The Task of Social Hygiene

[163] De Quincey in his Confessions of an Opium Eater referred to the power that many, perhaps most, children possess of seeing visions in the dark. The phenomenon has been carefully studied by G.L. Partridge (Pedagogical Seminary, April, 1898) in over 800 children. He found that 58.5 of them aged between thirteen and sixteen could see visions or images at night with closed eyes before falling asleep; of those aged six the proportion was higher. There seemed to be a maximum at the age of ten, and probably another maximum at a much earlier age. Among adults this tendency is rudimentary, and only found in a marked form in neurasthenic subjects or at moments of nervous exhaustion. See also Havelock Ellis, The World of Dreams, chap. II.

[164] G. Stanley Hall, "The Contents of Children's Minds on Entering School," Pedagogical Seminary, June, 1891.

[165] "The mother's face and voice are the first conscious objects as the infant soul unfolds, and she soon comes to stand in the very place of God to her child. All the religion of which the child is capable during this by no means brief stage of its development consists of these sentiments—gratitude, trust, dependence, love, etc.—now felt only for her, which are later directed towards God. The less these are now cultivated towards the mother, who is now their only fitting if not their only possible object, the more feebly they will later be felt towards God. This, too, adds greatly to the sacredness of the responsibilities of motherhood." (G. Stanley Hall, Pedagogical Seminary, June, 1891, p. 199).

[166] J. Morse, American Journal of Religious Psychology, 1911, p. 247.

[167] Lobsien, "Kinderideale," Zeitschrift für Päd. Psychologie, 1903.

[168] Mr. Edmond Holmes, formerly Chief Inspector of Elementary Education in England, has an instructive remark bearing on this point in his suggestive book, What Is and What Might be (1911, p. 88): "The first forty minutes of the morning session are given in almost every elementary school to what is called Religious Instruction. This goes on, morning after morning, and week after week. The fact that the English parent, who must himself have attended from 1500 to 2000 Scripture lessons in his schooldays, is not under any circumstance to be trusted to give religious instruction to his own children, shows that those who control the religious education of the youthful 'masses' have but little confidence in the effects of their system on the religious life and faith of the English people." Miss Harriet Finlay-Johnson, a highly original and successful elementary school teacher, speaks (The Dramatic Method of Teaching, 1911, p. 170) with equal disapproval of the notion that any moral value attaches to the ordinary school examinations in "Scripture."

[169] If it were not so, England, after sixty years of National Schools, ought to be a devout nation of good Church people. Most of the criminals and outcasts have been taught in Church Schools. A clergyman, who points this out to me, adds: "I am heartily thankful that religion was never forced on me as a child. I do not think I had any religion, in the ethical sense, until puberty, or any conscious realization of religion, indeed, until nineteen." "The boy," remarks Holmes (op. cit., p. 100), "who, having attended two thousand Scripture lessons, says to himself when he leaves school: 'If this is religion I will have no more of it,' is acting in obedience to a healthy instinct. He is to be honoured rather than blamed for having realized at last that the chaff on which he has so long been fed is not the life-giving grain which, unknown to himself, his inmost soul demands."

[170] La Nouvelle Héloïse, Part V, Letter 3. In more recent times Ellen Key remarks in a suggestive chapter on "Religions Education" in her Century of the Child: "Nothing better shows how deeply rooted religion is in human nature than the fact that 'religious education' has not been able to tear it out."

[171] J.S. Mill, Letters, Vol. II, p. 135.

[172] Lancaster found ("The Psychology and Pedagogy of Adolescence," Pedagogical Seminary, July, 1897) that among 598 individuals of both sexes in the United States, as many as 518 experienced new religious emotions between the ages of 12 and 20, only 80 having no such emotions at this period, so that more than 5 out of 6 have this experience; it is really even more frequent, for it has no necessary tendency to fall into conventional religious moulds.

[173] Professor Starbuck, in his Psychology of Religion, has well brought together and clearly presented much of the evidence showing this intimate association between adolescence and religious manifestations. He finds (Chap. III) that in females there are two tidal waves of religious awakening, one at about 13, the other at 16, with a less significant period at 18; for males, after a wavelet at 12, the great tidal wave is at 16, followed by another at 18 or 19. Ruediger's results are fairly concordant ("The Period of Mental Reconstruction," American Journal of Psychology, July, 1907); he finds that in women the average age of conversion is 14, in men it is at 13 or 14, and again at 18.

[174] G. Stanley Hall, "The Moral and Religious Training of Children and Adolescents," Pedagogical Seminary, June, 1891, p. 207. From the more narrowly religious side the undesirability of attempting to teach religion to children is well set forth by Florence Hayllar (Independent Review, Oct., 1906). She considers that thirteen is quite early enough to begin teaching children the lessons of the Gospels, for a child who acted in accordance with the Gospels would be "aggravating," and would generally be regarded as "an insufferable prig." Moreover, she points out, it is dangerous to teach young children the Christian virtues of charity, humility, and self-denial. It is far better that they should first be taught the virtues of justice and courage and self-mastery, and the more Christian virtues later. She also believes that in the case of the clergy who are brought in contact with children a preliminary course of child-study, with the necessary physiology and psychology, should be compulsory.

[175] The varying opinions on this point have been fairly and clearly presented by Cheetham in his Hulsean lectures on the Mysteries Pagan and Christian.

[176] Thus at the first Congress of Italian Women held at Rome in 1908—a very representative Congress, by no means made up of "feminists" or anti-clericals, and marked by great moderation and good sense—a resolution was passed against religious teaching in primary schools, though a subsequent resolution declared by a very large majority in favour of teaching the history of religions in secondary schools. These resolutions caused much surprise at the time to those persons who still cherish the superstition that in matters of religion women are blindly prejudiced and unable to think for themselves.

[177] See e.g. an article by Halley Stewart, President of the Secular Education League, on "The Policy of Secular Education," Nineteenth Century, April, 1911.

[178] So far as numbers go, the dominant religion of the British Empire, the religion of the majority, is Hinduism; Mohammedanism comes next.

[179] "Not long ago," says Dr. L. Guthrie (Clinical Journal, 7th June, 1899), "I heard of a lady who, in her desire that her children should learn nothing but what was true, banished fairy tales from her nursery. But the children evolved from their own imagination fictions which were so appalling that she was glad to divert them with Jack-the-Giant-Killer."

[180] In his interesting study of comparative education (The Making of Citizens, 1902, p. 194), Mr. R.E. Hughes, a school inspector, after discussing the methods of settling the difficulties of religious education in England, America, Germany, and France, reasonably concludes: "The solution of the religious problem of the schools of these four peoples lies in the future, but we believe it will be found not to be beyond human ingenuity to devise a scheme of moral and ethical training for little children which will be suitable. It is the moral principles underlying all conduct which the school should teach. Indeed, the school, to justify its existence, dare not neglect them. It will teach them, not dogmatically or by precept, but by example, and by the creation of a noble atmosphere around the child." Holmes also (op. cit., p. 276) insists that the teaching of patriotism and citizenship must be informal and indirect.