Herland
home they mean to have, or how many children; these planned, freely and
gaily with much happy chattering, of what they would do for the country
when they were grown.
It was the eager happiness of the children and young people which first
made me see the folly of that common notion of ours--that if life was
smooth and happy, people would not enjoy it.
As I studied these youngsters, vigorous, joyous, eager little creatures,
and their voracious appetite for life, it shook my previous ideas so
thoroughly that they have never been re-established. The steady level of
good health gave them all that natural stimulus we used to call “animal
spirits”--an odd contradiction in terms. They found themselves in an
immediate environment which was agreeable and interesting, and before
them stretched the years of learning and discovery, the fascinating,
endless process of education.
As I looked into these methods and compared them with our own, my
strange uncomfortable sense of race-humility grew apace.
Ellador could not understand my astonishment. She explained things
kindly and sweetly, but with some amazement that they needed explaining,
and with sudden questions as to how we did it that left me meeker than
ever.
I betook myself to Somel one day, carefully not taking Ellador. I did
not mind seeming foolish to Somel--she was used to it.
“I want a chapter of explanation,” I told her. “You know my stupidities
by heart, and I do not want to show them to Ellador--she thinks me so
wise!”
She smiled delightedly. “It is beautiful to see,” she told me, “this
new wonderful love between you. The whole country is interested, you
know--how can we help it!”
I had not thought of that. We say: “All the world loves a lover,” but
to have a couple of million people watching one’s courtship--and that a
difficult one--was rather embarrassing.
“Tell me about your theory of education,” I said. “Make it short and
easy. And, to show you what puzzles me, I’ll tell you that in our theory
great stress is laid on the forced exertion of the child’s mind; we
think it is good for him to overcome obstacles.”
“Of course it is,” she unexpectedly agreed. “All our children do
that--they love to.”
That puzzled me again. If they loved to do it, how could it be
educational?
“Our theory is this,” she went on carefully. “Here is a young human
being. The mind is as natural a thing as the body, a thing that grows,
a thing to use and enjoy. We seek to nourish, to stimulate, to exercise
the mind of a child as we do the body. There are the two main divisions
in education--you have those of course?--the things it is necessary to
know, and the things it is necessary to do.”
“To do? Mental exercises, you mean?”
“Yes. Our general plan is this: In the matter of feeding the mind,
of furnishing information, we use our best powers to meet the natural
appetite of a healthy young brain; not to overfeed it, to provide such
amount and variety of impressions as seem most welcome to each child.
That is the easiest part. The other division is in arranging a properly
graduated series of exercises which will best develop each mind; the
common faculties we all have, and most carefully, the especial faculties
some of us have. You do this also, do you not?”
“In a way,” I said rather lamely. “We have not so subtle and highly
developed a system as you, not approaching it; but tell me more. As
to the information--how do you manage? It appears that all of you know
pretty much everything--is that right?”
This she laughingly disclaimed. “By no means. We are, as you soon found
out, extremely limited in knowledge. I wish you could realize what a
ferment the country is in over the new things you have told us; the
passionate eagerness among thousands of us to go to your country and
learn--learn--learn! But what we do know is readily divisible into
common knowledge and special knowledge. The common knowledge we have
long since learned to feed into the minds of our little ones with no
waste of time or strength; the special knowledge is open to all, as
they desire it. Some of us specialize in one line only. But most take up
several--some for their regular work, some to grow with.”
“To grow with?”
“Yes. When one settles too close in one kind of work there is a tendency
to atrophy in the disused portions of the brain. We like to keep on
learning, always.”
“What do you study?”
“As much as we know of the different sciences. We have, within our
limits, a good deal of knowledge of anatomy, physiology, nutrition--all
that pertains to a full and beautiful personal life. We have our botany
and chemistry, and so on--very rudimentary, but interesting; our own
history, with its accumulating psychology.”
“You put psychology with history--not with personal life?”
“Of course. It is ours; it is among and between us, and it changes with
the succeeding and improving generations. We are at work, slowly and
carefully, developing our whole people along these lines. It is glorious
work--splendid! To see the thousands of babies improving, showing
stronger clearer minds, sweeter dispositions, higher capacities--don’t
you find it so in your country?”
This I evaded flatly. I remembered the cheerless claim that the human
mind was no better than in its earliest period of savagery, only better
informed--a statement I had never believed.
“We try most earnestly for two powers,” Somel continued. “The two that
seem to us basically necessary for all noble life: a clear, far-reaching
judgment, and a strong well-used will. We spend our best efforts, all
through childhood and youth, in developing these faculties, individual
judgment and will.”
“As part of your system of education, you mean?”
