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Abbott Jacob
Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young

The Intention good

The mother, forgetting the good intention which prompted the act, and thinking only of the inconvenience which it occasions her, administers at once a sharp rebuke. The cause of the trouble was, simply, that the child was not old enough to understand the laws of momentum and of oscillation that affect the condition of a fluid when subjected to movements more or less irregular. She has had no theoretical instruction on the subject, and is too young to have acquired the necessary knowledge practically, by experience or observation.

It is so with a very large portion of the accidents which befall children. They arise not from any evil design, nor even any thing that can properly be called carelessness, on their part, but simply from the immaturity of their knowledge in respect to the properties and qualities of the material objects with which they have to deal.

It is true that children may be, and often, doubtless, are, in fault for these accidents. The boy may have been warned by his father not to attempt to bore with his knife-blade, or the girl forbidden to attempt to carry the milk-pitcher. The fault, however, would be, even in these cases, in the disobedience, and not in the damage that accidentally resulted from it. And it would be far more reasonable and proper to reprove and punish the fault when no evil followed than when a damage was the result; for in the latter case the damage itself acts, ordinarily, as a more than sufficient punishment.

Misfortunes befalling Men

These cases are exactly analogous to a large class of accidents and calamities that happen among men. A ship-master sails from port at a time when there are causes existing in the condition of the atmosphere, and in the agencies in readiness to act upon it, that must certainly, in a few hours, result in a violent storm. He is consequently caught in the gale, and his topmasts and upper rigging are carried away. The owners do not censure him for the loss which they incur, if they are only assured that the meteorological knowledge at the captain's command at the time of leaving port was not such as to give him warning of the danger; and provided, also, that his knowledge was as advanced as could reasonably be expected from the opportunities which he had enjoyed. But we are very much inclined to hold children responsible for as much knowledge of the sources of danger around them as we ourselves, with all our experience, have been able to acquire, and are accustomed to condemn and sometimes even to punish them, for want of this knowledge.

Indeed, in many cases, both with children and with men, the means of knowledge in respect to the danger may be fully within reach, and yet the situation may be so novel, and the combination of circumstances so peculiar, that the connection between the causes and the possible evil effects does not occur to the minds of the persons engaged. An accident which has just occurred at the time of this present writing will illustrate this. A company of workmen constructing a tunnel for a railway, when they had reached the distance of some miles from the entrance, prepared a number of charges for blasting the rock, and accidentally laid the wires connected with the powder in too close proximity to the temporary railway-track already laid in the tunnel. The charges were intended to be fired from an electric battery provided for the purpose; but a thunder-cloud came up, and the electric force from it was conveyed by the rails into the tunnel and exploded the charges, and several men were killed. No one was inclined to censure the unfortunate men for carelessness in not guarding against a contingency so utterly unforeseen by them, though it is plain that, as is often said to children in precisely analogous cases, they might have known.

Children's Studies.—Spelling

There is, perhaps, no department of the management of children in which they incur more undeserved censure, and even punishment, and are treated with so little consideration for faults arising solely from the immaturity of their minds, than in the direction of what may be called school studies. Few people have any proper appreciation of the enormous difficulties which a child has to encounter in learning to read and spell. How many parents become discouraged, and manifest their discouragement and dissatisfaction to the child in reproving and complaints, at what they consider his slow progress in learning to spell—forgetting that in the English language there are in common, every-day use eight or ten thousand words, almost all of which are to be learned separately, by a bare and cheerless toil of committing to memory, with comparatively little definite help from the sound. We have ourselves become so accustomed to seeing the word bear, for example, when denoting the animal, spelt b e a r, that we are very prone to imagine that there is something naturally appropriate in those letters and in that collocation of them, to represent that sound when used to denote that idea. But what is there in the nature and power of the letters to aid the child in perceiving—or, when told, in remembering—whether, when referring to the animal, he is to write bear, or bare, or bair, or bayr, or bere, as in where. So with the word you. It seems to us the most natural thing in the world to spell it y o u. And when the little pupil, judging by the sound, writes it y u, we mortify him by our ridicule, as if he had done something in itself absurd. But how is he to know, except by the hardest, most meaningless, and distasteful toil of the memory, whether he is to write you, or yu, or yoo, or ewe, or yew, or yue, as in flue, or even yo as in do, and to determine when and in what cases respectively he is to use those different forms?

