loudly in modern French art, but we are
+following close behind, less logical and with more remaining traditions
+of correctness, but influenced beyond what we like to own.
+
+In the education of girls, which is subject to so many limitations, very
+often short in itself, always too short for what would be desirable to
+attain, the best way to harmonize aesthetic teaching is not to treat it
+in different departments, but to centre all round the general history of
+art. This leaves in every stage the possibility of taking up particular
+branches of art study, whether historical, or technical, or practical,
+and these will find their right place, not dissociated from their
+antecedents and causes, not paramount but subordinate, and thus rightly
+proportioned and true in their relation to the whole progress of mankind
+in striving after beauty and the expression of it.
+
+The history of art in connexion with the general history of the human
+race is a complement to it, ministering to the understanding of what is
+most intimate, stamping the expression of the dominant emotion on the
+countenance of every succeeding age. This is what its art has left to
+us, a more confidential record than its annals and chronicles, and more
+accessible to the young, who can often understand feelings before they
+can take account of facts in their historical importance. In any case
+the facts are clothed in living forms there where belief and aspiration
+and feeling have expressed themselves in works of art. If we value for
+children the whole impression of the centuries, especially in European
+history, more than the mere record of changes, the history of art will
+allow them to apprehend it almost as the biographies of great persons
+who have set their signature upon the age in which they lived.
+
+As each of the fine arts has its own history which moves along divergent
+or parallel lines in different countries and periods, and as each
+development or check is bound up with the history of the country or
+period and bears its impress, the interpretation of one is assisted and
+enriched by the other, and both are linked together to illuminate the
+truth. It is only necessary to consider the position of Christian art in
+the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and the changes wrought by the
+Renaissance, to estimate the value of some knowledge of it in giving to
+children a right understanding of those times and of what they have left
+to the world. Again, the inferences to be drawn from the varied
+developments of Gothic architecture in France, Spain, and England are
+roads indicated to what is possible to explore in later studies, both in
+history and in art. And so the schools of painting studied in their
+history make ready the way for closer study in after years. Pugin's
+"Book of Contrasts" is an illustration full of suggestive power as to
+the service which may be rendered in teaching by comparing the art of
+one century with that of another, as expressive of the spirit of each
+period, and a means of reading below the surface.
+
+Without Pugin's bitterness the same method of contrast has been used
+most effectively to put before children by means of lantern slides and
+lectures the manner in which art renders truth according to the various
+ideals and convictions of the artists. It is a lesson in itself, a
+lesson in faith, in devotion, as well as in art and in the history of
+man's mind, to show in succession, or even side by side, though the
+shock is painful, works of art in which the Christian mysteries are
+rendered in an age of faith or in one of unbelief. They can see in the
+great works of Catholic art how faith exults in setting them forth, with
+undoubting assurance, with a theological grasp of their bearings and
+conclusions, with plenitude of conviction and devotion that has no
+afterthoughts; and in contrasting with these the strained efforts to
+represent the same subjects without the illumination of theology they
+will learn to measure the distance downwards in art from faith to
+unbelief.
+
+The conclusions may carry them further, to judge from the most modern
+paintings of the tone of mind of their own time, of its impatience and
+restlessness and want of hope. Let them compare the patient finish, the
+complete thought given to every detail in the works of the greatest
+painters, the accumulated light and depth, the abounding life, with the
+hasty, jagged, contemporary manner of painting, straining into harshness
+from want of patience, tense and angular from want of real vitality,
+exhausted from the absence of inward repose. They will comment for
+themselves upon the pessimism to which so many surrender themselves,
+taking with them their religious art, with its feeble Madonnas and
+haggard saints, without hope or courage or help, painted out of the
+abundance of their own heart's sadness. This contrast carries much
+teaching to the children of to-day if they can understand it, for each
+one who sets value upon faith and hope and resolution and courage in art
+is a unit adding strength to the line of defence against the invasions
+of sadness and dejection of spirit.
+
+These considerations belong to the moral and spiritual value of the
+study of art, in the early years of an education intended to be general.
+They are of primary importance although in themselves only indirect
+results of the study. As to its direct results, it may be said in
+general that two things must be aimed at during the years of school
+life, appreciation of the beautiful in the whole realm of art, and some
+very elementary execution in one or other branch, some doing or making
+according to the gift of each one.
+
+The work on both sides is and can be only preparation, only the
+establishment of principles and the laying of foundations; if anything
+further is attempted during school life it is apt to throw the rest of
+the education out of proportion, for in nothing whatever can a girl
+leaving the school-room be looked upon as having finished. It is a great
+deal if she is well-grounded and ready to begin. Even the very branches
+of study to which a disproportioned space has been allowed will suffer
+the penalty of it later on, for the narrow basis of incomplete
+foundations tends to make an ill-balanced superstructure which cannot
+bear the stress of effort required for perfection without falling into
+eccentricity or wearing itself out. Both misfortunes have been seen
+before now when infant prodigies have been allowed to grow on one side
+only. Restraint and control and general building up tend to strengthen
+even the talent which has apparently to be checked, by giving it space
+and equilibrium and the power of repose. Even if art should be their
+profession or their life-work in any form, the sacrifices made for
+general education will be compensated in the mental and moral balance of
+their work.
+
+If general principles of art have been kept before the minds of
+children, and the history of art has given them some true ideas of its
+evolution, they are ready to learn the technique and practice of any
+branch to which they may be attracted. But as music and painting are
+more within their reach than other arts, it is reasonable that they
+should be provided for in the education of every child, so that each
+should have at least the offer and invitation of an entrance into those
+worlds, and latent talents be given the opportunity of declaring
+themselves. Poetry has its place apart, or rather it has two places, its
+own in the field of literature, and another, as an inspiration pervading
+all the domain of the fine arts, allied with music by a natural
+affinity, connected with painting on the side of imagination, related in
+one way or another to all that is expressive of the beautiful. Children
+will feel its influence before they can account for it, and it is well
+that they should do so--to feel it is in the direction of refusing the
+evil and choosing the good.
+
+Music is coming into a more important place among educational influences
+now that the old superstition of making every child play the piano is
+passing away. It was an injustice both to the right reason of a child
+and to the honour of music when it was forced upon those who were
+unwilling and unfit to attain any degree of excellence in it. We are
+renouncing these superstitions and turning to something more widely
+possible--to cultivate the audience and teach them to listen with
+intelligence to that which without instruction is scarcely more than
+pleasant noise, or at best the expression of emotion. The intellectual
+aspect of music is beginning to be brought forward in teaching children,
+and with this awakening the whole effect of music in education is
+indefinitely raised. It has scarcely had time to tell yet, but as it
+extends more widely and makes its way through the whole of our
+educational system it may be hoped that the old complaints, too well
+founded, against the indifference and carelessness of English audiences,
+will be heard no more. We shall never attain to the kind of religious
+awe which falls upon a German audience, or to its moods of emotion, but
+we may reach some means of expression which the national character does
+not forbid, showing at least that we understand, even though we must not
+admit that we feel.
+
+It is impossible to suggest what may be attained by girls of exceptional
+talent, but in practice if the average child-students, with fair musical
+ability, can at the end of their school course read and sing at sight
+fairly easy music, and have a good beginning of intelligent playing on
+one or two instruments, they will have brought their foundations in
+musical practice up to the level of their general education. If with
+some help they can understand the structure of a great musical work, and
+perhaps by themselves analyse an easy sonata, they will be in a position
+to appreciate the best of what they will hear afterwards, and if they
+have learnt something of the history of music and of the works of the
+great composers, their musical education will have gone as far as
+proportion allows before they are grown up. Some notions of harmony,
+enough to harmonize by the most elementary methods a simple melody, will
+be of the greatest service to those whose music has any future in it.
+
+Catholic girls have a right and even a duty to learn something of the
+Church's own music; and in this also there are two things to be
+learnt--appreciation and execution. And amongst the practical
+applications of the art of music to life there is nothing more
+honourable than the acquired knowledge of ecclesiastical music to be
+used in the service of the Church. When the love and understanding of
+its spirit are acquired the diffusion of a right tone in Church music is
+a means of doing good, as true and as much within the reach of many
+girls as the spread of good literature; and in a small and indirect way
+it allows them the privilege of ministering to the beauty of Catholic
+worship and devotion.
+
+The scope of drawing and painting in early education has been most ably
+treated of in many general and special works, and does not concern us
+here except in so far as it is connected with the training of taste in
+art which is of more importance to Catholics than to others, as has been
+considered above, in its relation to the springs of spiritual life, to
+faith and devotion, and also in so far as taste in art serves to
+strengthen or to undermine the principles on which conduct is based. We
+have to brace our children's wills to face restraint, to know that they
+cannot cast themselves at random and adrift in the pursuit of art, that
+their ideals must be more severe than those of others, and that they
+have less excuse than others if they allow these ideals to be debased.
+They ought to learn to be proud of this restraint, not to believe
+themselves thwarted or feel themselves galled by it, but to understand
+that it stands for a higher freedom by the side of which ease and
+unrestraint are more like servitude than liberty; it stands for the
+power to refuse the evil and choose the good; it stands for intellectual
+and moral freedom of choice, holding in check the impulse and
+inclination that are prompted from within and invited from without to
+escape from control.
+
+The best teaching in this is to show what is best, and to give the
+principles by which it is to be judged. To talk of what is bad, or less
+good, even by way of warning, is less persuasive and calculated even to
+do harm to girls whose temper of mind is often "quite contrary."
+Warnings are wearisome to them, and when they refer to remote dangers,
+partly guessed at, mostly unknown, they even excite the spirit of
+adventure to go and find out for themselves, just as in childhood
+repeated warnings and threats of the nursery-maids and maiden aunts are
+the very things which set the spirit of enterprise off on the voyage of
+discovery, a fact which the head nurse and the mother have found out
+long ago, and so have learnt to refrain from these attractive
+advertisements of danger. So it is with teachers. We learn by experience
+that a trumpet blast of warning wakes the echoes at first and rouses all
+that is to be roused, but also that if it is often repeated it dulls the
+ear and calls forth no response at all. Quiet positive teaching
+convinces children; to show them the best things attracts them, and once
+their true allegiance is given to the best, they have more security
+within themselves than in many danger signals set up for their safety.
+What is most persuasive of all is a whole-hearted love for real truth
+and beauty in those who teach them. Their own glow of enthusiasm is
+caught, light from light, and taste from taste, and ideal from ideal;
+warning may be lost sight of, but this is living spirit and will last.
+
+What children can accomplish by the excellent methods of teaching
+drawing and painting which are coming into use now, it is difficult to
+say. Talent as well as circumstances and conditions of education differ
+very widely in this. But as preparation for intelligent appreciation
+they should acquire some elementary principles of criticism, and some
+knowledge of the history and of the different schools of painting,
+indications of what to look for here and there in Europe and likewise of
+how to look at it; this is what they can take with them as a foundation,
+and in some degree all can acquire enough to continue their own
+education according to their opportunities. Matter-of-fact minds can
+learn enough not to be intolerable, the average enough to guide and
+safeguard their taste. They are important, for they will be in general
+the multitude, the public, whose judgment is of consequence by its
+weight of numbers; they will by their demand make art go upwards or
+downwards according to their pleasure. For the few, the precious few who
+are chosen and gifted to have a more definite influence, all the love
+they can acquire in their early years for the best in art will attach
+them for life to what is sane and true and lovely and of good fame.
+
+The foundations of all this lie very deep in human nature, and taste
+will be consistent with itself throughout the whole of life. It
+manifests itself in early sensitiveness and responsiveness to artistic
+beauty. It determines the choice in what to love as well as what to
+like. It will assert itself in friendship, and estrangement in matters
+of taste is often the first indication of a divergence in ideals which
+continues and grows more marked until at some crossroads one takes the
+higher path and the other the lower and their ways never meet again.
+That higher path, the disinterested love of beauty, calls for much
+sacrifice; it must seek its pleasure on ly in the highest, and not look
+for a first taste of delight, but a second, when the power of criticism
+has been schooled by a kind of asceticism to detect the choice from the
+vulgar and the true from the insincere. This spirit of sacrifice must
+enter into every form of training for life, but above all into the
+training of the Catholic mind. It has a wide range and asks much of its
+disciples, a certain renunciation and self-restraint in all things which
+never completely lets itself go. Catholic art bears witness to this:
+"Where a man seeks himself there he falls from love," says a Kempis, and
+this is proved not only in the love of God, but in what makes the glory
+of Christian art, the love of beauty and truth in the service of faith.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+MANNERS.