“Exactly. As the most valuable part. With the babies, as you may have
noticed, we first provide an environment which feeds the mind without
tiring it; all manner of simple and interesting things to do, as soon
as they are old enough to do them; physical properties, of course, come
first. But as early as possible, going very carefully, not to tax the
mind, we provide choices, simple choices, with very obvious causes and
consequences. You’ve noticed the games?”
I had. The children seemed always playing something; or else, sometimes,
engaged in peaceful researches of their own. I had wondered at first
when they went to school, but soon found that they never did--to their
knowledge. It was all education but no schooling.
“We have been working for some sixteen hundred years, devising better
and better games for children,” continued Somel.
I sat aghast. “Devising games?” I protested. “Making up new ones, you
mean?”
“Exactly,” she answered. “Don’t you?”
Then I remembered the kindergarten, and the “material” devised by
Signora Montessori, and guardedly replied: “To some extent.” But most
of our games, I told her, were very old--came down from child to child,
along the ages, from the remote past.
“And what is their effect?” she asked. “Do they develop the faculties
you wish to encourage?”
Again I remembered the claims made by the advocates of “sports,” and
again replied guardedly that that was, in part, the theory.
“But do the children _like_ it?” I asked. “Having things made up and
set before them that way? Don’t they want the old games?”
“You can see the children,” she answered. “Are yours more
contented--more interested--happier?”
Then I thought, as in truth I never had thought before, of the dull,
bored children I had seen, whining; “What can I do now?”; of the little
groups and gangs hanging about; of the value of some one strong spirit
who possessed initiative and would “start something”; of the children’s
parties and the onerous duties of the older people set to “amuse the
children”; also of that troubled ocean of misdirected activity we call
“mischief,” the foolish, destructive, sometimes evil things done by
unoccupied children.
“No,” said I grimly. “I don’t think they are.”
The Herland child was born not only into a world carefully prepared,
full of the most fascinating materials and opportunities to learn, but
into the society of plentiful numbers of teachers, teachers born and
trained, whose business it was to accompany the children along that, to
us, impossible thing--the royal road to learning.
There was no mystery in their methods. Being adapted to children it was
at least comprehensible to adults. I spent many days with the little
ones, sometimes with Ellador, sometimes without, and began to feel a
crushing pity for my own childhood, and for all others that I had known.
The houses and gardens planned for babies had in them nothing to
hurt--no stairs, no corners, no small loose objects to swallow, no
fire--just a babies’ paradise. They were taught, as rapidly as
feasible, to use and control their own bodies, and never did I see such
sure-footed, steady-handed, clear-headed little things. It was a joy
to watch a row of toddlers learning to walk, not only on a level floor,
but, a little later, on a sort of rubber rail raised an inch or two
above the soft turf or heavy rugs, and falling off with shrieks of
infant joy, to rush back to the end of the line and try again. Surely we
have noticed how children love to get up on something and walk along it!
But we have never thought to provide that simple and inexhaustible form
of amusement and physical education for the young.
Water they had, of course, and could swim even before they walked. If I
feared at first the effects of a too intensive system of culture, that
fear was dissipated by seeing the long sunny days of pure physical
merriment and natural sleep in which these heavenly babies passed their
first years. They never knew they were being educated. They did not
dream that in this association of hilarious experiment and achievement
they were laying the foundation for that close beautiful group feeling
into which they grew so firmly with the years. This was education for
citizenship.
CHAPTER 10.
Their Religions and Our Marriages
It took me a long time, as a man, a foreigner, and a species
of Christian--I was that as much as anything--to get any clear
understanding of the religion of Herland.
Its deification of motherhood was obvious enough; but there was far more
to it than that; or, at least, than my first interpretation of that.
I think it was only as I grew to love Ellador more than I believed
anyone could love anybody, as I grew faintly to appreciate her inner
attitude and state of mind, that I began to get some glimpses of this
faith of theirs.
When I asked her about it, she tried at first to tell me, and then,
seeing me flounder, asked for more information about ours. She soon
found that we had many, that they varied widely, but had some points
in common. A clear methodical luminous mind had my Ellador, not only
reasonable, but swiftly perceptive.
She made a sort of chart, superimposing the different religions as
I described them, with a pin run through them all, as it were; their
common basis being a Dominant Power or Powers, and some Special
Behavior, mostly taboos, to please or placate. There were some common
features in certain groups of religions, but the one always present was
this Power, and the things which must be done or not done because of
it. It was not hard to trace our human imagery of the Divine Force up
through successive stages of bloodthirsty, sensual, proud, and cruel
gods of early times to the conception of a Common Father with its
corollary of a Common Brotherhood.
This pleased her very much, and when I expatiated on the Omniscience,
Omnipotence, Omnipresence, and so on, of our God, and of the loving
kindness taught by his Son, she was much impressed.
The story of the Virgin birth naturally did not astonish her, but she