Chapter I: Part 1

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

This book contains illustrations depicting various states of nudity.

More notes can be found at the end of this book.

DANCING, BEAUTY, AND GAMES

_From a Photograph by the White Studios_]

DANCING, BEAUTY
AND
GAMES

By

Lady Constance Stewart Richardson

LONDON
ARTHUR L. HUMPHREYS
187 PICCADILLY, W.

1913

CONTENTS

PAGE

PHYSICAL CULTURE 1

GAMES 17

BEAUTY 27

TEACHERS 43

DANCING 55

SWIMMING 63

BIG GAME SHOOTING 77

RELIGION 97

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

LADY CONSTANCE STEWART RICHARDSON _Frontispiece_

A GOOD POSE _facing Page_ 4

RORY DANCING ” 8

RORY, TORQUIL, AND HAMISH ” 12

GROTESQUE TOYS ” 34

MISS ISADORA DUNCAN ” 56

MAD^{LLE} ADELINE GENÉE ” 58

MADAME KARSAVINA ” 60

BAREFOOTED DANCING AFTER THE GREEK STYLE ” 62

ENGLISH POSITION IN AIR WHILE DIVING ” 64

SWEDISH SWALLOW DIVE ” 66

DANCING, BEAUTY AND GAMES

PHYSICAL CULTURE

To try and write about Physical Culture without linking it on to Mental and Moral Culture would be of little use or interest, as these three cannot be divided and good come from them, any more than a tree can be separated from its bark and leaves and live. It is true that many have realised the great and undeniable truth that Physical Culture properly used is also mental culture, but it is also true that the masses are absolutely ignorant of this fact, and merely think that the person who believes so is a harmless lunatic. That it is within the means of the majority to have a powerful weapon to combat sins and vice that at present go rampantly on their way, I do most sincerely believe, and that weapon is a right understanding of the effect which Physical Culture has on the mind and body; and that ignorance of this weapon is almost universal amongst the masses is due to the fact that those who are at the head of things do not understand and will not listen to those who do, or take the time and trouble to find out the root of the evils which exist to such an enormous extent, especially throughout towns.

That this subject has been handled before by far more skilled writers than myself I know well, but in most of the articles on Physical Culture there is a great dislike to tackling the serious side of the question, and my excuse for doing so is that I have spent all my life or rather all my thinking life in enquiring into and trying to understand the effect Physical Culture has on the mind, and that this effect is tremendous no one who knows anything about the subject can doubt. The more artificial life becomes, the more necessary it is to fight the evils which arise from this artificial condition, and personally I am all for fighting artificiality with nature. Nature, if understood, seldom fails us. Many hundreds of thousands of pounds are spent annually on hospitals, homes for the feeble-minded, &c.; if only a few of those thousands were expended in our schools, and in the proper teaching of the young, surely in a couple of generations a great many of the former institutions would be empty. And until it is understood that to help the human race towards real health, and the happiness that marches hand in hand with that health, it is necessary to attack and demolish the amazing system of wicked ignorance which has our young in its grip--both rich and poor--these institutions will be needed.

For long it has been the cry, give every one a fair chance, and I do most sincerely believe that it is possible to give that chance by turning out into the world self-respecting men and women mentally and physically developed in the manner that I believe God meant us all to be; and not maimed body and soul by the course of instruction we have been put through before we are thrown out on our own resources to struggle blindly through our lives as best we may in a semi-developed condition, mentally and physically: some of us perhaps to learn what a fine thing we could have made of life if only we had known and understood sooner. That moral feebleness allied to real vice is tremendously on the increase in large towns, cannot be denied; also that a great deal of it has its beginning in school-life is well known, just as it is realised by thinking people that very little effort is made either to enquire into the cause of it or find a remedy. It seems to be taken for granted that if a young boy or girl shows moral feebleness there is nothing much to be done except to hope that they will not be found out and disgraced. I know well that to cure immorality in the young once it has established itself, is difficult, though not by any means hopeless. Cures always are difficult and take time; therefore prevention is so much simpler: and certainly a great deal, if not all, of this immorality could be prevented if Physical Culture and its true effects on body and mind were understood, and the teaching of a right system was insisted on in all places where the young gather together.