+
+"Manners are the happy ways of doing things; each--once--a stroke of
+genius or of love, now repeated and hardened into usage."--EMERSON.
+
+The late Queen Victoria had a profound sense of the importance of
+manners and of certain conventionalities, and the singular gift of
+common sense, which stood for so much in her, stands also for the
+significance of those things on which she laid so much stress.
+
+Conventionality has a bad name at present, and manners are on the
+decline, this is a fact quite undisputed. As to conventionalities it is
+assumed that they represent an artificial and hollow code, from the
+pressure of which all, and especially the young, should be emancipated.
+And it may well be that there is something to be said in favour of
+modifying them--in fact it must be so, for all human things need at times
+to be revised and readapted to special and local conditions. To attempt
+to enforce the same code of conventions on human society in different
+countries, or at different stages of development, is necessarily
+artificial, and if pressed too far it provokes reaction, and in reaction
+we almost inevitably go to extreme lengths. So in reaction against too
+rigid conventionalities and a social ritual which was perhaps
+over-exacting, we are swinging out beyond control in the direction of
+complete spontaneity. And yet there is need for a code of
+conventions--for some established defence against the instincts of
+selfishness which find their way back by a short cut to barbarism if
+they are not kept in check.
+
+Civilized selfishness leads to a worse kind of barbarism than that of
+rude and primitive states of society, because it has more resources at
+its command, as cruelty with refinement has more resources for
+inflicting pain than cruelty which can only strike hard. Civilized
+selfishness is worse also in that it has let go of better things; it is
+not in progress towards a higher plane of life, but has turned its back
+upon ideals and is slipping on the down-grade without a check. We can
+see the complete expression of life without conventions in the
+unrestraint of "hooliganism" with us, and its equivalents in other
+countries. In this we observe the characteristic product of bringing up
+without either religion, or conventions, or teaching in good manners
+which are inseparable from religion. We see the demoralization of the
+very forces which make both the strength and the weakness of youth and a
+great part of its charm, the impetuosity, the fearlessness of
+consequence, the lightheartedness, the exuberance which would have been
+so strong for good if rightly turned, become through want of this right
+impetus and control not strong but violent, uncontrollable and reckless
+to a degree which terrifies the very authorities who are responsible for
+them, in that system which is bringing up children with nothing to hold
+by, and nothing to which they can appeal. Girls are inclined to go even
+further than boys in this unrestraint through their greater excitability
+and recklessness, and their having less instinct of self-preservation.
+It is a problem for the local authorities. Their lavish expenditure upon
+sanitation, adornment, and--to use the favourite word--"equipment" of
+their schools does not seem to touch it; in fact it cannot reach the
+real difficulty, for it makes appeal to the senses and neglects the
+soul, and the souls of children are hungry for faith and love and
+something higher to look for, beyond the well-being of to-day in the
+schools, and the struggle for life, in the streets, to-morrow.
+
+It is not only in the elementary schools that such types of formidable
+selfishness are produced. In any class of life, in school or home,
+wherever a child is growing up without control and "handling," without
+the discipline of religion and manners, without the yoke of obligations
+enforcing respect and consideration for others, there a rough is being
+brought up, not so loud-voiced or so uncouth as the street-rough, but as
+much out of tune with goodness and honour, with as little to hold by and
+appeal to, as troublesome and dangerous either at home or in society, as
+uncertain and unreliable in a party or a ministry, and in any
+association that makes demand upon self-control in the name of duty.
+
+This is very generally recognized and deplored, but except within the
+Church, which has kept the key to these questions, the remedy is hard to
+find. Inspectors of elementary schools have been heard to say that, even
+in districts where the Catholic school was composed of the poorest and
+roughest elements, the manners were better than those of the well-to-do
+children in the neighbouring Council schools. They could not account for
+it, but we can; the precious hour of religious teaching for which we
+have had to fight so hard, influences the whole day and helps to create
+the "Catholic atmosphere" which in its own way tells perhaps more widely
+than the teaching. Faith tells of the presence of God and this underlies
+the rest, while the sense of friendly protection, the love of Our Lady,
+the angels, and saints, the love of the priest who administers all that
+Catholic children most value, who blesses and absolves them in God's
+name, all these carry them out of what is wretched and depressing in
+their surroundings to a different world in which they give and receive
+love and respect as children of God. No wonder their manners are gentler
+and their intercourse more disposed to friendliness, there is something
+to appeal to and uphold, something to love.
+
+The Protestant Reformation breaking up these relations and all the
+ceremonial observance in which they found expression, necessarily
+produced deterioration of manners. As soon as anyone, especially a
+child, becomes--not rightly but aggressively--independent, argumentatively
+preoccupied in asserting that "I am as good as you are, and I can do
+without you"--he falls from the right proportion of things, becomes less
+instead of greater, because he stands alone, and from this to warfare
+against all order and control the step is short. So it has proved. The
+principles of Protestantism worked out to the principles of the
+Revolution, and to their natural outcome, seen at its worst in the Reign
+of Terror and the Commune of 1871 in Paris.
+
+Again the influence of the Church on manners was dominant in the age of
+chivalry. At that time religion and manners were known to be
+inseparable, and it was the Church that handled the rough vigour of her
+sons to make them gentle as knights. This is so well known that it needs
+no more than calling to mind, and, turning attention to the fact that
+all the handling was fundamental, it is handling that makes manners.
+Even the derivation of the word does not let us forget this--_manners_
+from _manieres_, from _manier_, from _main_, from _manus_, the touch of
+the human hand upon the art of living worthily in human society, without
+offence and without contention, with the gentleness of a race, the
+_gens_, that owns a common origin, the urbanity of those who have
+learned to dwell in a city "compact together," the respect of those who
+have some one to look to for approval and control, either above them in
+dignity, or beneath them in strength, and therefore to be considered
+with due reverence.
+
+The handling began early in days of chivalry, no time was lost, because
+there would necessarily be checks on the way. Knighthood was far off,
+but it could not be caught sight of too early as an ideal, and it was
+characteristic of the consideration of the Church that, in the scheme of
+manners over which she held sway, the first training of her knights was
+intrusted to women. For women set the standard of manners in every age,
+if a child has not learnt by seven years old how to behave towards them
+it is scarcely possible for him to learn it at all, and it is by women
+only that it can be taught. The little _damoiseaux_ would have perfect
+and accomplished manners for their age when they left the apartments of
+the ladies at seven years old; it was a matter of course that they would
+fall off a good deal in their next stage. They would become "pert," as
+pages were supposed to be, and diffident as esquires, but as knights
+they would come back of themselves to the perfect ways of their
+childhood with a grace that became well the strength and self-possession
+of their knighthood. We have no longer the same formal and ceremonial
+training; it is not possible in our own times under the altered
+conditions of life, yet it commands attention for those who have at
+heart the future well-being of the boys and girls of to-day. The
+fundamental facts upon which manners are grounded remain the same. These
+are, some of them, worth consideration:--
+
+1. That manners represent a great deal more than mere social
+observances; they stand as the outward expression of some of the deepest
+springs of conduct, and none of the modern magic of philanthropy--
+altruism, culture, the freedom and good-fellowship of democracy,
+replaces them, because, in their spirit, manners belong to religion.
+
+2. That manners are a matter of individual training, so that they could
+never be learnt from a book. They can scarcely be taught, except in
+their simplest elements, to a class or school as a whole, but the
+authority which stands nearest in responsibility to each child, either
+in the home circle or at school, has to make a special study of it in
+order to teach it manners. The reason of this is evident. In each nature
+selfishness crops out on one side rather than another, and it is this
+which has to be studied, that the forward may be repressed, the shy or
+indolent stimulated, the dreamy quickened into attention, and all the
+other defective sides recognized and taken, literally, _in hand_, to be
+modelled to a better form.
+
+3. That training in manners is not a short course but a long course of
+study, a work of patience on both sides, of gentle and most insistent
+handling on one side and of long endurance on the other. There are a
+very few exquisite natures with whom the grace of manners seems to be
+inborn. They are not very vigorous, not physically robust; their own
+sensitiveness serves as a private tutor or monitor to tell them at the
+right moment what others feel, and what they should say or do. They have
+a great gift, but they lay down their price for it, and suffer for
+others as well as in themselves more than their share. But in general,
+the average boy and girl needs a "daily exercise" which in most cases
+amounts to "nagging," and in the best hands is only saved from nagging
+by its absence of peevishness, and the patience with which it reminds
+and urges and teases into perfect observance. The teasing thing, and yet
+the most necessary one, is the constant check upon the preoccupying
+interests of children, so that in presence of their elders they can
+never completely let themselves go, but have to be attentive to every
+service of consideration or mark of respect that occasion calls for. It
+is very wearisome, but when it has been acquired through laborious
+years--there it is, like a special sense superadded to the ordinary
+endowments of nature, giving presence of mind and self-possession,
+arming the whole being against surprise or awkwardness or indiscretion,
+and controlling what has so long appeared to exercise control over
+it--the conditions of social intercourse.
+
+How shall we persuade the children of to-day that manners and
+conventions have not come to an end as part of the old regime which
+appears to them an elaborate unreality V It is exceedingly difficult to
+do so, at school especially, as in many cases their whole family
+consents to regard them as extinct, and only when startled at the
+over-growth of their girls' unmannerly roughness and self-assertion they
+send them to school "to have their manners attended to"; but then it is
+too late. The only way to form manners is to teach them from the
+beginning as a part of religion, as indeed they are. Devotion to Our
+Lady will give to the manners both of boys and girls something which
+stamps them as Christian and Catholic, something above the world's
+level. And, as has been so often pointed out, the Church's ritual is the
+court ceremonial of the most perfect manners, in which every least
+detail has its significance, and applies some principle of inward faith
+and devotion to outward service.
+
+If we could get to the root of all that the older codes of manners
+required, and even the conventionalities of modern life--these remnants,
+in so far as they are based on the older codes--it would be found that,
+as in the Church's ceremonial, not one of them was without its meaning,
+but that all represented some principle of Christian conduct, even if
+they have developed into expressions which seem trivial. Human things
+tend to exaggeration and to "sport," as gardeners say, from their type
+into strange varieties, and so the manners which were the outcome of
+chivalry--exquisite, idealized, and restrained in their best period, grew
+artificial in later times and elaborated themselves into an etiquette
+which grew tyrannical and even ridiculous, and added violence to the
+inevitable reaction which followed. But if we look beyond the outward
+form to the spirit of such prescriptions as are left in force, there is
+something noble in their origin, either the laws of hospitality
+regulating all the relations of host and guest, or reverence for
+innocence and weakness which surrounded the dignity of both with lines
+of chivalrous defence, or the sensitiveness of personal honour, the
+instinct of what was due to oneself, an inward law that compelled a line
+of conduct that was unselfish and honourable. So the relics of these
+lofty conventions are deserving of all respect, and they cannot be
+disregarded without tampering with foundations which it is not safe to
+touch. They are falling into disrepute, but for the love of the children
+let us maintain them as far as we can. The experience of past ages has
+laid up lessons for us, and if we can take them in let us do so, if only
+as a training for children in self-control, for which they will find
+other uses a few years hence.
+
+But in doing this we must take account of all that has changed. There
+are some antique forms, beautiful and full of dignity, which it is
+useless to attempt to revive; they cannot live again, they are too
+massive for our mobile manner of life to-day. And on the other hand
+there are some which are too high-pitched, or too delicate. We are
+living in a democratic age, and must be able to stand against its
+stress. So in the education of girls a greater measure of independence
+must necessarily be given to them, and they must learn to use it, to
+become self-reliant and self-protecting. They have to grow more
+conscious, less trustful, a little harder in outline; one kind of young
+dignity has to be exchanged for another, an attitude of self-defence is
+necessary. There is perhaps a certain loss in it, but it is inevitable.