The truth is, that each elementary sound that enters into the composition of words is represented in our language by so many different combinations of letters, in different cases, that the child has very little clue from the sound of a syllable to guide him in the spelling of it. We ourselves, from long habit, have become so accustomed to what we call the right spelling—which, of course, means nothing more than the customary one—that we are apt to imagine, as has already been said, that there is some natural fitness in it; and a mode of representing the same sound, which in one case seems natural and proper, in another appears ludicrous and absurd. We smile to see laugh spelled larf, just as we should to see scarf spelled scaugh, or scalf, as in half; and we forget that this perception of apparent incongruity is entirely the result of long habit in us, and has no natural foundation, and that children can not be sensible of it, or have any idea of it whatever. They learn, in learning to talk, what sound serves as the name by which the drops of water that they find upon the grass in the morning is denoted, but they can have no clue whatever to guide them in determining which of the various modes by which precisely that sound is represented in different words, as dew, do, due, du, doo, and dou, is to be employed in this case, and they become involved in hopeless perplexity if they attempt to imagine "how it ought to be spelled;" and we think them stupid because they can not extricate themselves from the difficulty on our calling upon them to "think!" No doubt there is a reason for the particular mode of spelling each particular word in the language—but that reason is hidden in the past history of the word and in facts connected with its origin and derivation from some barbarous or dead language, and is as utterly beyond the reach of each generation of spellers as if there were no such reasons in existence. There can not be the slightest help in any way from the exercise of the thinking or the reasoning powers.

It is true that the variety of the modes by which a given sound may be represented is not so great in all words as it is in these examples, though with respect to a vast number of the words in common use the above are fair specimens. They were not specially selected, but were taken almost at random. And there are very few words in the language the sound of which might not be represented by several different modes.

Take, for example, the three last words of the last sentence, which, as the words were written without any thought of using them for this purpose, may be considered, perhaps, as a fair specimen of words taken actually at random. The sound of the word several might be expressed in perfect accordance with the usage of English spelling, as ceveral, severul, sevaral, cevural, and in many other different modes. The combinations dipherant, diferunt, dyfferent, diffurunt, and many others, would as well represent the sound of the second word as the usual mode. And so with modes, which, according to the analogy of the language, might as well be expressed by moads, mowdes, moades, mohdes, or even mhodes, as in Rhodes.

An exceptionally precise speaker might doubtless make some slight difference in the sounds indicated by the different modes of representing the same syllable as given above; but to the ordinary appreciation of childhood the distinction in sound between such combinations, for example, as a n t in constant and e n t in different would not be perceptible.

Now, when we consider the obvious fact that the child has to learn mechanically, without any principles whatever to guide him in discovering which, out of the many different forms, equally probable, judging simply from analogy, by which the sound of the word is to be expressed, is the right one; and considering how small a portion of his time each day is or can be devoted to this work, and that the number of words in common use, all of which he is expected to know how to spell correctly by the time that he is twelve or fifteen years of age, is probably ten or twelve thousand (there are in Webster's dictionary considerably over a hundred thousand); when we take these considerations into account, it would seem that a parent, on finding that a letter written by his daughter, twelve or fourteen years of age, has all but three or four words spelled right, ought to be pleased and satisfied, and to express his satisfaction for the encouragement of the learner, instead of appearing to think only of the few words that are wrong, and disheartening and discouraging the child by attempts to make her ashamed of her spelling.

The case is substantially the same with the enormous difficulties to be encountered in learning to read and to write. The names of the letters, as the child pronounces them individually, give very little clue to the sound that is to be given to the word formed by them. Thus, the letters h i t, as the child pronounces them individually—aitch, eye, tee—would naturally spell to him some such word as achite, not hit at all. And as for the labor and difficulty of writing, a mother who is impatient at the slow progress of her children in the attainment of the art would be aided very much in obtaining a just idea of the difficulties which they experience by sitting upon a chair and at a table both much too high for her, and trying to copy Chinese characters by means of a hair-pencil, and with her left hand—the work to be closely inspected every day by a stern Chinaman of whom she stands in awe, and all the minutest deviations from the copy pointed out to her attention with an air of dissatisfaction and reproval!

Effect of Ridicule

There is, perhaps, no one cause which exerts a greater influence in chilling the interest that children naturally feel in the acquisition of knowledge, than the depression and discouragement which result from having their mistakes and errors—for a large portion of which they are in no sense to blame—made subjects of censure or ridicule. The effect is still more decided in the case of girls than in that of boys, the gentler sex being naturally so much more sensitive. I have found in many cases, especially in respect to girls who are far enough advanced to have had a tolerably full experience of the usual influences of schools, that the fear of making mistakes, and of being "thought stupid," has had more effect in hindering and retarding progress, by repressing the natural ardor of the pupil, and destroying all alacrity and courage in the efforts to advance, than all other causes combined.