_From a Photograph by Andrew Paterson, Inverness_]

Let me try and explain what I mean by a right system. It is not just a different way of exercising the arms, legs, and body. There are many most admirable methods of Physical Culture, composed and propounded by men who thoroughly understand the human body and its needs. But what I think is wanting in our teaching of the young when we teach them at all, is the giving of any reason as to why they should exercise regularly; beyond the rather feeble fact that they will most likely feel better if they do. Give children a true reason for doing anything and they will hold on to it throughout life, and the true reason for Physical Culture surely is that God has given you a body and a brain to develop to the best of your ability, and that when the time comes to render them back again to your Maker you will be able to do so with no sense of shame. Instil this into the young and it is wonderful how they understand and reverence the thought. To merely tell children that it is jolly to have big muscles and be stronger than their neighbours, will certainly urge them on for the moment, but these reasons have little strength or help in them if there is a temptation to be overcome, and to continue to use them is but building upon sand.

Children are born idealists, and surely it ought to be the duty of all to make those ideals higher and of a strength that will last through life. The only ideal that the average child has nowadays is ‘how to get on,’ and in the getting on if the other fellow goes to the wall no matter; the ideal of Physical and Mental culture ought to be of the highest and the greatest purity, and it is only possible to instil this into the very young. All chance of pure thinking as regards the body is generally entirely shattered by nurses and parents before a child reaches four or five years of age: its body is made a shameful thing to hide as much as possible and never to be referred to. If you want to feel real shame, and understand the impure manner in which the body is regarded, watch small children in any well-to-do nursery being washed by their nurses; instead of being taught that their body is a beautiful and sacred thing and one of God’s greatest works, they are made to believe it is a shameful thing. Little harmless questions that all children ask and which ought to get straight, sensible answers, are greeted with giggles or winks, and the child is told not to ask naughty questions. Thus at the beginning of their lives is planted the little, creeping, insidious, dirty growth. All children will think about their bodies, it is right and natural that they should do so; only those thoughts must be guided into pure, sensible channels, not left in black ignorance, except for the unclean hints dropped by many who, to our shame be it said, have children in their charge.

To instil pure-mindedness, a child from the moment it can understand must be taught to take a proper pride in its body, then when come to man or woman’s full growth, a clean-minded, healthy, happy, human being will be the result, and during the always more or less difficult age before full growth is reached there need be little fear of the dangers and temptations which as a rule beset the young.

_From a Photograph by Andrew Paterson_]

If from early youth it was explained and impressed on the young of both sexes, that it was a real sin against God to allow their minds to become a mass of sensuality, and that the mind becoming like this means that the body has been neglected, and the only right remedy for body and mind is proper exercise and a proper understanding of what to eat and what to avoid in eating and drinking, what a help it would be to them. As a rule this is never explained to the young, and surely its great importance ought to be understood at least by those who have children in their charge. The ordinary man or woman fighting the temptations which arise from the artificial conditions of life, are as helpless from their ignorance and neglect of the human body as a man naked fighting against one fully armed.

There are a certain number of men and women who are strong-minded enough to be able to take up physical exercises late in life and get a considerable amount of good from them, but with the majority unless the exercises are a habit from early youth, they find them a bore after the novelty has worn off, and they are eventually dropped altogether. It is a very great effort for a man or woman who has neglected any regular exercise all their lives, to get up in the morning and perform a certain set amount. But if a child is trained almost from infancy to do this, and made to understand that it is quite as dirty to neglect the body or to put dirty (otherwise unwholesome) food into it, as it is to walk about with unwashed teeth, they no more think of neglecting the care of the one than they do of the other. Therefore, personally, I always train my own children to exercise ten minutes every morning before their baths; not that it is a real necessity when living an open-air life, but that I feel the habit will go with them through life; also that the time may come when having to be in town it may prove of incalculable value. At present they would no more think of missing their exercises than they would their baths.

Again, I think great help against the bad and harmful habits of drinking and smoking can be given, if a child is taught that his body is a beautiful and precious trust, and that to soil and harm it by the accumulation of bad and artificial habits is to commit a real sin, and also shows a considerable lack of intelligence if commenced with open eyes and understanding. Also, if the explanation is given of how these habits grow and take hold, if once started, and how a liking for them becomes quickly ingrained, I am quite sure that boys and girls would no more make a habit of these harmful things than they would cheat at cards--as in one case you are behaving dishonourably to your fellow-men, in the other you are betraying a trust given into your hands by God; surely the latter ought to be made of as much importance as the former. It is all very well to say that smoking and drinking in moderation harm no one; perhaps not, but the difficulty of keeping them in moderation is very great, particularly when troubles come along, which even if they be molehills in reality, to the young are always mountains, and it seems somewhat foolish to learn and encourage an artificial habit which may at any time prove a most dangerous enemy, and is certainly not missed if never begun.