+The real misfortune is that the first line of defence is often
+surrendered before the second is ready, and a sudden relaxation of
+control tends to yield too much; in fact girls are apt to lose their
+heads and abandon their self-control further than they are able to
+resume it. Once they have "let themselves go"--it is the favourite
+phrase, and for once a phrase that completely conveys its meaning--it is
+exceedingly difficult for them to stop themselves, impossible for others
+to stop them by force, for the daring ones are quite ready to break with
+their friends, and the others can elude control with very little
+difficulty. The only security is a complete armour of self-control based
+on faith, and a home tie which is a guarantee for happiness. Girls who
+are not happy in their own homes live in an atmosphere of temptation
+which they can scarcely resist, and the happiness of home is dependent
+in a great measure upon the manners of home, "there is no surer
+dissolvant of home affections than discourtesy." [1--D. Urquhart.] It
+is useless to insist on this, it is known and admitted by almost all,
+but the remedy or the preventive is hard to apply, demanding such
+constant self-sacrifice on the part of parents that all are not ready to
+practise it; it is so much easier and it looks at first sight so kind to
+let children have their way. So kind at first, so unselfish in
+appearance, the parents giving way, abdicating their authority, while
+the young democracy in the nursery or school-room takes the reins in
+hand so willingly, makes the laws, or rather rules without them, by its
+sovereign moods, and then outgrows the "establishment" altogether,
+requires more scope, snaps the link with home, scarcely regretting, and
+goes off on its own account to elbow its way in the world. It is
+obviously necessary and perhaps desirable that many girls should have to
+make their own way in the world who would formerly have lived at home,
+but often the way in which it is done is all wrong, and leaves behind on
+both sides recollections with a touch of soreness.
+
+For those who are practically concerned with the education of girls the
+question is how to attain what we want for them, while the force of the
+current is set so strongly against us. We have to make up our minds as
+to what conventions can survive and fix in some way the high and
+low-water marks, for there must be both, the highest that we can attain,
+and the lowest that we can accept. All material is not alike; some
+cannot take polish at all. It is well if it can be made tolerable; if it
+does not fall below that level of manners which are at least the
+safeguard of conduct; if it can impose upon itself and accept at least
+so much restraint as to make it inoffensive, not aggressively selfish.
+Perhaps the low-water mark might be fixed at the remembrance that other
+people have rights and the observance of their claims. This would secure
+at least the common marks of respect and the necessary conventionalities
+of intercourse. For ordinary use the high-water mark might attain to the
+remembrance that other people have feelings, and to taking them into
+account, and as an ordinary guide of conduct this includes a great deal
+and requires training and watchfulness to establish it, even where there
+is no exceptional selfishness or bluntness of sense to be overcome. The
+nature of an ordinary healthy energetic child, high-spirited and
+boisterous, full of a hundred interests of its own, finds the mere
+attention to these things a heavy yoke, and the constant self-denial
+needed to carry them out is a laborious work indeed.
+
+The slow process of polishing marble has more than one point of
+resemblance with the training of manners; it is satisfactory to think
+that the resemblance goes further than the process, that as only by
+polishing can the concealed beauties of the marble be brought out, so
+only in the perfecting of manners will the finer grain of character and
+feeling be revealed. Polishing is a process which may reach different
+degrees of brilliancy according to the material on which it is
+performed; and so in the teaching of manners a great deal depends upon
+the quality of the nature, and the amount of expression which it is
+capable of acquiring. It is useless to press for what cannot be given,
+at the same time it is unfair not to exact the best that every one is
+able to give. As in all that has to do with character, example is better
+than precept.
+
+But in the matter of manners example alone is by no means enough;
+precept is formally necessary, and precept has to be enforced by
+exercise. It is necessary because the origin of established
+conventionalities is remote; they do not speak for themselves, they are
+the outcome of a general habit of thought, they have come into being
+through a long succession of precedents. We cannot explain them fully to
+children; they can only have the summary and results of them, and these
+are dry and grinding, opposed to the unpremeditated spontaneous ways of
+acting in which they delight. Manners are almost fatally opposed to the
+sudden happy thoughts of doing something original, which occur to
+children's minds. No wonder they dislike them; we must be prepared for
+this. They are almost grown up before they can understand the value of
+what they have gone through in acquiring these habits of unselfishness,
+but unlike many other subjects to which they are obliged to give time
+and labour, they will not leave this behind in the schoolroom. It is
+then that they will begin to exercise with ease and precision of long
+practice the art of the best and most expressive conduct in every
+situation which their circumstances may create.
+
+In connexion with this question of circumstances in life and the
+situations which arise out of them, there is one thing which ought to be
+taught to children as a fundamental principle, and that is the relation
+of manners to class of life, and what is meant by vulgarity. For
+vulgarity is not--what it is too often assumed to be--a matter of class,
+but in itself a matter of insincerity, the effort to appear or to be
+something that one is not. The contrary of vulgarity, by the word, is
+preciousness or distinction, and in conduct or act it is the perfect
+preciousness and distinction of truthfulness. Truthfulness in manners
+gives distinction and dignity in all classes of society; truthfulness
+gives that simplicity of manners which is one of the special graces of
+royalty, and also of an unspoiled and especially a Catholic peasantry.
+Vulgarity has an element of restless unreality and pretentious striving,
+an affectation or assumption of ways which do not belong to it, and in
+particular an unwillingness to serve, and a dread of owning any
+obligation of service. Yet service perfects manners and dignity, from
+the highest to the lowest, and the manners of perfect servants either
+public or private are models of dignity and fitness. The manners of the
+best servants often put to shame those of their employers, for their
+self-possession and complete knowledge of what they are and ought to be
+raises them above the unquietness of those who have a suspicion that
+they are not quite what might be expected of them. It is on this
+uncertain ground that all the blunders of manners occur; when simplicity
+is lost disaster follows, with loss of dignity and self-respect, and
+pretentiousness forces its way through to claim the respect which it is
+conscious of not deserving.
+
+Truth, then, is the foundation of distinction in manners for every
+class, and the manners of children are beautiful and perfect when
+simplicity bears witness to inward truthfulness and consideration for
+others, when it expresses modesty as to themselves and kindness of heart
+towards every one. It does not require much display or much ceremonial
+for their manners to be perfect according to the requirements of life at
+present; the ritual of society is a variable thing, sometimes very
+exacting, at others disposed to every concession, but these things do
+not vary--truth, modesty, reverence, kindness are of all times, and these
+are the bases of our teaching.
+
+The personal contribution of those who teach, the influence of their
+companionship is that which establishes the standard, their patience is
+the measure which determines the limits of attainment, for it is only
+patience which makes a perfect work, whether the attainment be high or
+low. It takes more patience to bring poor material up to a presentable
+standard than to direct the quick intuitions of those who are more
+responsive; in one case efforts meet with resistance, in the other,
+generally with correspondence. But our own practice is for ourselves the
+important thing, for the inward standard is the point of departure, and
+our own sincerity is a light as well as a rule, or rather it is a rule
+because it is a light; it prevents the standard of manners from being
+double, one for use and one for ornament; it imposes respect to be
+observed with children as well as exacted from them, and it keeps up the
+consciousness that manners represent faith and, in a sense, duty to God
+rather than to one's neighbour.
+
+This, too, belongs not to the fleeting things of social observance but
+to the deep springs of conduct, and its teaching may be summed up in one
+question. Is not well-instructed devotion to Our Lady and the
+understanding of the Church's ceremonies a school of manners in which we
+may learn how human intercourse may be carried on with the most perfect
+external expressiveness? Is not all inattention of mind to the
+courtesies of life, all roughness and slovenliness, all crude
+unconventionality which is proud of its self-assertion, a "falling from
+love" in seeking self? Will not the instinct of devotion and imitation
+teach within, all those things which must otherwise be learned by
+painful reiteration from without; the perpetual _give up, give way, give
+thanks, make a fitting answer, pause, think of others, don't get
+excited, wait, serve_, which require watchfulness and self-sacrifice?
+
+Perhaps in the last year or two of education, when our best
+opportunities occur, some insight will be gained into the deeper meaning
+of all these things. It may then be understood that they are something
+more than arbitrary rules; there may come the understanding of what is
+beautiful in human intercourse, of the excellence of self-restraint, the
+loveliness of perfect service. If this can be seen it will tone down all
+that is too uncontrolled and make self-restraint acceptable, and will
+deal with the conventions of life as with symbols, poor and inarticulate
+indeed, but profoundly significant, of things as they ought to be.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+HIGHER EDUCATION OP WOMEN.
+
+"In die Erd' isi's aufgenommen,
+Glucklich ist die Form gefullt;
+Wird's auch schon zu Tage kommen,
+Dass es Fleiss und Kunst vergilt?
+  Wenn der Guss misslang?
+  Wenn die Form zersprang?
+Ach, vielleicht, indem wir hoffen,
+Hat uns Unheil schon getroffen."
+      SCHILLER, "Das Lied von der Gloeke."
+
+So far in these pages the education of girls has only been considered up
+to the age of eighteen or so, that is to the end of the ordinary
+school-room course. At eighteen, some say that it is just time to go to
+school, and others consider that it is more than time to leave it. They
+look at life from different points of view. Some are eager to experience
+everything for themselves, and as early as possible to snatch at this
+good thing, life, which is theirs, and make what they can of it,
+believing that its only interest is in what lies beyond the bounds of
+childhood and a life of regulated studies; they want to begin to _live_.
+Others feel that life is such a good thing that every year of longer
+preparation fits them better to make the most of its opportunities, and
+others again are anxious--for a particular purpose, sometimes, and very
+rarely for the disinterested love of it--to undertake a course of more
+advanced studies and take active part in the movement "for the higher
+education of women." The first will advance as far as possible the date
+of their coming out; the second will delay it as long as they are
+allowed, to give themselves in quiet to the studies and thought which
+grow in value to them month by month; the third, energetic and decided,
+buckle on their armour and enter themselves at universities for degrees
+or certificates according to the facilities offered.
+
+There can be no doubt that important changes were necessary in the
+education of women. About the middle of the last century it had reached
+a condition of stagnation from the passing away of the old system of
+instruction before anything was ready to take its place. With very few
+exceptions, and those depended entirely on the families from which they
+carae, girls were scarcely educated at all. The old system had given
+them few things but these were of value; manners, languages, a little
+music and domestic training would include it all, with perhaps a few
+notions of "the use of the globes" and arithmetic. But when it dwindled
+into a book called "Hangnail's Questions," and manners declined into
+primness, and domestic training lost its vigour, then artificiality laid
+hold of it and lethargy followed, and there was no more education for
+"young ladies."
+
+In a characteristically English way it was individual effort which came
+to change the face of things, and honour is due to the pioneers who went
+first, facing opposition and believing in the possibilities of better
+things. In some other countries the State would have taken the
+initiative and has done so, but we have our own ways of working out
+things, "l'aveugle et tatonnante infaillibilite de l'Angleterre," as
+some one has called it, in which the individual goes first, and makes
+trial of the land, and often experiences failure in the first attempts.
+From the closing years of the eighteenth century, when the "Vindication
+of the Rights of Women" was published by Mary Wollstonecraft, the
+question has been more or less in agitation. But in 1848, with the
+opening of Queen's College in London, it took its first decided step
+forward in the direction of provision for the higher education of women,
+and in literature it was much in the air. Tennyson's "Princess" came in
+1847, and "Aurora Leigh" from Elizabeth Barrett Browning in 1851, and
+things moved onward with increasing rapidity until at one moment it
+seemed like a rush to new goldfields. One university after another has
+granted degrees to women or degree certificates in place of the degrees
+which were refused; women are resident students at some universities and
+at others present themselves on equal terms with men for examination.
+The way has been opened to them in some professions and in many spheres
+of activity from which they had been formerly excluded.
