LETTER XV. CHILDREN.

One of the happiest days, and, perhaps, the most beautiful of life, is when the birth of a child opens the heart of the parent to emotions, as yet, unknown.[31] Yet what torments are prepared by this epoch! What painful anxiety, what agonies their sufferings excite! What terror, when we fear for their infant life! These alarms terminate not with their early age. The inquietude with which their parents watch over their destiny fills every period of their life to their last sigh.

The compensating satisfaction which they bring must be very vivid, since it counterbalances so many sufferings. In order to love them, we have no need to be convinced that they will respond to our cares, and one day repay them. If there be in the human heart one disinterested sentiment, it is parental love. Our tenderness for our children is independent of reflection. We love them because they are our children. Their existence makes a part of ours; or, rather, is more than ours. All that is either useful or pleasant to them, brings us a pure happiness, springing from their health, their gayety, their amusements.

The chief end which we ought to propose to ourselves, in rearing them, is to train and dispose them so that they may wisely enjoy that existence which is accorded them. Of all the happy influences which can be brought to bear upon their mind and manners, none is more[118] beneficial than the example of parental gentleness. The good Plutarch most eloquently advanced this doctrine in ancient time. Montaigne, Rousseau, M’Kenzie, and various writers of minor fame among the moderns, have reproduced his ideas, and, by their authority, have finally effected a happy revolution in education. I delight to trace the most important ideas thus reproduced by enlightened and noble minds in different ages. It is chiefly by persevering in the system of the influence of gentleness that we may expect an ultimate melioration in the human character and condition.

But scarcely has any such salutary change been effected, before minds, either superficial or soured, see only the inconveniences which accompany it; and, instead of evading or correcting them, would return to the point whence they started. We hear people regretting the decline of the severity of ancient education; and maintaining the wisdom of those contrarieties and vexations which children used to experience; ‘a fitting discipline of preparation,’ say they, ‘to prepare them for the sorrows of life.’ Would they, on the same principle, inflict bruises and contusions, to train them to the right endurance of those that carelessness or accident might bring? ‘It is an advantage,’ say they, ‘to put them to an apprenticeship of pain at the period when the sorrow it inflicts is light and transient.’ This mode of speaking, with many others of similar import, presents a combination of much error with some truth.

The sufferings of childhood seem to us trifling and easy to endure, because time has interposed distance between them and us; and we have no fear of ever meeting them again. It does not cease to be a fact,[119] that the child that passes a year under the discipline of the ferule of a severe master, is as unhappy as a man deprived a year of his liberty. The latter, in truth, has less reason to complain; since he ought to find, in the discipline of his reason, and his maturity and force of character, more powerful motives for patient endurance. Parents! Providence has placed the destiny of your children in your hands. When you thus sacrifice the present to an uncertain future, you ought to have strong proof that you will put at their disposal the means of indemnification. If the sacrifice of the present to the future were indispensable, I would not dissuade from it. But my conviction is, that the best means of preparing them for the future may be found in rendering them as happy as possible for the present. If it should be your severe trial to be deprived of them in their early days, you will, at least, have the consolation of being able to say, ‘I have rendered them happy during the short time they were confided to me.’ Strive then, by gentleness, guided by wisdom and authority, to cast the sunshine of enjoyment upon the necessary toils and studies of the morning of their existence.

It is the stern award of nature to bring them sorrows. Our task is to soothe them. I feel an interest when I see the child regret the trinket it has broken, or the bird it has reared. Nature in this way, gives them the first lessons of pain, and strengthens them to sustain the more bitter losses of maturer days. Let us prudently second the efforts of nature; and to console the weeping child, let us not attempt to change the course of these fugitive ideas, nor to efface the vexation by a pleasure. In unavoidable suffering let the dawning courage and reason[120] find strength for endurance. Let us first share the regrets, and gently bring the sufferer to feel the inutility of tears. Let us accustom him not to throw away his strength in useless efforts; and let us form his mind to bear without a murmur the yoke of necessity. These maxims, I am aware, are directly against the spirit of modern education, which is almost entirely directed towards the views of ambition.

But while I earnestly inculcate gentleness in parental discipline, I would not confound it with weakness. I disapprove that familiarity between parents and children which is unfavorable to subordination. Fashion is likely to introduce an injurious equality into this relation. I see the progress of this dangerous effeminacy with regret. The dress and expenditures which would formerly have supplied ten children, scarcely satisfy at present the caprices of one. This foolish complaisance of parents prepares, for the future husbands and wives, a task most difficult to fulfil. Let us not, by anticipating and preventing the wishes of children, teach them to be indolent in searching for their own pleasures. Their age is fertile in this species of invention. That they may be successful in seizing enjoyment, little more is requisite to be performed on our part than to break their chains.