I also feel most strongly that it will be an impossibility to make Physical Culture what it ought to be until a radical change is made in present-day clothing for both sexes.

Revolutionise the clothing of children and all would be well, as if sanely clad during their growing years, they certainly would not submit in later life to the absurd garments worn by their parents.

_From a Photograph by Andrew Paterson_]

I do not suggest that every one should go about in Greek tunics, as this garment is not very suitable to our grey climate; but there is a far cry between a Greek tunic and an Eton suit, for instance. That the garments children often have to wear are responsible for a great deal of immorality I am certain, and they are on the whole most insanitary, great carriers of germs, and intensely uncomfortable as well. There has certainly been a slight move for the better amongst some who have stopped their children wearing hats; thus giving them a chance to grow up without chronic headaches, and to have beautiful hair. Also a few now give their children a shoe that does not deform their feet as in the past, but even now it is very rarely that one sees a child over ten years of age with toes that are not crooked; for it does not seem to be realised the tremendous pace a child’s foot grows between the ages of two and fifteen; therefore if only sandals were used for growing children such a lot of pain and expense might be saved; a sandal showing at once if it is too small, and also is much cheaper to replace than shoes, or those still greater iniquities, boots, which cramp the muscles of the legs and stop the ankle muscles from gaining growth and strength.

I know that many people will contend that the mental impurity I have spoken of is the exception and not the rule. I can but ask these people to spend an afternoon in the sculpture room at a museum or in a picture gallery, and watch the majority of those who come through and see the nudes in either marble or on canvas. Apart from a few serious art students there are generally two types, the one who passes by with averted head and downcast eyes, getting slightly red in doing so; these are generally men or women very religious from the world’s point of view, and with sad, contracted minds. They pray, but at the same time they have made up their minds that one of God’s most splendid works is a shameful thing to be covered up, neglected and forgotten as much as possible.

The other type is the man or woman who comes to stare and giggle, and nudge with coarse innuendo and joke. These are more awful than the others to watch, as they are alive with a horrible wakefulness coming from minds that are merely cesspools.

And with both types the same cause is at work in different ways. They cannot see a naked figure either in life, painting, or sculpture without bringing in the sex question. They can see no beauty, as it is obscured by the grime of their minds.

Surely a state of things to make one stand aghast with bent and shamed head.

I do not think I ever realised fully the extreme impurity that is rife through the minds particularly of those who live in towns until I went on to the stage, and took up classical dancing seriously. Then there used to pour in upon me a stream of letters of such a terrible kind that one wondered it were possible for any living being who had a soul to write such things, and in those days came to me a great and sincere wish to help on in any way possible the work of trying to establish a system of Physical and Mental Culture that should give the children their fair chance in life; for rich and poor there ought to be but one system, and that instilled in a manner to give to them a knowledge and reverent love of all that is God’s work, to bring within the reach of all the chance to keep the body beautiful outwardly and clean inwardly, and to fill the mind with high ideals and a fine knowledge of men and books. May we all try and make it more possible and easier for the little children to walk with firm and unfaltering footsteps the path that ours have tottered so painfully along.

GAMES

Games are nearly always regarded as recreation, though a few people take them seriously and work at them with a view to becoming professionals and earning a livelihood in this manner. When I say they are used as a recreation, this is applicable to those people who play different games in a desultory fashion during the whole or part of the year; showing as time passes curiously little improvement in their play. Plodding continuously on, but from what point of view it is difficult to understand, unless it be from a purely animal liking of being in the open air and the pleasure they derive from following after, hitting, or kicking a ball. One cannot believe that they can get any pleasure from the competition arising in games, as they never strive to improve their play. Many I know have devoted several hours weekly for a long time to a game, but they play no better or very slightly better now than when they commenced.