+
+One advantage of the English mode of proceeding in these great questions
+is that the situation can be reconsidered from time to time without the
+discordant contentions which surround any proclamation of non-success in
+State concerns. We feel our way and try this and that, and readjust
+ourselves, and a great deal of experimental knowledge has been gained
+before any great interests or the prestige of the State have been
+involved. These questions which affect a whole people directly or
+indirectly require, for us at least, a great deal of experimenting
+before we know what suits us. We are not very amenable to systems, or
+theories, or ready-made schemes. And the phenomenon of tides is very
+marked in all that we undertake. There is a period of advance and then a
+pause and a period of decline, and after another pause the tide rises
+again. It may perhaps be accounted for in part by the very fact that we
+do so much for ourselves in England, and look askance at anything which
+curtails the freedom of our movements, when we are in earnest about a
+question; but this independence is rapidly diminishing under the more
+elaborate administration of recent years, and the increase of State
+control in education. Whatever may be the effect of this in the future,
+it seems as if there were at present a moment of reconsideration as to
+whether we have been quite on the right track in the pursuit of higher
+education for women, and a certain discontent with what has been
+achieved so far. There are at all events not many who are cordially
+pleased with the results. Some dissatisfaction is felt as to the
+position of the girl students in residence at the universities. They
+cannot share in any true sense in the life of the universities, but only
+exist on their outskirts, outside the tradition of the past, a modern
+growth tolerated rather than fostered or valued by the authorities. This
+creates a position scarcely enviable in itself, or likely to communicate
+that particular tone which is the gift of the oldest English
+universities to their sons. Some girl students have undoubtedly
+distinguished themselves, especially at Cambridge; in the line of
+studies they attained what they sought, but that particular gift of the
+university they could not attain. It is lamented that the number of
+really disinterested students attending Girton and Newnham is small; the
+same complaint is heard from the Halls for women at Oxford; there is a
+certain want of confidence as to the future and what it is all leading
+to. To women with a professional career before them the degree
+certificates are of value, but the course of studies itself and its
+mental effect is conceded by many to be disappointing. One reason may be
+that the characteristics of girls' work affect in a way the whole
+movement. They are very eager and impetuous students, but in general the
+staying power is short; an excessive energy is put out in one direction,
+then it flags, and a new beginning is made towards another quarter. So
+in this general movement there have been successive stages of activity.
+
+The higher education movement has gone on its own course. The first
+pioneers had clear and noble ideals; Bedford College, the growth of
+Cheltenham, the beginnings of Newnham and Girton Colleges, the North of
+England Ladies' "Council of Education" represented them. Now that the
+movement has left the port and gone beyond what they foresaw, it has met
+the difficulties of the open sea.
+
+Nursing was another sphere opened about the same time, to meet the
+urgent needs felt during the Crimean War; it was admirably planned out
+by Florence Nightingale, again a pioneer with loftiest ideals. There
+followed a rush for that opening; it has continued, and now the same
+complaint is made that it is an outlet for those whose lives are not to
+their liking at home, rather than those who are conscious of a special
+fitness for it or recognized as having the particular qualities which it
+calls for. And then came the development of a new variety among the
+unemployed of the wealthier classes, the "athletic girl." Not every one
+could aspire to be an athletic girl, it requires some means, and much
+time; but it is there, and it is part of the emancipation movement. The
+latest in the field are the movements towards organization of effort,
+association on the lines of the German _Frauenbund_, and the French
+_Mouvement Feministe_, and beside them, around them, with or without
+them, the Women's Suffrage Movement, militant or non-militant. These are
+of the rising tide, and each tide makes a difference to our coast-line,
+in some places the sea gains, in others the land, and so the thinkers,
+for and against, register their victories and defeats, and the face of
+things continues to change more and more rapidly.
+
+It seems an ungracious task, unfair--perhaps it seems above all
+retrograde and ignorant--to express doubt and not to think hopefully
+of a cause in which so many lives have been spent with singular
+disinterestedness and self-devotion. Yet these adverse thoughts are in
+the air, not only amongst those who are unable to win in the race, but
+amongst those who have won, and also amongst those who look out upon
+it all with undistracted and unbiassed interest; older men, who look
+to the end and outcome of things, to the ultimate direction when
+the forces have adjusted themselves. Those who think of the next
+generation are not quite satisfied with what is being done for our
+girls or by them.
+
+Catholics have been spurred hotly into the movement by those who are
+keenly anxious that we should not be left behind, but should show
+ourselves able to be with the best in all these things. Perhaps at the
+stage which has been reached we have more reason than others to be
+dissatisfied with the results of success, since we are more beset than
+others by the haunting question--_what then_? For those who have to
+devote themselves to the cause of Catholic education it is often and
+increasingly necessary to win degrees or their equivalents, not
+altogether for their own value, but as the key that fits the lock, for
+the gates to the domain of education are kept locked by the State. And
+so in other spheres of Catholic usefulness the key may become more and
+more necessary. But--may it be suggested--in their own education, a degree
+for a man and a degree for a girl mean very different things, even if
+the degree is the same. For a girl it is the certificate of a course of
+studies. For a man an Oxford or Cambridge degree means atmosphere unique
+in character, immemorial tradition, association, all kinds of interests
+and subtle influences out of the past, the impressiveness of numbers,
+among which the individual shows in very modest proportions indeed
+whatever may be his gifts. The difference is that of two worlds. Bat
+even at other universities the degree means more to a man if it is
+anything beyond a mere gate-key. It is his initial effort, after which
+comes the full stress of his life's work. For a girl, except in the
+rarest cases, it is either a gate-key or a final effort, either her
+life's work takes a different turn, or she thinks she has had enough.
+The line of common studies is adapted for man's work and programme of
+life. It has been made to fit woman's professional work, but the fit is
+not perfect. It has a marked unfitness in its adaptation for women to
+the real end of higher education, or university education, which is the
+perfecting of the individual mind, according to its kind, in
+surroundings favourable to its complete development.
+
+Atmosphere is a most important element at all periods of education, and
+in the education of girls all-important, and an atmosphere for the
+higher education of girls has not yet been created in the universities.
+The girl students are few, their position is not unassailable, their
+aims not very well defined, and the thing which is above all required
+for the intellectual development of girls--quiet of mind--is not assured.
+It is obvious that there can never be great tradition and a past to look
+back to, unless there is a present, and a beginning, and a long period
+of growth. But everything for the future consists in having a noble
+beginning, however lowly, true foundations and clear aims, and this we
+have not yet secured. It seems almost as if we had begun at the wrong
+end, that the foundations of character were not made strong enough,
+before the intellectual superstructure began to be raised--and that this
+gives the sense of insecurity. An unusual strength of character would be
+required to lead the way in living worthily under such difficult
+circumstances as have been created, a great self-restraint to walk
+without swerving or losing the track, without the controlling machinery
+of university rules and traditions, without experience, at the most
+adventurous age of life, and except in preparation for professional work
+without the steadying power of definite duties and obligations. A few
+could do it, but not many, and those chosen few would have found their
+way in any case. The past bears witness to this.
+
+But the past as a whole bears other testimony which is worth considering
+here. Through every vicissitude of women's education there have always
+been the few who were exceptional in mental and moral strength, and they
+have held on their way, and achieved a great deal, and left behind them
+names deserving of honour. Such were Maria Gaetana Agnesi, who was
+invited by the Pope and the university to lecture in mathematics at
+Bologna (and declined the invitation to give herself to the service of
+the poor), and Lucretia Helena Gomaro Piscopia, who taught philosophy
+and theology! and Laura Bassi who lectured in physics, and Clara von
+Schur-man who became proficient in Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, and Chaldaic
+in order to study Scripture "with greater independence and judgment,"
+and the Pirk-heimer family of Nuremberg, Caritas and Clara and others,
+whose attainments were conspicuous in their day. But there is something
+unfamiliar about all these names; they do not belong so much to the
+history of the world as to the curiosities of literature and learning.
+The world has not felt their touch upon it; we should scarcely miss them
+in the galleries of history if their portraits were taken down.
+
+The women who have been really great, whom we could not spare out of
+their place in history, have not been the student women or the
+remarkably learned. The greatest women have taken their place in the
+life of the world, not in its libraries; their strength has been in
+their character, their mission civilization in its widest and loftiest
+sense. They have ruled not with the "Divine right of kings," but with
+the Divine right of queens, which is quite a different title, undisputed
+and secure to them, if they do not abdicate it of themselves or drag it
+into the field of controversy to be matched and measured against the
+Divine or human rights of kings. "The heaven of heavens is the Lord's,
+but the earth He has given to the children of men," and to woman He
+seems to have assigned the borderland between the two, to fit the one
+for the other and weld the links. Hers are the first steps in training
+the souls of children, the nurseries of the kingdom of heaven (the
+mothers of saints would fill a portrait gallery of their own); hers the
+special missions of peace and reconciliation and encouragement, the
+hidden germs of such great enterprises as the Propagation of the Faith,
+and the trust of such great devotions as that of the Blessed Sacrament
+and the Sacred Heart to be brought within the reach of the faithful. The
+names of Matilda of Tuscany, of St. Catherine of Siena, of Blessed Joan
+of Arc, of Isabella the Catholic, of St. Theresa are representative,
+amongst others, of women who have fulfilled public missions for the
+service of the Church, and of Christian people, and for the realization
+of religious ideals: true queens of the borderland between both worlds.
+Others have reigned in their own spheres, in families or solitudes, or
+cloistered enclosures--as the two Saints Elizabeth, Paula and Eustochium
+and all their group of friends, the great Abbesses Hildegarde, Hilda,
+Gertrude and others, and the chosen line of foundresses of religious
+orders--these too have ruled the borderland, and their influence, direct
+or indirect, has all been in the same direction, for pacification and
+not for strife, for high aspiration and heavenly-mindedness, for faith
+and hope and love and self-devotion, and all those things for want of
+which the world is sick to death.
+
+But the kingdom of woman is on that borderland, and if she comes down to
+earth to claim its lowland provinces she exposes herself to lose both
+worlds, not securing real freedom or permanent equality in one, and
+losing hold of some of the highest prerogatives of the other. These may
+seem to be cloudy and visionary views, and this does not in any sense
+pretend to be a controversial defence of them, but only a suggestion
+that both history and present experience have something to say on this
+side of the question, a suggestion also that there are two spheres of
+influence, requiring different qualities for their perfect use, as there
+are two forces in a planetary system. If these forces attempted to work
+on one line the result would be the wreck of the whole, but in their
+balance one against the other, apparently contrary, in reality at one,
+the equilibrium of the whole is secured. One is for motor force and the
+other for central control; both working in concert establish the harmony
+of planetary motion and give permanent conditions of unity. Here, as
+elsewhere, uniformity tends to ultimate loosening of unity; diversity
+establishes that balance which combines freedom with stability.
+
+Once more it must be said that only the Catholic Church can give perfect
+adjustment to the two forces, as she holds up on both sides ideals which
+make for unity. And when the higher education of women has flowered
+under Catholic influence, it has had a strong basis of moral worth, of
+discipline and control to sustain the expansion of intellectual life;
+and without the Church the higher education of women has tended to
+one-sidedness, to nonconformity of manners, of character, and of mind,
+to extremes, to want of balance, and to loss of equilibrium in the
+social order, by straining after uniformity of rights and aims and
+occupations.
+
+So with regard to the general question of women's higher education may
+it be suggested that the moral training, the strengthening of character,
+is the side which must have precedence and must accompany every step of
+their education, making them fit to bear heavier responsibilities, to
+control their own larger independence, to stand against the current of
+disintegrating influences that will play upon them. To be fit for higher
+education calls for much acquired self-restraint, and unfortunately it
+is on the contrary sometimes sought as an opening for speedier
+emancipation from control. Those who seek it in this spirit are of all
+others least fitted to receive it, for the aim is false, and it gives a
+false movement to the whole being. Again, when it is entirely
+dissociated from the realities of life, it tends to unfit girls for any
+but a professional career in which they will have--at great cost to their
+own well-being--to renounce their contact with those primeval teachers of
+experience.
+
+In some countries they have found means of combining both in a modified
+form of university life for girls, and in this they are wiser than we.
+Buds of the same tree have been introduced into England, but they are
+nipped by want of appreciation. We have still to look to our
+foundations, and even to make up our minds as to what we want. Perhaps
+the next few years will make things clearer. But in the meantime there
+is a great deal to be done; there is one lesson that every one concerned
+with girls must teach them, and induce them to learn, that is the lesson
+of self-command and decision. Our girls are in danger of drifting and
+floating along the current of the hour, passive in critical moments,
+wanting in perseverance to carry out anything that requires steady
+effort. They are often forced to walk upon slippery ground; temptations
+sometimes creep on insensibly, and at others make such sudden attacks
+that the thing all others to be dreaded for girls is want of courage and
+decision of character. Those render them the best service who train them
+early to decide for themselves, to say yes or no definitely, to make up
+their mind promptly, not because they "feel like it" but for a reason
+which they know, and to keep in the same mind which they have reasonably
+made up. Thus they may be fitted by higher moral education to receive
+higher mental training according to their gifts; but in any case they
+will be prepared by it to take up whatever responsibilities life may
+throw upon them.