Stupidity

How ungenerous, and even cruel, it is to reproach or ridicule a child for stupidity, is evident when we reflect that any supposed inferiority in his mental organization can not, by any possibility, be his fault. The question what degree of natural intelligence he shall be endowed with, in comparison with other children, is determined, not by himself, but by his Creator, and depends, probably, upon conditions of organization in his cerebral system as much beyond his control as any thing abnormal in the features of his face, or blindness, or deafness, or any other physical disadvantage. The child who shows any indications of inferiority to others in any of these respects should be the object of his parent's or his teacher's special tenderness and care. If he is near-sighted, give him, at school, a seat as convenient as possible to the blackboard or the map. If he is hard of hearing, place him near the teacher; and for reasons precisely analogous, if you suspect him to be of inferior capacity, help him gently and tenderly in every possible way. Do every thing in your power to encourage him, and to conceal his deficiencies both from others and from himself, so far as these objects can be attained consistently with the general good of the family or of the school.

And, at all events, let those who have in any way the charge of children keep the distinction well defined in their minds between the faults which result from evil intentions, or deliberate and willful neglect of known duty, and those which, whatever the inconvenience they may occasion, are in part or in whole the results of mental or physical immaturity. In all our dealings, whether with plants, or animals, or with the human soul, we ought, in our training, to act very gently in respect to all that pertains to the embryo condition.

CHAPTER XIV. THE ACTIVITY OF CHILDREN

In order rightly to understand the true nature of that extraordinary activity which is so noticeable in all children that are in a state of health, so as to be able to deal with it on the right principles and in a proper manner, it is necessary to turn our attention somewhat carefully to certain scientific truths in respect to the nature and action of force in general which are now abundantly established, and which throw great light on the true character of that peculiar form of it which is so characteristic of childhood, and is, indeed, so abundantly developed by the vital functions of almost all young animals. One of the fundamental principles of this system of scientific truth is that which is called the persistence of force.

The Persistence of Force

By the persistence of force is meant the principle—one now established with so much certainty as to command the assent of every thinking man who examines the subject—that in the ordinary course of nature no force is either ever originated or ever destroyed, but only changed in form. In other words, that all existing forces are but the continuation or prolongation of other forces preceding them, either of the same or other forms, but precisely equivalent in amount; and that no force can terminate its action in any other way than by being transmuted into some other force, either of the same or of some other form; but still, again, precisely equivalent in amount.

It was formerly believed that a force might under certain circumstances be originated—created, as it were—and hence the attempts to contrive machines for perpetual motion—that is, machines for the production of force. This idea is now wholly renounced by all well-informed men as utterly impossible in the nature of things. All that human mechanism can do is to provide modes for using advantageously a force previously existing, without the possibility of either increasing or diminishing it. No existing force can be destroyed. The only changes possible are changes of direction, changes in the relation of intensity to quantity, and changes of form.

The cases in which a force is apparently increased or diminished, as well as those in which it seems to disappear, are all found, on examination, to be illusive. For example, the apparent increase of a man's power by the use of a lever is really no increase at all. It is true that, by pressing upon the outer arm with his own weight, he can cause the much greater weight of the stone to rise; but then it will rise only a very little way in comparison with the distance through which his own weight descends. His own weight must, in fact, descend through a distance as much greater than that by which the stone ascends, as the weight of the stone is greater than his weight. In other words, so far as the balance of the forces is concerned, the whole amount of the downward motion consists of the smaller weight descending through a greater distance, which will be equal to the whole amount of that of the larger one ascending through a smaller distance; and, to produce a preponderance, the whole amount of the downward force must be somewhat greater. Thus the lever only gathers or concentrates force, as it were, but does not at all increase it.

It is so with all the other contrivances for managing force for the accomplishment of particular purposes. None of them, increase the force, but only alter its form and character, with a view to its better adaptation to the purpose in view.