If one remarks on the rather curious mental condition a person must be in to act like this, the reply generally is, ‘Every one cannot play games well. A good eye is necessary,’ &c. Certainly that is so, but a good eye is mostly training and practice like any other muscle control. Surely if a thing is worth doing at all it is worth doing well, and I think that any one who gives the matter a few moments’ thought will agree that it is extremely harmful physically and mentally to go on doing a thing in the wrong way year after year. It denotes lack of concentration, lack of self-control, and a general mental sloppiness. Curiously enough these people are always the ones who continually ask others to teach and help them to improve their play, but an endeavour to do so is nearly always greeted with a laugh, and, ‘Oh, yes, I see,’ and they go steadily on with the same faults as before, though quite often showing that with a little concentration and control they might have become admirable players. This class of game-player, I feel sure, has developed from the child who has been allowed to undertake its games and its work in a slipshod fashion, never being made to realise that if a game or a piece of work is taken up it should either be done well and completely or left alone. By this I naturally do not mean that all amateurs ought not to play a game unless they play it like a professional, but there is a very far cry between professionalism and the slipshod game-player. The next type of man who plays games is the one who does so purely from the health-giving point of view and not from any real love of games, doing so most likely only when he is a bit off colour, and in vulgar parlance, wishes to have a good sweat! A Turkish bath would have as good an effect, but he, like a good many others, cannot be bothered to seek after health unless his mind is stimulated and amused at the same time. He is not really of much interest from the game-playing point of view, as he enters into the world of games but little.

At the opposite extreme is to be found the man who takes games seriously, though this type is really divided into two classes; one who plays games to keep fit, and the other who keeps fit to play games. The latter, of course, are the men with a real devotion to games who spend little time doing anything else; at all events, during the season when their own particular game is to the fore. The questions I think one is inclined to ask oneself, when seriously thinking over games, are: in what spirit ought games to be taken? Are they a waste of time or not? and are they of real good mentally and physically to the player? I have always personally felt that games, regarded as they are at the present day, are extremely bad, but if taken in a sane and sensible fashion ought to be of the greatest value. This is what I mean. Children when they start to play games are nearly always allowed to do so in a most haphazard manner; for instance, a child who shows a strong fancy for games is often left to play them _ad lib._, only being reproved if his school-work suffers, and often a lenient eye is turned on all shirking of work if the shirker is found to have used the time for game-playing. It is rarely explained to him or her that games ought to be regarded as a recreation and an aid to health, also that if played they ought to be played properly at proper times. Shirking your other work to play them or playing them badly is misusing both your body and mind, and generally hurting yourself physically and mentally.

Games must be looked at in their proper proportion and once finished with not allowed to usurp the mind, as a man who makes games his sole thought throughout life is a sad person to meet. If the child who was backward and rather stupid at games was taken a little trouble with and equally taught with his more forward brother that games are to be regarded educationally like any other physical exercise, I think that as grown men they would both be improved. On the one hand, you would not find the man who does not play games at all, from having been told when a child that he was no use; and on the other, the man who eats, thinks, talks, and sleeps games: but two human beings with the good health, concentration, quickness, and self-control which games properly used certainly bring, all of which are most admirable qualities having a very great effect on a man’s life in all and every profession. A man of the above qualities, added to a clean outdoor sense of things, is far more apt to make a success of his life from the higher point of view than the one without them. Equally this reacts on his children. The man of control and understanding will most assuredly see that his children are trained to have the same qualities.

I do not think it can be repeated too often what great harm can be done to children, and, alas! is done both physically and mentally, by allowing them to play games at all times and in any manner they please. It is quite time it was realised that during the period the brain and body are developing, enormous care ought to be taken in the supervision of all bodily exercises, for that their effect is very great on the brain only the ignorant will deny. A child left to exercise itself at games will as a rule play till it is dead beat, thus undoing any good that might come to it from the exercise of its muscles and mind, as long before it has got to this stage of tiredness it will have been hitting wrong, running wrong, and forcing the heart to overwork. Mentally it will be over-excited, the eye will be strained, and the temper out of control. One of the great advantages of games is the teaching of tolerance and self-control, but when a thing is young and tender it does not do to bear too heavily on it. Whereas judicious exercise strengthens a weak thing, heavy work will merely spoil it, and in all probability ruin it for all time. How often one sees a child burst into tears for no obvious reason, become irritable and bad-tempered, and when bedtime comes lie awake for hours. The cause nearly always being the ignorance of teachers and parents who in their mistaken kindness allow children to play games until they can hardly walk with fatigue. I have often been asked if I advocate games for children; before the ages of ten or eleven years old I certainly do not, and between those ages and sixteen, I think games ought to be most carefully supervised and chosen, and for these reasons. From infancy up to eleven years is a most critical period, the most critical I personally believe in the whole life. When a young child is playing games it is most difficult, in fact almost impossible, to get it to remember several things at once. What I mean is this. A young child at this period is merely learning everything, how to walk, how to run, and how to balance itself correctly. The meaning of perfect poise ought at this age to be installing itself into a child’s mind; in the excitement of the game a child as a rule tries to do too much, with the result that in a short space of time it will be walking badly and heavily, and running in an ugly, uncertain fashion.