+
+The future of girls necessarily remains indeterminate, at least until
+the last years of their education, but the long indeterminate time is
+not lost if it has been spent in preparatory training of mind, and
+especially in giving some resistance to their pliant or wayward
+characters. Thus, whether they devote themselves to the well-being of
+their own families, or give themselves to volunteer work in any
+department, social or particular, or advance in the direction of higher
+studies, or receive any special call from God to dedicate their gifts to
+His particular service, they will at least have something to give; their
+education will have been "higher" in that it has raised them above the
+dead level of mediocre character and will-power, which is only
+responsive to the inclination or stimulus of the moment, but has no
+definite plan of life. It may be that as far as exterior work goes, or
+anything that has a name to it, no specified life-work will be offered
+to many, but it is a pity if they regard their lives as a failure on
+that account.
+
+There are lives whose occupations could not be expressed in a formula,
+yet they are precious to their surroundings and precious in themselves,
+requiring more steady self-sacrifice than those which give the stimulus
+of something definite to do. These need not feel themselves cut off from
+what is highest in woman's education, if they realize that the mind has
+a life in itself and makes its own existence there, not selfishly, but
+indeed in a peculiarly selfless way, because it has nothing to show for
+itself but some small round of unimpressive occupations; some perpetual
+call upon its sympathies and devotion, not enough to fill a life, but
+just enough to prevent it from turning to anything else. Then the higher
+life has to be almost entirely within itself, and no one is there to see
+the value of it all, least of all the one who lives it. There is no
+stimulus, no success, no brilliancy; it is perhaps of all lives the
+hardest to accept, yet what perfect workmanship it sometimes shows. Its
+disappearance often reveals a whole tissue of indirect influences which
+had gone forth from it; and who can tell how far this unregistered,
+uncertificated higher education of a woman, without a degree and with an
+exceedingly unassuming opinion of itself, may have extended. It is a
+life hard to accept, difficult to put into words with any due proportion
+to its worth, but good and beautiful to know, surely "rich in the sight
+of God,"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+CONCLUSION.
+
+"Far out the strange ships go:
+   Their broad sails flashing red
+As flame, or white as snow:
+   The ships, as David said.
+'Winds rush and waters roll:
+   Their strength, their beauty, brings
+Into mine heart the whole
+   Magnificence of things.'"
+                              LIONEL JOHNSON.
+
+The conclusion is only an opportunity for repeating how much there is
+still to be said, and even more to be thought of and to be done, in the
+great problem and work of educating girls. Every generation has to face
+the same problem, and deals with it in a characteristic way. For us it
+presents particular features of interest, of hope and likewise of
+anxious concern. The interest of education never flags; year after year
+the material is new, the children come up from the nursery to the
+school-room, with their life before them, their unbounded possibilities
+for good, their confidence and expectant hopefulness as to what the
+future will bring them. We have our splendid opportunity and are greatly
+responsible for its use. Each precious result of education when the girl
+has grown up and leaves our hands is thrown into the furnace to be
+tried--fired--like glass or fine porcelain. Those who educate have, at a
+given moment, to let go of their control, and however solicitously they
+may have foreseen and prepared for it by gradually obliging children to
+act without coercion and be responsible for themselves, yet the critical
+moment must come at last and "every man's work shall be manifest," "the
+fire shall try every man's work, of what sort it is" (1 Cor. III).
+Life tries the work of education, "of what sort it is." If it stands the
+test it is more beautiful than before, its colours are fixed. If it
+breaks, and some will inevitably break in the trial, a Catholic
+education has left in the soul a way to recovery. Nothing, with us, is
+hopelessly shattered, we always know how to make things right again. But
+if we can we must secure the character against breaking, our effort in
+education must be to make something that will last, and for this we must
+often sacrifice present success in consideration of the future, we must
+not want to see results. A small finished building is a more sightly
+object than one which is only beginning to rise above its foundations,
+yet we should choose that our educational work should be like the second
+rather than the first, even though it has reached "the ugly stage,"
+though it has its disappointments and troubles before it, with its daily
+risks and the uncertainty of ultimate success. But it is a truer work,
+and a better introduction to the realities of life.
+
+A "finished education" is an illusion or else a lasting disappointment;
+the very word implies a condition of mind which is opposed to any
+further development, a condition of self-satisfaction. What then shall
+we call a well-educated girl, whom we consider ready for the
+opportunities and responsibilities of her new life? An equal degree of
+fitness cannot be expected from all, the difference between those who
+have ten talents and those who have only two will always be felt. Those
+who have less will be well educated if they have acquired spirit enough
+not to be discontented or disheartened at feeling that their resources
+are small; if we have been able to inspire them with hope and plodding
+patience it will be a great thing, for this unconquerable spirit of
+perseverance does not fail in the end, it attains to something worthy of
+all honour, it gives us people of trust whose character is equal to
+their responsibilities, and that is no little thing in any position of
+life; and, if to this steadiness of will is added a contented mind, it
+will always be superior to its circumstances and will not cease to
+develop in the line of its best qualities.
+
+It is not these who disappoint--in fact they often give more than was
+expected of them. It is those of great promise who are more often
+disappointing in failing to realize what they might do with their richer
+endowments; they fail in strength of will.
+
+Now if we want a girl to grow to the best that a woman ought to be it is
+in two things that we must establish her fundamentally--quiet of mind and
+firmness of will. Quiet of mind equally removed from stagnation and from
+excitement. In stagnation her mind is open to the seven evil spirits who
+came into the house that was empty and swept; under excitement it is
+carried to extremes in any direction which occupies its attention at the
+time. The best minds of women are quiet, intuitive, and full of
+intellectual sympathies. They are not in general made for initiation and
+creation, but initiation and creation lean upon them for understanding
+and support. And their support must be moral as well as mental, for this
+they need firmness of will. Support cannot be given to others without an
+inward support which does not fail towards itself in critical moments.
+The great victories of women have been won by this inward support, this
+firmness and perseverance of will based upon faith. The will of a woman
+is strong, not in the measure of what it manifests without, as of what
+it reserves within, that is to say in the moderation of its own
+impulsiveness and emotional tendency, in the self-discipline of
+perseverance, the subordination of personal interest to the good of
+whatever depends upon it for support. It is great in self-devotion, and
+in this is found its only lasting independence.
+
+To give much and ask little in personal return is independence of the
+highest kind. But faith alone can make it possible. The Catholic Faith
+gives that particular orientation of mind which is independent of this
+world, knowing the account which it must give to God. To some it is duty
+and the reign of conscience, to others it is detachment and the reign of
+the love of God, the joyful flight of the soul towards heavenly things.
+The particular name matters little, it has a centre of gravity. "As
+everlasting foundations upon a solid rock, so the commandments of God in
+the heart of a holy woman." [1--Ecclus. XXVI. 24.]
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX I.
+
+EXTRACT FROM "THE BLESSED SACRAMENT"
+BY FATHER FABER.
+
+BOOK III. SEC. VII.
+
+Let us put aside the curtain of vindicative fire, and see what this pain
+of loss is like; I say, what it is like, for it fortunately surpasses
+human imagination to conceive its dire reality. Suppose that we could
+see the huge planets and the ponderous stars whirling their terrific
+masses with awful, and if it might be so, clamorous velocity, and
+thundering through the fields of unresisting space with furious gigantic
+momentum, such as the mighty avalanche most feebly figures, and thus
+describing with chafing eccentricities and frightful deflections, their
+mighty centre-seeking and centre-flying circles, we should behold in the
+nakedness of its tremendous operations the Divine law of gravitation.
+Thus in like manner should we see the true relations between God and
+ourselves, the true meaning and worth of His beneficent presence, if we
+could behold a lost soul at the moment of its final and judicial
+reprobation, a few moments after its separation from the body and in all
+the strength of its disembodied vigour and the fierceness of its penal
+immortality.
+
+No beast of the jungle, no chimera of heathen imagination, could be so
+appalling. No sooner is the impassable bar placed between God and itself
+than what theologians call the creature's radical love of the Creator
+breaks out in a perfect tempest of undying efforts. It seeks its centre
+and it cannot reach it. It bounds up towards God, and is dashed down
+again. It thrusts and beats against the granite walls of its prison with
+such incredible force, that the planet must be strong indeed whose
+equilibrium is not disturbed by the weight of that spiritual violence.
+Yet the great law of gravitation is stronger still, and the planet
+swings smoothly through its beautiful ether. Nothing can madden the
+reason of the disembodied soul, else the view of the desirableness of
+God and the inefficacious attractions of the glorious Divinity would do
+so.
+
+Up and down its burning cage the many-facultied and mightily
+intelligenced spirit wastes its excruciating immortality in varying and
+ever varying still, always beginning and monotonously completing, like a
+caged beast upon its iron tether, a threefold movement, which is not
+three movements successively, but one triple movement all at once. In
+rage it would fain get at God to seize Him, dethrone Him, murder Him,
+and destroy Him; in agony it would fain suffocate its own interior
+thirst for God, which parches and burns it with all the frantic horrors
+of a perfectly self-possessed frenzy; and in fury it would fain break
+its tight fetters of gnawing fire which pin down its radical love of the
+beautiful Sovereign Good, and drag it ever back with cruel wrench from
+its desperate propension to its uncreated Centre. In the mingling of
+these three efforts it lives its life of endless horrors. Portentous as
+is the vehemence with which it shoots forth its imprecations against
+God, they fall faint and harmless, far short of His tranquil,
+song-surrounded throne.
+
+Pour views of its own hideous state revolve around the lost soul, like
+the pictures of some ghastly show. One while it sees the million times
+ten million genera and species of pains of sense which meet and form a
+loathsome union with this vast central pain of loss. Another while all
+the multitude of graces, the countless kind providences, which it has
+wasted pass before it, and generate that undying worm of remorse of
+which Our Saviour speaks. Then comes a keen but joyless view, a
+calculation, but only a bankrupt's calculation, of the possibility of
+gains for ever forfeited, of all the grandeur and ocean-like vastness of
+the bliss which it has lost. Last of all comes before it the immensity
+of God, to it so unconsoling and so unprofitable; it is not a picture,
+it is only a formless shadow, yet it knows instinctively that it is God.
+With a cry that should be heard creation through, it rushes upon Him,
+and it knocks itself, spirit as it is, against material terrors. It
+clasps the shadow of God, and, lo! it embraces keen flames. It runs up
+to Him but it has encountered only fearful demons. It leaps the length
+of its chain after Him, but it has only dashed into an affrighting crowd
+of lost and cursed souls. Thus is it ever writhing under the sense of
+being its own executioner. Thus there is not an hour of our summer
+sunshine, not a moment of our sweet starlight, not a vibration of our
+moonlit groves, not an undulation of odorous air from our flowerbeds,
+not a pulse of delicious sound from music or song to us, but that
+hapless unpitiable soul is ever falling sick afresh of the overwhelming
+sense that all around it is eternal.
+
+EXTRACT FROM "THE CREATOR AND THE CREATURE."
+BY FATHER FABER.
+
+BOOK II. CH. V.
+
+Yet the heavenly joys of the illuminated understanding far transcend the
+thrills of the glorified senses. The contemplation of heavenly beauty
+and of heavenly truth must indeed be beyond all our earthly standards of
+comparison. The clearness and instantaneousness of all the mental
+processes, the complete exclusion of error, the unbroken serenity of the
+vision, the facility of embracing whole worlds and systems in one calm,
+searching, exhausting glance, the Divine character and utter holiness of
+all the truths presented to the view--these are broken words which serve
+at least to show what we may even 'now indistinctly covet in that bright
+abode of everlasting bliss. Intelligent intercourse with the angelic
+choirs, and the incessant transmission of the Divine splendours through
+them to our minds, cannot be thought of without our perceiving that the
+keen pleasures and deep sensibilities of the intellectual world on earth
+are but poor, thin, unsubstantial shadows of the exulting immortal life
+of our glorified minds above.
+
+The very expansion of the faculties of the soul, and the probable
+disclosure in it of many new faculties which have no object of exercise
+in this land of exile, are in themselves pleasures which we can hardly
+picture to ourselves. To be rescued from all narrowness, and for ever;
+to possess at all times a perfect consciousness of our whole undying
+selves, and to possess and retain that self-consciousness in the bright
+light of God; to feel the supernatural corroborations of the light of
+glory, securing to us powers of contemplation such as the highest
+mystical theology can only faintly and feebly imitate; to expatiate in
+God, delivered from the monotony of human things; to be securely poised
+in the highest flights of our immense capacities, without any sense of
+weariness, or any chance of a reaction; who can think out for himself
+the realities of a life like this?