Nor can any force be extinguished. When a bullet strikes against a solid wall, the force of its movement, which seems to disappear, is not lost; it is converted into heat—the temperature of both the bullet and of that part of the wall on which it impinges being raised by the concussion. And it is found that the amount of the heat which is thus produced is always in exact proportion to the quantity of mechanical motion which is stopped; this quantity depending on the weight of the bullet, and on the velocity with which it was moving. And it has been ascertained, moreover, by the most careful, patient, and many times repeated experiments and calculations, that the quantity of this heat is exactly the same with that which, through the medium of steam, or by any other mode of applying it, may be made to produce the same quantity of mechanical motion that was extinguished in the bullet. Thus the force was not destroyed, but only converted into another form.

And if we should follow out the natural effects of this heat into which the motion of the bullet was transferred, we should find it rarefying the air around the place of concussion, and thus lifting the whole mass of the atmosphere above it, and producing currents of the nature of wind, and through these producing other effects, thus going on forever; the force changing its form, but neither increasing or diminishing its quantity through a series of changes without end.

The Arrest and temporary Reservation of Force

Now, although it is thus impossible that any force should be destroyed, or in any way cease to exist in one form without setting in action a precisely equal amount in some other form, it may, as it were, pass into a condition of restraint, and remain thus suspended and latent for an indefinite period—ready, however, to break into action again the moment that the restraint is removed. Thus a perfectly elastic spring may be bent by a certain force, and retained in the bent position a long time. But the moment that it is released it will unbend itself, exercising in so doing precisely the degree of force expended in bending it. In the same manner air may be compressed in an air-gun, and held thus, with the force, as it were, imprisoned, for any length of time, until at last, when the detent is released by the trigger, the elastic force comes into action, exercising in its action a power precisely the same as that with which it was compressed.

Force or power may be thus, as it were, stored up in a countless variety of ways, and reserved for future action; and, when finally released, the whole amount may be set free at once, so as to expend itself in a single impulse, as in case of the arrow or the bullet; or it may be partially restrained, so as to expend itself gradually, as in the case of a clock or watch. In either case the total amount expended will be precisely the same—namely, the exact equivalent of that which was placed in store.

Vegetable and Animal Life

There are a vast number of mechanical contrivances in use among men for thus putting force in store, as it were, and then using it more or less gradually, as may be required. And nature, moreover, does this on a scale so stupendous as to render all human contrivances for this purpose utterly insignificant in comparison. The great agent which nature employs in this work is vegetation. Indeed, it may truly be said that the great function of vegetable life, in all the infinitude of forms and characters which it assumes, is to receive and store up force derived from the emanations of the sun.

Animal life, on the other hand, exists and fulfills its functions by the expenditure of this force. Animals receive vegetable productions containing these reserves of force into their systems, which systems contain arrangements for liberating the force, and employing it for the purposes it is intended to subserve in the animal economy.

The manner in which these processes are performed is in general terms as follows: The vegetable absorbs from the earth and from the air substances existing in their natural condition—that is, united according to their strongest affinities. These substances are chiefly water, containing various mineral salts in solution, from the ground, and carbonic acid from the air. These substances, after undergoing certain changes in the vessels of the plant, are exposed to the influence of the rays of the sun in the leaves. By the power of these rays—including the calorific, the luminous, and the actinic—the natural affinities by which the above-mentioned substances were united are overcome, and they are formed into new combinations, in which they are united by very weak affinities. Of course, they have a strong tendency to break away from the new unions, and fall back into the old. But, by some mysterious and incomprehensible means, the sun has power to lock them, so to speak, in their new forms, so as to require a special condition of things for the releasing of them. Thus they form a reserve of force, which can be held in restraint until the conditions required for their release are realized.

The process can be illustrated more particularly by a single case. Water, one of the substances absorbed by plants, is composed of oxygen and hydrogen, which are united by an affinity of prodigious force. It is the same with carbon and oxygen, in a compound called carbonic acid, which is also one of the principal substances absorbed by plants from the air. Now the heat and other emanations from the sun, acting upon these substances in the leaves, forces the hydrogen and the carbon away from their strong bond of union with oxygen, and sets the oxygen free, and then combines the carbon and hydrogen into a sort of unwilling union with each other—a union from which they are always ready and eager to break away, that they may return to their union with the object of their former and much stronger attachment—namely, oxygen; though they are so locked, by some mysterious means, that they can not break away except when certain conditions necessary to their release are realized.

Hydrocarbons

The substances thus formed by a weak union of carbon with hydrogen are called hydrocarbons. They comprise nearly all the highly inflammable vegetable substances. Their being combustible means simply that they have a great disposition to resume their union with oxygen—combustion being nothing other than a more or less violent return of a substance to a union with oxygen or some other such substance, usually one from which it had formerly been separated by force—giving out again by its return, in the form of heat, the force by which the original separation had been effected.