Then there are very few games which do not draw the body forward, contracting the chest, in consequence of which the breathing is restricted, which naturally renders the blood impure, this leading to a thousand troubles. Also I do not believe it is good or natural for any young undeveloped thing to be knocked about in the way that happens in a good many games, as the muscles and bones are soft and apt to be distorted easily. Children in a natural rough-and-tumble amongst themselves are no more likely to hurt themselves or each other than puppies or any other young animal at play, but bring in the competition and the unnatural excitement which creeps into games that after all are an artificial amusement, more harm than good is likely to result to children under sixteen years of age. After that age, regarded in their proper proportion, I think they are excellent. I am a firm believer for the young in individual athletic exercises such as running, jumping, throwing the hammer, the discus, swimming and dancing, &c., but under the eye always of an experienced person, as in these exercises it is possible to control and watch the work of each child, to see and teach that each muscle is developed in proper fashion, and by degrees the girl or boy will understand how to control the whole body in a perfect manner, each and every muscle hardening and enlarging to its full development. If this form of physical education is carried out from infancy, at sixteen years old a girl or boy ought to be fit to take up any game they may have a fancy for, reaping the great good that certainly may be got from games and equally avoiding the great harm.

BEAUTY

To instil a love of beauty into a child’s mind at the commencement of its life is not necessary, as normal children will always hold out their hands and seek to draw towards them all that is beautiful, instinctively turning away and shrinking from the hideous and grotesque. But what is necessary is to foster, protect, and encourage this natural gift, and it is only too evident that this necessity is not only neglected, but that the love of the hideous and grotesque is actually forced into the minds of the young, and the growth of that love helped on in every possible way. There are many who scoff at the belief that the love and true realisation of all beauty ought to be one of the most serious sides in the education of the young, but I think it would behove them to give a few hours’ serious consideration to the subject, before dismissing it with one of the contemptuous laughs that are so freely given by the people who have never taken the trouble to probe very deeply into any new effort or idea that may come their way. Not that the idea of instilling the love and understanding of beauty into the young is a new one, as in ancient Greece it was a recognised part of all education, but most certainly for many and many a generation it has never been given a thought to, except in isolated cases. I do not think it would be a waste of time if some of our best brains at the head of things would give some serious consideration from a purely common-sense point of view, as to whether it may not stand within the bounds of reason that a very large part of the decadence, vice, and educational failure is not largely due to the entire lack in that education of any effort being made to teach the difference between the ugly and the beautiful.

Sin and vice are strangely like unto ugliness and repulsiveness. Equally, cleanliness and culture of mind, body, and spirit are not mean reflectors of the beautiful. It is not difficult to realise that perhaps the neglect of teaching the one has a good deal to do with the existence of the other. That a most drastic change in this direction would be greatly for the benefit of all children I most firmly believe. The richest and the poorest ought to have the same chance of being allowed to keep that wonderful gift, a love of beauty, which is a heritage to all, and not to have it snatched away only to be replaced by that which will cause them to go mentally blind through life, missing all the joy which comes to those who can see with undimmed eyes the wonders that God has placed in the world for all.

A love of the obviously beautiful I do not think is of any great help or value, though naturally better than entire blindness: to only admire what, so to speak, shrieks its beauty at you, takes no great understanding or discrimination. Neither does it take great powers of observation. Stone-blindness would have to be the portion of the man who was not more or less impressed by the Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls. But to see and rejoice over little pools with the light throwing different shadows, a drop of dew hanging on a blade of grass, or a myriad other miniature miracles, which happen around us day and night, takes a power of observation and realisation that lies only in the human being who has had his eye trained to observe and his mind to feel and rejoice in all beauty, whether it be great or small, the largely obvious or that which requires careful looking for.