+
+Yet what is all this compared with one hour, one of earth's short hours,
+of the magnificences of celestial love? Oh to turn our whole souls upon
+God, and souls thus expanded and thus glorified; to have our affections
+multiplied and magnified a thousandfold, and then girded up and
+strengthened by immortality to bear the beauty of God to be unveiled
+before us; and even so strengthened, to be rapt by it into a sublime
+amazement which has no similitude on earth; to be carried away by the
+inebriating torrents of love, and yet be firm in the most steadfast
+adoration; to have passionate desire, yet without tumult or disturbance;
+to have the most bewildering intensity along with an unearthly calmness;
+to lose ourselves in God, and then find ourselves there more our own
+than ever; to love rapturously and to be loved again still more
+rapturously, and then for our love to grow more rapturous still, and
+again the return of our love to be still outstripping what we gave, and
+then for us to love even yet more and more and more rapturously, and
+again, and again, and again to have it so returned, and still the great
+waters of God's love to flow over us and overwhelm us until the
+vehemence of our impassioned peace and the daring vigour of our yearning
+adoration reach beyond the sight of our most venturous imagining; what
+is all this but for our souls to live a life of the most intelligent
+entrancing ecstasy, and yet not be shivered by the fiery heat? There
+have been times on earth when we have caught our own hearts loving God,
+and there was a flash of light, and then a tear, and after that we lay
+down to rest. O happy that we were! Worlds could not purchase from us
+even the memory of those moments. And yet when we think of heaven, we
+may own that we know not yet what manner of thing it is to love the Lord
+Our God.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX II
+
+_From a Pastoral Letter of His Eminence Cardinal Bourne, Archbishop of
+Westminster, written when Bishop of Southwark. Quinquagesima Sunday,_
+1901.
+
+...Every age has its own difficulties and dangers. At the present day we
+are exposed to temptations which at the beginning of the last century
+were of comparatively small account. It will be so always. Every new
+development of human activity, every invention of human ingenuity, is
+meant by God to serve to His honour, and to the good of His creatures.
+We must accept them all gratefully as the results of the intelligence
+which He has been pleased to bestow upon us. At the same time the
+experience of every age teaches us that the weakness and perversity of
+many wrest to evil purposes these gifts, which in the Divine intention
+should serve only for good. It is against the perverted use of two of
+God's gifts that we would very earnestly warn you to-day.
+
+During the last century the power that men have of conveying their
+thoughts to others has been multiplied incredibly by the facility of the
+printed word. Thoughts uttered in speech or sermon were given but to a
+few hundreds who came within the reach of the human voice. Even when
+they were communicated to manuscript they came to the knowledge of very
+few. What a complete change has now been wrought. In the shortest space
+of time men's ideas are conveyed all over the world, and they may become
+at once a power for good or for evil in every place, and millions who
+have never seen or heard him whose thoughts they read, are brought to
+some extent under his influence.
+
+Again, at the present day all men read, more or less. The number of
+those who are unable to do so is rapidly diminishing, and a man who
+cannot read will soon be practically unknown. As a matter of fact men
+read a great deal, and they are very largely influenced by what they
+read.
+
+Thus the multiplicity of printed matter, and the widespread power of
+reading have created a situation fraught with immense possibilities for
+good, but no less exposed to distinct occasions of evil and of sin. It
+is to such occasions of sin, dear children in Jesus Christ, that we
+desire to direct your attention this Lent.
+
+Every gift of God brings with it responsibility on our part in the use
+that we make of it. The supreme gift of intelligence and free-will are
+powers to enable us to love and serve God, but we are able to use them
+to dishonour and outrage Him. So with all the other faculties that flow
+from these two great gifts. Beading and books have brought many souls
+nearer to their Creator. Many souls, on the other hand, have been ruined
+eternally by the books which they have read. It is dearly, therefore, of
+importance to us to know how to use wisely these gifts that we possess.
+
+The Holy Catholic Church, the Guardian of God's Truth, and the
+unflinching upholder of the moral law, has been always alive to her duty
+in this matter, and from the earliest times has claimed and exercised
+the right of pointing out to her children books that are dangerous to
+faith or virtue. This is one of the duties of bishops, and, in a most
+special manner, of the Sacred Congregation of the Index. And, though at
+the present day, owing to the decay of religious belief, this authority
+cannot be exercised in the same way as of old, it is on that very
+account all the more necessary for us to bear well in mind, and to carry
+out fully in practice, the great unchanging principles on which the
+legislation of the Church in this matter has been ever based.
+
+You are bound, dear children in Jesus Christ, to guard yourselves
+against all those things which may be a source of danger to your faith
+or purity of heart. You have no right to tamper with the one or the
+other. Therefore, in the first place, it is the duty of Catholics to
+abstain from reading all such books as are written directly with the
+object of attacking the Christian Faith, or undermining the foundations
+of morality. If men of learning and position are called upon to read
+such works in order to refute them, they must do so with the fear of God
+before their eyes. They must fortify themselves by prayer and spiritual
+reading, even as men protect themselves from contagion, where they have
+to enter a poisonous atmosphere. Mere curiosity, still less the desire
+to pass as well informed in every newest theory, will not suffice to
+justify us in exposing ourselves to so grave a risk.
+
+Again, there are many books, especially works of fiction, in which false
+principles are often indirectly conveyed, and by which the imagination
+may be dangerously excited. With regard to such reading, it is very hard
+to give one definite rule, for its effect on different characters varies
+so much. A book most dangerous to one may be almost without harm to
+another, on account of the latter's want of vivid imagination. Again, a
+book full of danger to the youth or girl may be absolutely without
+effect on one of maturer years. The one and only rule is to be
+absolutely loyal and true to our conscience, and if the voice of
+conscience is not sufficiently distinct, to seek guidance and advice
+from those upon whom we can rely, and above all, from the director of
+our souls. If we take up a book, and we find that, without foolish
+scruple, it is raising doubts in our mind or exciting our imagination in
+perilous directions, then we must be brave enough to close it, and not
+open it again. If our weakness is such that we cannot resist temptation,
+which unforeseen may come upon us, then it is our duty not to read any
+book the character of which is quite unknown to us. If any such book is
+a source of temptation to us, we must shun it, if we wish to do our duty
+to God. If our reading makes us discontented with the lot in life which
+Divine Providence has assigned to us, if it leads us to neglect or do
+ill the duties of our position, if we find that our trust in God is
+lessening and our love of this world growing, in all these cases we must
+examine ourselves with the greatest care, and banish from ourselves any
+book which is having these evil effects upon us.
+
+Lastly there is an immense amount of literature, mostly of an ephemeral
+character, which almost of necessity enters very largely into our lives
+at the present day. We cannot characterize it as wholly bad, though its
+influence is not entirely good, but it is hopeless to attempt to
+counteract what is harmful in it by any direct means. The newspapers and
+magazines of the hour are often without apparent harm, and yet very
+often their arguments are based on principles which are unsound, and
+their spirit is frankly worldly, and entirely opposed to the teaching of
+Jesus Christ and of the Gospel. Still more when the Catholic Church and
+the Holy See are in question, we know full well, and the most recent
+experience has proved it, that they are often consciously or
+unconsciously untruthful. Even when their misrepresentations have been
+exposed, in spite of the boasted fairness of our country, we know that
+we must not always expect a withdrawal of false news, still less
+adequate apology. Constant reading of this character cannot but weaken
+the Catholic sense and instinct, and engender in their place a worldly
+and critical spirit most harmful in every way, unless we take means to
+counteract it. What are these means? A place must be found in your
+lives, dear children in Jesus Christ, for reading of a distinctly
+Catholic character. You must endeavour to know the actual life and
+doings of the Catholic Church at home and abroad by the reading of
+Catholic periodical literature. You must have at hand books of
+instruction in the Catholic Faith, for at least occasional reading, so
+as to keep alive in your minds the full teaching of the Church. You must
+give due place to strictly spiritual reading, such as the "Holy
+Gospels," "The Following of Christ," "The Introduction to a Devout Life"
+by St. Francis of Sales, and the lives of the Saints, which are now
+published in every form and at every price. It is not your duty to
+abstain from reading all the current literature of the day, but it is
+your duty to nourish your Catholic mental life by purely Catholic
+literature. The more you read of secular works, the more urgent is your
+duty to give a sufficient place to those also, which will directly serve
+you in doing your duty to God and in saving your soul. Assuredly one of
+the most pressing duties at the present day is to recognize fully our
+personal and individual responsibility in this matter of reading, and to
+examine our conscience closely to see how we are acquitting ourselves of
+it.
+
+Before we leave this subject, we wish to ask all those among you dear
+children in Jesus Christ, who, whether as fathers and mothers, or as
+members of religious institutes, or masters and mistresses in schools,
+are charged with the education of the young, to do all in your power to
+train those committed to you to a wise and full understanding of this
+matter of reading, and to a realization of its enormous power for good
+and harm, and, therefore, to a sense of the extreme responsibility
+attaching to it. Make them understand that, while all are able to read,
+all things are not to be read by all; that this power, like every power,
+may be abused, and that we have to learn how to use it with due
+restraint. While they are with you and gladly subject to your influence,
+train their judgment and their taste in reading, so that they may know
+what is good and true, and know how to turn from what is evil and false.
+Such a trained and cultivated judgment is the best protection that you
+can bestow upon them. Some dangers must be overcome by flight, but there
+are far more, especially at the present day, which must be faced, and
+then overcome. It is part of your great vocation to prepare and equip
+these children to be brave and to conquer in this fight. Gradually,
+therefore, accustom them to the dangers they may meet in reading. Train
+their judgment, strengthen their wills, make them loyal to conscience,
+and then, trusting in God's grace, give them to their work in life.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX.
+
+Abbesses, the great, 224.
+Accent and pronunciation, 154.
+Adolescence, impressionability of children in, 173.
+Aesthetics, 68; principles of, 71-2; teaching of, 187.
+Agnesi, Maria Gaetana, 222.
+Aids to study, 103-4.
+A Kempls on self-seeking, 197.
+America: educational experiments in, 84; text-books in, 180.
+American view on character, 22.
+  --expressive phrases, 128,155.
+Ampere, Catholic scientist, 115.
+Amusements and lessons, 100.
+Animals, care of, in education of children, 125.
+Answers, irrelevancy in girls', 74.
+Aquinas, St. Thomas, 72.
+Architecture, Gothic, inferences from, 189.
+Arnold, Matthew, quoted, 48.
+Art, character and, 186-7; Christian, 188, 189, 197; for children,
+   191-2; contrasts in works of, 189-90; in education of girls, 72, 187;
+   French art, 187; history of, 188-9; study of, 190-1; aims of study in
+   early education, 185, 196.
+Assenting mind, the, 25.
+Assentors, great, 26.
+Athletic craze, the, 111.
+  --girl, the, 219.
+Atmosphere in education, 321-2.
+Audience, English and German, contrasted, 193.
+"Aurora Leigh," 216.
+Average person, the, 64-6.
+
+"Babylonian Captivity," the. 165.
+Bacon, "Of Goodnesse," 45.
+Balder, the story of, 170.
+Barbarism, selfishness and, 199.
+Basilicas, the Christian, 19-20.
+Basket-ball for girls, 110.
+Bassi, Laura, 222.
+Beale, Dorothea, cited, 94.
+Bedford College, 218.
+Benedictine monks, cited, 92-8.
+Boarding schools, 76; young children in, 78.
+Boniface VIII, 177.
+Books, attitude of child towards, 36; wealth of children's literature in
+  England, 144-5
+  --reaction against mere lessons from, 80, 119-20.
+  --Sacred, jewels of prayer and devotion in, IS.
+  --to avoid, 148.
+Botany, 122-3.
+British oulturs, characteristics of, 139.
+Browning, E. B., cited, 216.
+  --R., quoted, 76; "An incident of the French camp," cited, 136.
+
+Calvinism, 4, 26.
+Candour, charm of, in children, 130.
+Carlyle, cited, 153.
+Catch-words, abuse of, 133.
+Catherine, St., of Siena, 223.
+Catholic--
+  Art, 189, 197.
+  Atmosphere, effect on manners, 201.
+  Body, at play, 111; and religious education, 1.
+  Characteristics: belong to graver side of human race, 112,
+  Child, the, characteristics of, 29, 30;  source of courage in, 9-10;
+   in Protestant surroundings, 24; prerogative of, 9, 30.
