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PHYSICAL EDUCATION.

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importance to physical education, and begins his work with it. He was a champion of the hardening system, which has, no doubt, as Mr. H. Spencer puts it, hardened many children out of the world. Scanty clothing, thin boots with holes to admit wet, hard fare, and irregular meals, are now condemned by all our best authorities. In other particulars, where he seems more happy, Locke's suggestions have become established customs. We have got to believe in the use of cold water, though we should not think to appease the fears of mothers by quoting the example of Seneca. But there are two or three points in Locke's very practical directions which are still worth special attention. He urges that all clothes should be loose, and speaks as emphatically as every doctor has spoken since against the madness of 'strait lacing.' He rejoices that mothers cannot attempt any improvements in their children's shapes before birth; otherwise, says he, we should have no perfect children born. Do we not seem to hear the voice of Rousseau ?

Another point on which he is very emphatic is, that action of the bowels should be secured daily at the same hour by the force of habit.

The following quotation would have been thought folly only a few years ago. Now, it has a chance of a fair hearing. Have a great care of tampering that way [i.e. with apothecaries' medicines], lest, instead of preventing, you draw on diseases. Nor even upon every little indisposition is physic to be given, or the physician called to children, especially if he be a busy man that will presently fill their

windows with gallipots and their stomachs with drugs. It is safer to leave them wholly to Nature than to put them into the hands of one forward to tamper, or that thinks children are to be cured in ordinary distempers by anything but diet, or by a method very little distant from it; it seeming suitable both to my reason and experience, that the tender constitutions of children should have as little done to them as possible, and as the absolute necessity of the case requires.' Among many practical suggestions which he gives in this part of the book, the following shows that his hardening discipline did not proceed from want of sympathy with the little ones. Let children be very carefully aroused in the morning with the voice only, and let them have nothing but kind treatment before they are wide awake.'

*

Locke's own summing up of his recommendations concerning the body and health is- Plenty of open air, exercise, and sleep, plain diet, no wine or strong drink, and very little or no physic; not too warm and strait clothes, especially the head and feet kept cold, and the feet often used to cold water, and exposed to wet.'

'As the strength of the body lies chiefly in being able to endure hardships, so also does that of the mind, and the great principle and foundation of all virtue and worth is placed in this-that a man is able to deny himself his own desires, cross his own inclinations, and purely follow what reason directs as best, though the appetite leans the other way.'

* Locke is, however, only copying from Montaigne, who tells us that, in his childhood, his father had him awakened by music.

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Again, he says, 'He that has not mastery over his inclinations, he that knows not how to resist the importunity of present pleasure or pain, for the sake of what reason tells him is fit to be done, wants the true principle of virtue and industry, and is in danger of never being good for anything. This temper, therefore, so contrary to unguided Nature, is to be got betimes; and this habit, as the true foundation of future ability and happiness, is to be wrought into the mind, as early as may be, even from the first dawnings of any knowledge or apprehension in children, and so to be confirmed in them, by all the care and ways imaginable, by those who have the oversight of their education.' Here the philosopher seems to ground all virtue on Reason. Less intellectual people might be inclined to seek the ground of most virtue in the affections.

The practice of self-denial,' says Locke, 'is to be got and improved by custom-made easy and familiar by an early practice. The practice should be begun from their very cradles. Whenever the children craved what was not fit for them to have, they should not be permitted it because they were little and desired it. Nay, whatever they were importunate for, they should be sure, for that very reason, to be denied. younger they are, the less, I think, are their unruly and disorderly appetites to be complied with; and the less reason they have of their own, the more are they to be under the absolute power and restraint of those in whose hands they are. From which, I confess, it will follow, that none but discreet people should be about them.'

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'Be sure to establish the authority of a father as soon as the child is capable of submission, and can understand in whose power he is. If you would have him stand in awe of you, imprint it in his infancy, and as he approaches more to a man admit him nearer to your familiarity, so shall you have him your obedient subject (as is fit) whilst he is a child, and your affectionate friend when he is a man.' This passage advises a complete inversion of the ordinary mode, which is to fondle children when young, and to 'keep them in their proper place' by a more distant behaviour, and by the more rigorous exercise of authority, as they grow up. But is not the treatment which estranges the son from the father wrong in both cases? The difference of age puts only too great a gulf between them already. To make either the child or young man stand in awe of his father is not exactly the way to bridge this gulf over. This can only be done by the father's endeavouring to enter into the feelings of the son, and seeking his sympathy in return. As for establishing the parental authority, a consistent firmness will do this without the aid of the power derived from fear and awe.'

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But, whilst advising that whatsoever rigour is necessary should be the more used the younger children are,' Locke is very strong against great severity. The children must be taught self-denial; but, on the other side, if the mind be curbed and humbled too much in children, if their spirits be debased and humbled much by too strict a hand over them, they lose all their vigour and industry, and are in a worse state than [in the other extreme.] For extravagant young fellows that have liveliness and spirit come sometimes

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to be set right, and so make able and great men, but dejected minds, timorous and tame, and low spirits are hardly ever to be raised, and very seldom attain to anything.' 'Slavish discipline makes slavish temper, and so leads to hypocrisy; and where it is most successful, it breaks the mind, and then you have a low-spirited, moped creature, who, however with his unnatural sobriety he may please silly people, who commend tame, inactive children because they make no noise, nor give them any trouble, yet, at last, will probably prove as uncomfortable a thing to his friends, as he will be all his life a useless thing to himself and others.' 'To avoid the danger that is on either hand, is the great art; and he that has found a way how to keep up a child's spirit easy, active, and free, and yet at the same time to restrain him from many things he has a mind to, and to draw him to things that are uneasy to him; he, I say, that knows how to reconcile these seeming contradictions, has, in my opinion, got the true secret of education.'

No corporal punishment, Locke tells us, is useful where the shame of suffering for having done amiss does not work more than the pain; otherwise, we merely teach boys to act from the worst motives of all -regard to bodily pleasure, or pain. The tutor must be sparing in his correction, for it is his business to create a liking for learning, and 'children come to hate things which were at first acceptable to them, when they find themselves whipped and chid and teazed about them. . . Offensive circumstances ordinarily infect innocent things which they are joined with, and the very sight of a cup wherein anyone uses to take

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