A compound formed thus of substances united by very weak affinities, so that they are always ready to separate from each other and form new unions under the influence of stronger affinities, is said to be in a state of unstable equilibrium. It is the function of vegetable life to create these unstable combinations by means of the force derived from the sun; and the combinations, when formed, of course hold the force which formed them in reserve, ready to make itself manifest whenever it is released. Animals receive these substances into their systems in their food. A portion of them they retain, re-arranging the components in some cases so as to form new compounds, but still unstable. These they use in constructing the tissues of the animal system, and some they reserve for future use. As fast as they require the heat and the force which are stored in them they expend, them, thus recovering the force which was absorbed in the formation of them, and which now, on being released, re-appears in the three forms of animal heat, muscular motion, and cerebral or nervous energy.

There are other modes besides the processes of animal life by which the reserved force laid up by the vegetable process in these unstable compounds may be released. In many cases it releases itself under ordinary exposures to the oxygen of the atmosphere. A log of wood—which is composed chiefly of carbon and hydrogen in an unstable union—lying upon the ground will gradually decay, as we term it—that is, its elements will separate from each other, and form new unions with the elements of the surrounding air, thus returning to their normal condition. They give out, in so doing, a low degree of heat, which, being protracted through a course of years, makes up, in the end, the precise equivalent of that expended by the sun in forming the wood—that is, the power expended in the formation of the wood is all released in the dissolution of it.

This process may be greatly accelerated by heat. If a portion of the wood is raised in temperature to a certain point, the elements begin to combine with the oxygen near, with so much violence as to release the reserved power with great rapidity. And as this force re-appears in the form of heat, the next portions of the wood are at once raised to the right temperature to allow the process of reoxidation to go on rapidly with them. This is the process of combustion. Observations and experiments on decaying wood have been made, showing that the amount of heat developed by the combustion of a mass of wood, though much more intense for a time, is the same in amount as that which is set free by the slower process of re-oxidation by gradual decay; both being the equivalent of the amount absorbed by the leaves from the sun, in the process of deoxidizing the carbon and hydrogen when the wood was formed.

The force imprisoned in these unstable compounds may be held in reserve for an unlimited period, so long as all opportunity is denied them of returning the elements that compose them to their original combinations. Such a case occurs when large beds of vegetable substances are buried under layers of sediment which subsequently become stone, and thus shut the hydrocarbonaceous compounds beneath them from all access to oxygen. The beds of coal thus formed retain their reserved force for periods of immense duration; and when at length the material thus protected is brought to the surface, and made to give up its treasured power, it manifests its efficiency in driving machinery, propelling trains, heating furnaces, or diffusing warmth and comfort around the family fireside. In all these cases the heat and power developed from the coal is heat and power derived originally from the sun, and now set free, after having lain dormant thousands and perhaps millions of years.

This simple case of the formation of hydrocarbons from the elements furnished by carbonic acid and water is only adduced as an illustration of the general principle. The modes by which the power of the sun actually takes effect in the decomposition of stable compounds, and the formation of unstable ones from the elements thus obtained, are innumerable, and the processes as well as the combinations that result are extremely complicated. These processes include not only the first formation of the unstable compounds in the leaf, but also an endless series of modifications and re-arrangements which they subsequently undergo, as well in the other organs of the plant as in those of the animal when they are finally introduced into an animal system. In all, however, the general result is substantially the same—namely, the forcing of elements into unnatural combinations, so to speak, by the power of the sun acting through the instrumentality of vegetation, in order that they may subsequently, in the animal system, give out that power again by the effort they make to release themselves from the coercion imposed upon them, and to return to the natural unions in which they can find again stability and repose.

One of the chief elements employed in the formation of these weakly-combined substances is nitrogen—its compounds being designated as nitrogenous substances, and noted, as a class, for the facility with which they are decomposed. Nitrogen is, in fact, the great weak-holder of nature. Young students in chemistry, when they learn that nitrogen is distinguished by the weakness of its affinities for other elements, and its consequent great inertness as a chemical agent, are often astonished to find that its compounds—such as nitric acid, nitre, which gives its explosive character to gunpowder, nitro-glycerine, gun-cotton, and various other explosive substances which it helps to form—are among the most remarkable in nature for the violence and intensity of their action, and for the extent to which the principle of vitality avails itself of them as magazines of force, upon which to draw in the fulfillment of its various functions.