+  Children, and relationship with Jeaus and His Mother, 8; and religion,
+   16-18; under influence of Sacraments, 29.
+  Church, ideals for man and woman in, 118, 225.
+  Citizenship, 39.
+  Disabilities, Newman quoted, 112-3.
+  Education, 220, 225, 230; and character, 39; and history, 116.
+  Faith, gives particular orientation of mind, 232.
+  Family life, 89, 93.
+  Girls, and work for the Church, 89; and Church music, 193.
+  Historical hold on the past, 152.
+  Literature, 240.
+  Men of science, 116.
+  Mental life, 242.
+  Mind: training of the, 197; and history, 165.
+  Patriotism, 39.
+  Peasantry, 211.
+  Philosophy, 60-76; value of, in education, 61.
+  Schools: manners in, 201; sodalities in, 78.
+  Secrets of strength, 99.
+  Teachers, 100; and truth in history, 178.
+  Text-books, need of, 180.
+  Women, duty and privilege of, 112.
+Catholics and--
+  Equality of education, 118; higher education, 220; duty In ing, 240;
+   historical teaching, 176; Latin, 163; taste in art, 194
+  --disabilities of, Newman quoted, 112-8.
+Celts of N. Europe, types of character among, 97.
+Certificates as aids to study, 1084.
+Character, 21-3; essentials of, 40-1; evolution of, 60,179-3; study of,
+   22, 29, 34-9; training of, 22, 29-34, 38-42, 46, 49-51, 58, 148, 210,
+   221, 225-6, 230; means of training 42-4; types of, 26-9, 37.
+  --influence of art on, 186.
+  --in the teacher, 38, 46-59.
+  --manners and, 209.
+  --religion and, 6-7, 29.
+  --the strength of great women, 228.
+  --value of, appreciated by children, 56-8, 171.
+Characters, modern, 26, 83; cardinal points in study of children's,
+   34-7.
+Characteristic cadence in speaking, 54. Characteristics, of the age, 39;
+   of British culture, 130; of English style, 129-30; of girls' work,
+   218.
+Charges against the Church, 179.
+Chaucer, 127.
+Cheltenham College, 94, 218.
+Child, attitude of, towards books, 36.
+  --martyrs, 10.
+  --study, 35, 57.
+  --vocabulary of an "only," 132.
+  --Wordsworth's "model child," 32-3.
+  _See also_ Catholic Child.
+Childhood, friendships formed in, 11.
+  --impressionability of, 173.
+Childishness in piety, 10.
+Childlike spirit of Catholic child, 29.
+Children, 30.
+  --books for, 144-6; attitude to books, 36.
+  --characteristics of, 36, 66, 56, 82-3, 109-10, 123; candour, 180;
+   habits of mind, 126; sensitive to influences, 46; as critics, 136;
+   like _real people_, 56-6; dislike compromise, 175.
+  --delicate, 9, 50, 84, 86.
+  --development of, 82; mental development, 140-1, 169-73.
+  --eccentric ways in, 84.
+  --groups observable among, 23, 26-8, 87, 62,125.
+  --and lessons; a simple life essential, 100; do not know how to learn,
+  101; answers, 102.
+  --letters of, 188-9.
+  --and love of nature, 124,126.
+  --no orphans within the Church, 80.
+  --and playtime solitude, 108-9. souls of, 200.
+  --training of, 32-3.
+Chivalry: age of, 202; religious spirit of, 165.
+Choleric temperament, the, 26.
+Church, the--
+  Abuses in, exaggerated, 179.
+  Ceremonial of, 205-6.
+  Characterised as the Great Master who educates us all, 434; as the
+   Guardian of Truth, 239; the Teacher of all nations, 58-9, 99.
+  Example of, as teacher, 43; influence on Catholic taachers, 99-100.
+  in France, 165.
+  and history, 165.
+  Ideals for man and woman in, 118, 225.
+  Music of, 193-4.
+  Needlework for, 89.
+  the pioneers of, 92.
+  as a teacher of manners, 200-3, 205.
+  testimony to, from Non-Catholic sources, 59, 178.
+Classes, advantages of large, 97.
+Classical studies, 151-2
+Classics, English, for the young, 145.
+"Clever" children, the so-called, 125.
+Colonial life, 92.
+Common sense, 65.
+Communion, First, 29.
+Composition, oral, 138; written, 137, 139-42.
+Concentric method in teaching, 167.
+Confirmation, 29.
+Contentment, 90.
+Contrasts, method of, in teaching of art, 189.
+Control and "handling" in training children, 200.
+Controversies. _See_ Educational Controversies.
+Conventionality, 198-9.
+Conventions, code of, 199.
+Conversation, 132-7; of girls, 182-4; principles in, 137.
+Cooking, 90, 121. Correction, value of, 42. Cosmology, 68.
+Countrymen and nature, 124-5.
+Crimean War and women's work, 219.
+Criticism and correction, 42-3; administered by the Church, 44.
+  --evils of merely destructive, 183; reading lesson as an exercise in,
+   136; of essays, 142.
+Critics, gravity of children as, 136.
+Cross-roads in a girl's life, 140.
+Cruelty, 199.
+Crusades, ideals of the, 165.
+Curiosity concerning evil, 14; evil of curiosity in reading, 149.
+
+Dalgairns, Fr., cited, 12.
+Damoiseaux, in days of chivalry, 203
+Dancing, 110-11.
+Dante, "Paradiso," quoted, 60.
+Death, right thoughts of, 7.
+De Bonald, cited, 73.
+De Ghantal, St. Jane F., quoted, 76.
+De Gramont, Marquise, quoted, 41.
+Degrees, different significance of, for man and woman, 220-1.
+Democratic age, 5, 207.
+Democracy in the nursery, 208.
+De Ravignan, Pere, quoted, 105.
+Devotion: requirements of, 10; to our Lady, 205, 218. _And see_
+   Self-devotion.
+Devotions of Blessed Sacrament and Sacred  Heart entrusted  to women,
+   223.
+  --to the Saints, 10.
+Difficulties of mind, 61-6.
+Discipline and obedience, 42.
+Dogmatism in teaching, 53.
+Domestic occupations, 81, 85-92, 93, 121.
+Doubts and difficulties as to faith, 14.
+Dressmaking, 88.
+Drudgery, need of, 96, 98.
+Duty and endurance, 96.
+
+Eccentricity, 83-5.
+Educated, a well-educated girl, 231.
+Education--
+  Aims in, 88, 89, 159, 230-1.
+  Board of, 80-1, 95, 119, 120, 121.
+  and character, 21, 231.
+  Demands of girls', 77.
+  A "finished," 230-1.
+  Higher Education of women, 214-28.
+  Home education, 77, 96, 97, 155.
+  Intermediate, 87,116.
+  Intellectual and practical, contrasted, 91.
+  Last years of, 213.
+  and lesson books, 80.
+  Life the test of, 230.
+  and material requirements of life, 86.
+  Middle class, and practical work, 81.
+  Mistakes in English, 119-21.
+  the opportunity of the teacher, 229,
+  Practical, 81, 91; practical aspect of, 122.
+  Problems in, 76 _et seq_.
+  Religious, 1-20.
+  and religious orders, 58-9.
+  State control in, 217.
+  System of 1870, 34, 120.
+  "Ugly stage" in, 230.
+  of women, changes in, 215.
+  of young children, 78-9, 96-7.
+Educational advantages of personal work, 88.
+Educational controversies, 1, 99, 116, 118, 151, 218.
+  --experiments in America, 34.
+  --pressure levels original thought, 184.
+Educators, qualities in great, 99; fundamental principles of, 99, 156.
+  --of early childhood, types of, 31-2.
+Elementary schools, 97.
+Elizabeth, the two Saints, 224.
+Emerson on manners, 198.
+Encouragement, need of, 50.
+English characteristics, 180, 137, 216-7.
+  --language, 128, 150; study of, 127-49; mathod in study, 131;
+   characteristics of style, 129-30; American influences on, 127-8;
+   traces of Elizabethan, in America, 128; new words in, 129; children's
+   English, 129-31. _And see_ Composition, Conversation, Literature,
+   Reading.
+  --martyrs, 172.
+  --portraits in Berlin, 129-30.
+Essay writing, 138-42.
+Ethics, 68, 70, 71, 73.
+European history, 165, 166.
+Eustoohium, St., 224.
+Examination programme, a professional danger, 61.
+Example, power of, 38, 46.
+Excitement, evil of, 100, 231.
+_Exempt_ persons, 86.
+
+Faber, Father, on hell and heaven, 8, 233-7.
+Fairness, children look for, 56.
+Faith, and art, 189-90, 194.
+  --Catholic, things which come with, 39.
+  --child's soul hungry for, 200.
+  --children as confessors of, 10.
+  --dangers to, 11-14, 178, 240.
+  --difficulties and doubts as to, 14-15.
+  --mysteries in, 2, 15.
+  --philosophy, a help and support to, 61, 72.
+  --the Propagation of the, 228.
+  --responsibility with regard to, 16-17.
+  --right thoughts of, 10.
+  --thoughts of, inspiring life, 6, 98, 104.
+Family life, Catholic, 39, 93.
+Fathers and mothers, symbols of God's love, 3.
+Faults contrary to spirit of childhood, 50.
+Feltre, Vittorino da, 99.
+Fighting instinct in child, 109.
+First aid, 89.
+Fitch, Sir J., "Lessons on Teaching," cited 169.
+Fitness, sense of, 19.
+Flowers and children, 109, 128, 125-6.
+Four last things, right thoughts of, 7-8.
+France, literature in, 161.
+Francis of Sales, St., cited, 12,17, 26; on care of the Church, 44;
+   works of, 162 _n_., 242.
+Frauenbund, 219.
+Freemason, Jewish, in Rome, 11.
+French: art, 187; language, study of, 163, 150, 169-60; litarature
+   160-1; mind, bent of, 160; Revolution, 202.
+Friend, the influence of a, 42.
+Friendship and character forming, 42, 43.
+Friendships, as indications of character, 86; a safeguard against
+   morbid, 51; with the saints, 11.
+
+Gairdner's "Lollardy and the Reformation" cited, 179.
+Games, value of organized, 78, 107-8, 110.
+Gardens for children, 125.
+  --in a new country, 126.
+Genesis, Book of, 115.
+Geography, 122.
+German, language, study of, 153-4, 169-60.
+  --musical audience, 193.
+Girl students at universities, 217-8, 226.
+Girls' and higher moral education, 226-7.
+  --answers, irrelevancy in, 74.
+  --views of life at age of 18, 214; mental outlook at 16, 141.
+  --work, characteristics of, 218.
+Girton, 218.
+"Giving way," 85.
+God, child's soul near to, 126.
+  --duty to, 1, 218, 241.
+  --Fatherhood of, 3, 6.
+  --on conveying right thought of, to children, 1-8.
+  --truths concerning existence of, 72.
+God's care for us, 44.
+  --priest, Art, 182.
+Golliwogg, the, 105-6.
+Gothic architecture, 189.
+Governess, a modern, 77.
+Grammar, 67.
+Gramophone in language teaching, 156.
+Greek history, 169.
+  --tragedies, 184.
+Gregory XVI and De Bonald, 73.
+Grown-up life, on anticipated instruction in, 94.
+
+Habit of work, 40, 98.
+Habits, 21, 22.
+Handicrafts, teaching of, 81.
+"Handling " in training in manners, 200-2.
+Handy member of family, the, 83.
+Hearing of lessons, 101.
+Hedley, Bp., quoted, 43.
+Hell and heaven, 8, 238-7.
+Hidden lives, 227-8.
+Higher education of women, 214-8; atmosphere for, non-existent 221, 226;
+   and Catholic influence, 225; false aims in, 226; and realities of
+   life, 226.
+  --life, the, 228.
+Historical teaching to Catholics, 176.
+History, 164; position in curriculum, 166-7; value in education, 181.
+  --European, centres round the Church, 165-7.
+  --study, and the examination syllabus, 166, 168.
+  --teaching: and periods in development of children, 170-6; aims in
+   teaching, 172; method, 102, 167-9, 180-1; concentric method, 167;
+   truth in teaching, 178; requirements in the teacher, 176-9.
+  --text-books, defects of, 168.
+Hockey, 110.
+Holy family, the, 98.
+  --Roman Empire, 165.
+Home education, 77, 96, 97, 155.
