Part 38

The child is now sent to kindergarten and for a year is truly taught. The process is not a filling of brain, but an encouragement of the deeper powers, their organisation and direction. At the end of the year, the child is sent into the first grade, where the barbaric process of competitive education and brain-cramming is carried on as sincerely as it was in Fröbel's time.... A kindergarten teacher told me in that low intense way, which speaks of many tears exhausted:

"I dare not look into the first-grade rooms. We have done so differently by them through the first year. When the little ones leave us, they are wide open and helpless. They are taken from a warm bath to a cold blast. Their little faces change in a few days. Do you know the ones that stand the change best? The commoner children, the clever and hard-headed children. The little dreamers--the sensitive ones--are hurt and altered for the worse. Their manner changes to me, when I see them outside. You do not know how we have suffered."

Some of the greatest teachers in America to-day are the kindergarten teachers; not that they are especially chosen for quality, but because they have touched reality in teaching. They have seen, even in the very little ones, that response which is deeper than brain. If the great ideal that is carried out through their first year were continued through seven years, the generation thus directed would meet life with serenity and without greed. They would make over the world into a finer place to be.

* * * * *

I wonder if I may dare to say it once more?... It came this way in Chapel just a few days ago. There was a pencil in my hand, and something of man's ideal performance here below appeared more than ever clearly. I am putting down the picture, much as it came then, for the straightest way to write anything is as you would tell it:

"... This pencil is a man, any man. Above is spirit; below matter. The world of spirit is finished. The plan is already thought out there, to the utmost detail. This above is the Breath, the Conception, the Emanation, the Dream, the Universal Energy--philosophers have called it by many names, but they mean the God-Idea wrought of necessity in Spirit, since God is spirit.

"The world of matter below is not finished. Certain parts are completed, but not all, and the assembly of parts is just begun. The material world is lost in the making of parts, forgetting that the plan is one--that the parts of matter must be assembled into a whole--that a replica must be made in matter of the one great spiritual Conception. So long as men are identified with parts, there is dissonance from the shops of earth, a pulling apart instead of together.

"The many are almost ready to grasp the great unifying conception. This is the next step for the human family as a whole; this the present planetary brooding. Much we have suffered from identifying ourselves with parts. Rivalries, boundaries, jealousies, wars--all have to do with the making of parts. Beauty, harmony, peace and brotherhood have to do with the assembly of parts into one. That which is good for the many is good for the one; and that which is good for the one is good for the many--the instant we leave the part and conceive the whole.

"All the high-range voices for hundreds of years have proclaimed that the plan is one. The world to-day is roused with the Unifiers--voices of men in every city and plain crying out that we are all one in aim and meaning, that the instruments are tuned, the orchestra ready, the music in place--but the players, alas, lost as yet in frenzy for their own little parts. The baton of the leader is lifted, but they do not hear. In their self-promulgation they have not yet turned as one to the conductor's eyes. The dissonance is at its highest, yet the hour has struck for the lift of harmony.

"Look again at the pencil that stands for man. Above is the spiritual plan all finished. Every invention, every song and poem and heroism to be, is there. One by one for ages, the aspiring intelligence of man has touched and taken down the parts of this spiritual plan, forced the parts into matter, making his dream come true. Thus have come into the world our treasures. We preserve them--every gift from a spiritual source. Often we preserve them (until they are fully understood) against our will. The mere matter-models break down and are lost, for matter changes endlessly until it is immortalised, as our bodies must be through the refinement of spiritual union.

"Our pioneers, by suffering and labour, even by fasting and prayer, have made themselves fine enough to contact some little part of that finished plan. They have lowered it into matter for us to see--step by step--the song into notes, the poem into words, the angel into paint or stone; and the saints have touched dreams of great service, bringing down the pictures of the dream somehow in matter--and their own bodies often to martyrdom....

"Below the pencil is the world of matter, at this hour of its highest disorganisation. The very terror and chaos of the world is an inspiration to every unifying voice. Here below are already many parts; above, the plan as a whole and the missing parts. Man stands between--the first creature to realise that there is an above, as well as a below. All creatures beneath man are driven; they look down. Man alone has looked up; man has raised himself erect and may take what he will from the spiritual source to electrify his progress. Man becomes significant the moment he realises that the plan is not for self, but for the race; not for the part, but for the whole.

"I have written it in many different ways, and told it in many more. There are endless analogies. Thousands before me have written and sung and told the same. It is the great Story. We see it working out even in these wrecking days. The plan is already in the souls of men.... And what has this to do with education?

"Everything. The brain sees but the part. The development of brain will never bring to child or man the conception of the spiritual plan. There is a man to come for every missing part. Each man, as he develops, is more and more a specialist. These missing parts shall be taken down from spirit and put into matter by men whose intrinsic gifts are developed to contact them. Thus have come the great poems and inventions so far, the splendid sacrifices of men, and all renunciation for the healing of the nations.

"I would first find the work for the child. The finer the child the easier this part of the task. Then I would develop the child to turn to a spiritual source for his inspiration--his expectation to a spiritual source for every good and perfect thing. The dream is there; the other half of the circle is to produce the dream in matter.

* * * * *

"Education is thus religion--but not the man-idea of religion. It has nothing to do with creeds or cults, with affirmations or observances. It has to do with establishing connection with the sources of power, and bringing the energy down into the performance of constructive work in matter. Religion isn't a feeling of piety or devoutness; it is action. Spirituality is intellect inspired.

"The mountain is broad at the base only. There are many paths upward. These paths are far apart only at the base. On the shoulder of the mountain we hear the voices of those who have taken the other paths. Still higher, we meet. The Apex is a point; the plan is one.

"I would teach the young mind to find his own voice, his own part, his own message. It is there above him. True training is the refinement, the preparing of a surface fine enough to receive his part. That is the inspiration. The out-breath--the right hand of the process--is action, making a model in matter of the thing received.

"All training that does not encourage the child to look into the Unseen for his power, not only holds, but draws him to the commonness of the herds.

"... Many men to-day can believe in angels who cannot believe in fairies; but the child who sees the changes of light in the lowliest shadows, whose fancy is filled with little figures of the conservers and colourers of nature, shall in good time see the angels--and one of that host shall come forward (which is more important and to the point) bringing a task for the child to do.

"I say to the children here: 'I do not see the things you do, and in that I am your inferior. They shut the doors upon me when I was little, not meaning to, but the world always does that. That fineness of seeing went out from my eyes, but it is so good a thing that I do not want you to lose it. And always I am ready to listen, when you tell me what you have seen.'"

THE END

BY WILL LEVINGTON COMFORT

MIDSTREAM

... A hint from the first-year's recognition of a book that was made to remain in American literature:

Boston Transcript: If it be extravagance, let it be so, to say that Comfort's account of his childhood has seldom been rivaled in literature. It amounts to revelation. Really the only parallels that will suggest themselves in our letters are the great ones that occur in Huckleberry Finn.... This man Comfort's gamut is long and he has raced its full length. One wonders whether the interest, the skill, the general worth of it, the things it has to report of all life, as well as the one life, do not entitle Midstream to the very long life that is enjoyed only by the very best of books.

San Francisco Argonaut: Read the book. It is autobiography in its perfection. It shows more of the realities of the human being, more of god and devil in conflict, than any book of its kind.