There are two fruitful sources of torments for children. One is, what the present day denominates politeness. It is revolting to me to see children early trained to forego their delightful frankness and simplicity, and learning artificial manners. We wish them to become little personages; and we compel them to receive tiresome compliments, and to repeat insignificant formulas[121] of common-place flattery. In this way, politeness, destined to impart amenity to life, becomes a source of vexation and restraint. It would seem as if we thought it so important a matter to teach the usages of society, that they could never be known unless the study were commenced in infancy. Besides, do we flatter ourselves, that we shall be able to teach children the modes and the vocabulary of politeness, without initiating them, at the same time, in the rudiments of falsehood? They are compelled to see that we consider it a trifle. If we wish them to become flatterers and dishonest, I ask what more efficient method we could take?

Labor is the second source of their sufferings. I would by no means be understood to dissuade from the assiduous cultivation of habits of industry. You may enable children to remove mountains, if you will contrive to render their tasks a matter of amusement and interest. The extreme curiosity of children announces an instinctive desire for instruction. But instead of profiting by it, we adopt measures which tend to stifle it. We render their studies tiresome, and then say that the young naturally tire of study.

When the parent is sufficiently enlightened to rear his child himself, instead of plying him with rudimental books, dictionaries and restraint, let him impart the first instructions by familiar conversation. Ideas advanced in this way are accommodated to the comprehension of the pupil, by mutual good feeling rendered attractive, and brought directly within the embrace of his mind. This instruction leads him to observe, and accustoms him to compare, reflect and discriminate, offers the sciences under interesting associations, and inspires[122] a natural thirst for instruction. Of all results which education can produce, this is the most useful. A youth of fifteen, trained in this way, will come into possession of more truths, mixed with fewer errors, than much older persons reared in the common way. He will be distinguished by the early maturity of his reason, and by his eagerness to cultivate the sciences, which, instead of producing fatigue or disgust, will every day give birth to new ideas and new pleasures. I am nevertheless little surprised, that the scrupulous advocates of the existing routine should insist that such a method tends to form superficial thinkers. I can only say to these profound panegyrists of the present order of instruction, that the method which I recommend, was that of the Greeks.—Their philosophers taught while walking in the shade of the portico or of trees, and were ignorant of the art of rendering study tiresome, and not disposed to throw over it the benefits of constraint. Modern instructers ought, therefore, to find that they were shallow reasoners, and that their poets and artists could have produced only crude and unfinished efforts.[33]

Besides, this part of education is of trifling importance, compared with the paramount obligation to give the pupil robust health, pure morals, and an energetic mind. I deeply regret that the despotic empire of opinion is more powerful than paternal love. Instead of gravely teaching to your son the little arts of shining in the world, have the courage to say to him, ‘oblige those of thy kind whose sufferings thou canst lighten, and exhibit a constant and universal example of good morals. Form, every evening, projects necessary for enjoying a happy and useful succeeding day.’ Thus you will see[123] him useful, good and happy, if not great in the world’s estimation. You will behold him peacefully descending the current of time. In striking the balance with life, he will be able to say, I have known only those sufferings which no wisdom could evade, and no efforts repel. But such are the prejudices of the age, to give such counsels to a son requires rare and heroic courage.

Is not that filial ingratitude, of which parents so generally complain, the bitter fruit of their own training?—You fill their hearts with mercenary passions, and with measureless ambition. You break the tenderest ties, and send them to distant public schools. Your children, in turn, put your lessons to account, and abandon your importunate and declining age, if you depend on them, to mercenary hands. When they were young, you ridiculed them out of their innocent recklessness, and frankness, and want of worldly wisdom. You vaunted to them that ambition and those arts of rising, which, put in practice, have steeled their hearts against filial piety, as well as the other affections that belong not to calculation. Since the paramount object of your training was to teach them to shine, and make the most out of every body, you have at least a right to expect from their vanity, pompous funeral solemnities. I revere that indication of infinite wisdom, that has rendered the love of the parent more anxious and tender than that of the child. The intensity of the affections ought to be proportionate to the wants of the beings that excite them. But ingratitude is not in nature. Better training would have produced other manners. In rearing our children with more enlightened care, in inspiring them with moderate desires, in reducing their eagerness for brilliancy and distinction,[124] we shall render them happy, without stifling their natural filial sentiments; and we shall thus use the best means of training them to sustain and soothe our last moments, as we embellished their first days.