+  --happiness dependent on manners, 208.
+Hooliganism, 199-200.
+
+Imagination, 189-40.
+Impressionism in conduct, 70.
+Independence, 40, 92, 207, 232.
+Influence. _See_ Example.
+Insincerity, 47-8; in teaching, 14,178.
+Inspectors on teaching by nuns, 59.
+Investitures, struggle concerning, 166.
+Irish Intermediate education, 87, 116.
+Isabella the Catholic, 224.
+Italian humanism, 25.
+  --language, study of, 153, 159.
+  --question, 166.
+
+Jansenism, spirit of, 4.
+Jesus Christ, right views of, 8-9.
+Joan of Arc, Blessed, 223.
+Johnson, Lionel, quoted, xiii, 229.
+Judgment, right thoughts of, 7-8.
+
+Keble, J., quoted, 1.
+Kingdom of woman, 224.
+Knighthood, training for, 202-3
+Knowledge: at first hand, 123; before action, 31; love of, and influence
+   of teacher, 99-100.
+
+Laboratory science, 120-1.
+Language. _See_ English.
+Languages, modern, place and value in education, 150-1,156-8; social and
+   commercial values of, 157-8; evil of superficial knowledge of, 158;
+   attitude towards study of, 153, 154; choice of, 159-61;
+   pronunciation, 154; methods in study, 155-7;  self-instruction
+   courses, 156; translation, 161-3. Latin, 161-3; grammar, 82.
+  --races, temperaments among, 27. Learning by heart, 135.
+  --of lessons, 100-2.
+Leo XIII, 17, 63, 74.
+Lesson books and education, 80, 81, 119.
+Lessons and play, 83,95-6,100.
+  --from history, 176.
+  --hearing of, 102; learning of, 100-2.
+Letter-writing, 138-9.
+Lir, children of, 170.
+Literature, 142-6; wealth of children's books, 144-5.
+Logic, 67, 68-9, 73; has no place in English religious system, 24.
+Lowell, J. Russell, quoted, 150.
+Loyalty and patriotism, 170.
+
+Mackey, Canon, cited, 162.
+"Mangnall's Questions," 215.
+Mannerisms in teachers, 54-6.
+Manners, 198-203, 210, 213; codes of, 205-6; derivation of word, 202;
+   acquiring of, wearisome, 204-5, 210; neglect of, 205-6; effect of
+   neglect to teach, 199-200; fundamentals of, 208-4; high and low
+   watermarks in, 208-9; standard of, 203, 212; training in, 204-5,
+   207-9; example not enough, 210; personal element in training in, 212;
+   mistakes in training in, 208; truthfulness in, 211-2.
+Manners and--
+  Class of life, 211; home ties, 207-8; religion, 200-2, 205-6, 211;
+   service, 211, 213; the life of to-day, 207.
+Manual work, value of, in education, 82-3, 85, 86; a corrective to
+   eccentricity, 83; domestic occupations, 85-93.
+Mathematics, 114, 116-8, 121.
+Matilda of Tuscany, 223.
+Mechanical toys, 106-7.
+Melancholic temperament, the, 26, 28.
+Mercier, Cardinal, quoted, 69, 71, 72.
+Metaphysics, 68.
+Middle-class education, 81.
+Mind, quiet of, 221, 231-2; habits of mind in children, 125; development
+   of, 140-1, 169-73.
+Minds: the best of, in women, 231-2; 5; classes of, 61-6.
+Modernism, 13.
+Montalembert, quoted, 88.
+More, Blessed Thomas, 26, 99.
+_Mouvement Feministe_, 219.
+Music, place of, in education, 191-4; aims of study in, 193;
+   intellectual aspect of, 192.
+Myths, value in teaching history, 170.
+
+Nagging, in teaching manners, 204.
+Natural Science, 67, 114-6, 118-22.
+  --Theology, 68, 72-3.
+Nature Study, 114, 122-6; aims of, 122; books, 123-4.
+Neoker de Saussure, Mme., quoted, 47-8, 54.
+Needlework, 87-9, 121.
+Nervs fatigue, 84.
+"Nerves," women subject to, 70.
+Newman, Cardinal, quoted, 112, 164.
+Newnham College, 218.
+Nightingale, Florence, 219.
+Non-Catholic parents, and schools held by Religious, 59.
+  --schools, 151, 166.
+Nonconformist type of character, 23-6.
+Nonentities, good, 38-40.
+North of England Ladies' "Council of Education," 218.
+Nuremberg, Pirkheimer family of, 222.
+Nurse, the English and the Irish, 31-2.
+Nursery shrine, the, 105, 106.
+Nursing, 89, 218-9.
+
+Obedience, training in, 43.
+Observation of children, 35.
+  --training in, 81, 119-26.
+Oral composition, 138; oral lessons, 74, 180.
+Organization and development, 80, 87.
+Our Lady, right thoughts of, 8-10.
+Oxford and Cambridge Degrees, 220.
+  --girl students at, 218.
+
+Painting and drawing, 191-6.
+Parents: and teaching about God, 3; and teaching of manners, 208.
+Pasteur, 115.
+Pater, Walter, cited, 130.
+Patience, value of, 40, 212; mental and moral, in women, 163.
+Patriotism, 39, 170-1.
+Paula, St., 224.
+Peasantry, Catholic, simplicity of manners in, 211.
+Penance, Sacrament of, 29.
+People of great promise, 231.
+Personal work, educational advantages of, 88.
+Piety, childishness in, 10.
+Philosophy, 60-75; method of study in, 66-74; relation to revealed
+   truth, 73.
+Phonetics, 155.
+Physical exercise, 82.
+Pico de Mirandola, 26.
+Pirkheimer family of Nuremberg, 222.
+Piscopia, Lucretia, 222.
+Pius VII, 177.
+Pius X, life of labour of, 99.
+Plants, care of, for chilflren, 126.
+Play, 104-5, 111, 112; and character, 86, 105, 107; of the nursery,
+   105-6; and organized games, 107-8, 110; and solitude, 108-10; toys
+   and playthings, 107; hoops, 110.
+Poetry, 102; place of, 192; for children's recitation, 186.
+Popes, the: in history, 177, 178, 179; of Renaissance, 26; temporal
+   power of, 165; life of labour of, 98-9.
+Popularity in matters of taste, 188-4.
+Portraits, criticism of English, in Berlin, 129-30.
+Pose, temptation to, 41; of being erratic, 70.
+Practical education, 81.
+Pressure in education, 97, 116-7.
+Prize distribution, system of, 103-4.
+Professional dangers in teaching, 61-7.
+Pronunciation and accent, 154.
+Proportion in studies, 191.
+Protestant Reformation, effect on manners, 201.
+  --school, Catholic child in, 24.
+Protestantism, 25; and French Revolution, 202.
+Psychology, 68, 70-1, 73.
+Pugin's "Book of Contrasts," cited, 189.
+Punishment, 99.
+
+"Quack" methods in learning languages, 155.
+Queen Victoria, 153, 198.
+Queen's College, London, opening of, 216.
+Querdeo, Y Le, quoted, 21.
+Querulous tone, in the nursery, 53.
+Question and answer lessons, 75, 180.
+Questioning, manner of, 102; effect of too many questions, 36.
+Quiet of mind, 221, 231-2.
+
+Reading:  Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster on, 147, 238-43; and
+   character, 36; for girls, 146, 148; without commentary, 145; value
+   of, in education, 182-42.
+  --aloud, 134, 136, 146; the best introduction to literature, 143.
+Realities of life, 81, 87 _et seq_., 226.
+Recitation, 134-6; gesture in, 136.
+Recreation. _See_ Play.
+Reformation, the Protestant, 201.
+Religion, the teaching of, 1-20; aims in, 11, 17-18; periods in, 8.
+Religious houses, foundresses of, 224; and manual labour, 98.
+  --minds, difficulties of, 63.
+  --orders, development of, 165.
+  --teaching: qualifications for, 4; and manners, 201.
+Renaissance, the, 25; Popes of the, 26.
+Rewards, 99, 103, 104.
+Reynolds, Sir Joshua, cited, 130.
+Roman Catholics, disabilities of, 112-3.
+  --history, 169.
+Rossettl, D. G., quoted, 182.
+
+Sacraments, the, as modifying temperamant, 29.
+Sacred books, jewels of prayer in, 15.
+Saints, devotions to the, 10-11.
+Savonarola, 26. Schiller, quoted, 214. Scholastic philosophy, 74.
+School: and home education, contrasted, 77-8; and preparation for life,
+   76, 80, 91 _et seq_,; organization and individual development, 80.
+  --education, drawbacks to, 78-9.
+  --life, impressiveness of, 76-7.
+Sohurman, Clara von, 222.
+Science, experimental, 120-2, 151; misuse of the term, 118-9.
+Scolding, 43, 60.
+Scottish schoolmasters, old race of, 97-8.
+Scriptural knowledge examinations, 16.
+Scripture, devotional study of, 15.
+Self-consciousness in children, 35.
+Self-devotion, 31, 219, 224, 228.
+Self-help, 89-90.
+Selfishness, 84,199-200.
+Servant question, 91.
+Servants, manners in the best, 211.
+Shrines, nursery, 105, 106.
+Sidney, Sir Philip, 127.
+Silliness, driven out by manual work, 86.
+Simple life, the, 40, 92; for children, 100.
+Sin and evil, right thoughts of, 6-7.
+Sincerity, 41, 47-9.
+Sodalities in Catholic schools, 78.
+Solitude, value of, to children, 108-9.
+South African War, reaction in education since, 119-20.
+Spanish, study of, 154, 159.
+Spiritualism, 13.
+Sporting instinct in children, 42.
+Stagnation of mind, 231.
+Story-telling, 170; in teaching history, 180-1.
+Strength, Catholic secrets of, 99.
+Study, aids to, 103.
+Suffrage movement, women's, 219.
+
+Taste, 182, 196-7; and character, 182-4; independent, 184; self-taught,
+   184, 185; trained, 185.
+"Teacher Study," from child's point of view, 58.
+Teacher's manners, 54-6.
+Teachers, a large measure of freedom for, 34,
+Teaching, a great stewardship, 3-4, 80; reality in, 122; qualifications
+   in religious, 4.
+  --orders of Eeligious, 58-9.
+"Teddy Bears," 105, 106.
+Temperament, 21-9; difficulties of, 32; division and classification of,
+   23, 26-9; in religion, 28-5.
+Tennyson, quoted, 216.
+Teutons, types of character among, 97.
+Text-books, 180.
+Theatres and children, 184.
+Theology: not for girls, 18; parallel with a great Basilica, 19-20;
+   Natural, 72.
+Theresa, Saint, 224.
+Thompson, Francis, quoted, 95, 127.
+Time, value of, 40.
+Townsman, the, in the country, 124-5.
+Toys, 107.
+Translation from foreign languages, 161-3.
+Transvaal, a garden party in the, 126.
+Truthfulness, 47, 211.
+
+Ullathorne, Archbishop, quoted, 34.
+Ulysses, the wanderings of, 170.
+University life for girls, 217-8, 226.
+  --locals, 87, 168.
+Urquhart, D., quoted, 208. Utilitarians in social life, 186.
+
+Victoria, Queen, 153,198.
+Vigilance, 42.
+Vitality in teacher, 49.
+Vocabulary of children, 132.
+Vocation, choice of a, 141.
+Voice, influence of tone of, 63; cadences in, 68-4; production, 184-0.
+Vulgarity, 211.
+
+Wassmann, Catholic scientist, 116.
+Ways of learning lessons, 101-2.
+Westminster, Cardinal Archbishop of, on reading, 147, 188-48.
+Will of a woman,  strength of, 282.
+Wisdom, the beginning of, 19.
+Wollstonecraft, Mary, cited, 216. Woman, the kingdom of, 224; the
+   mission of, 288.
+Women, higher education of, 214-28; changes In education of, 316.
+  --and manners, 203.
+  --direction of influence of, 224.
+  --mental characteristics of the best, 232.
+  --tendency of, to impressionism in conduct, 70.
+  --the really great, 223;  conspicuous in learning, 222; conspicuous in
+   religion, 224.
+Women's suffrage movement, 219.
+Wordsworth, quoted, 32, 114, 135. Work, habit of, 40, 98.
+
+Young ladies, education for, 215.
+
+Aberdeen: The University Press
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EDUCATION OF CATHOLIC GIRLS***
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