It cannot be denied that a power of observation is of great value in all walks of life; allied to a powerful memory it is of still greater value. Both of these can be taught to a great extent by encouraging the children in their love of the beautiful, which ought to be commenced in the observation and understanding of God’s work in Nature. The millions of beautiful things by which He has surrounded us are generally entirely unnoticed and ignored by the average child, and the wonderful reading of that book of Nature He has laid before us to instruct and help, is indeed a closed book except to the very few. That Nature-study is taught in many schools I am fully aware, but it is taught as a rule in a purely scientific manner, which at once does away with any chance of establishing high ideals by its help. Flowers are pulled to pieces, their growth and formation explained; a drop of water is taken, placed under a microscope, and the germs in it pointed out. That this is excellent and ought to be known and understood by all, I do not for a moment deny, but its place is secondary; God’s unspoken lesson of beauty in Nature is surely a far greater one than what man has found out about His work, and if this is the case, it seems to me that the first lesson of all that ought to be taught to the young is to look for and find all the beauties expressed in Nature. The colours and the scent of the flowers, the way they group themselves, the fashion in which they turn and seek the sun; to hear the music in the streams composed of a hundred different notes, to lie and watch the many changing lights and colours on running waters, to love the reflections in the pools and to learn to wander in that children’s second land ‘under the water,’ or to watch in breathless wonder the ripple of the soft summer breezes across that dry land-sea, the bit of rough ground with tall grasses of many kinds in full bloom; some almost pigeon-blood in colour, others pure gold. To hear the voices of the wood-people complaining as the wind-god moving through the trees disturbs them, or in his anger storms along on wintry days and nights, calling out in his wrath to the thunder and lightning to come and join him on his noisy way. All idealistic and fanciful, no doubt.

But who will deny that the man or woman who can see and hear clearly the voices of Nature, and who has the power to weave happy, harmless fancies, is not a better and more pure-minded person than one who outside of his own profession can neither see nor hear, and if placed apart from that profession is helpless and miserably bored. If unhappiness comes to him in his chosen work, he knows not where to seek help and distraction in a clean and healthy way. It has often been said that Mother Nature is a great healer: she most certainly is when we are given a chance of finding and knowing her, but to the average human being her existence may be known of, but the way of reaching her healing touch is a road carefully guarded, and hidden away out of sight, except to the adventurous few who have strength of mind to struggle on against all difficulties and seek her for themselves.

Surely we have no right not to lay open to the best of our abilities this road of happiness and comfort to all children; to shut them out into a materialistic darkness of mind, to crush that love of beauty that God has thought right to instil into every infant mind. Instead, there are a great many parents and teachers banded together with one object, that being to destroy and stamp out any love of beauty that may peep out from a child’s mind, to uproot it and there plant instead a million growths of rank and ugly thoughts all overshadowed by one great primary planted tree whose name is the love of the ugly and grotesque; from it branches another smaller tree called the power of being able only to see the bad; creeping up this is the worm of blindness to all God’s teaching of Nature. A truly terrible garden indeed, and apt to bear fruit plentifully now and afterwards.

I went to one of London’s largest toy-shops the other day and there bought some toys which can be seen in the following photograph. I was told that they were very popular, and it is difficult to believe that sane people can give their children toys of this kind, and not realise in any way the irreparable harm they are doing to their minds, particularly as most small infants will turn shuddering from this ugliness presented to them, but are coaxed into thinking they like these hideous things, until they really do come to take a pleasure in them. So the first great lesson of man’s teaching is learnt, taken into your heart and mind the ugly and repulsive thought and thing that God tells you instinctively to turn from and beware of. A few years of this teaching and God’s voice of instinct grows dim and at last ceases. So we wilfully and of our own accord strike out of our children’s lives one great help and safeguard, instead of aiding them to develop and strengthen it, so as to get all the joy and happiness possible from this great gift.

It may be agreed that a love of beauty has brought many a man and woman to sin, and it is true that such a love superficial and untrained, may well do so, But that love, trained and instilled into the human mind along with a deep and reverent understanding, can only be of the greatest help and benefit. In this case the beauty and purity of the soul, and that wondrous temple, the human body, would prove too strong a responsibility to allow the mind to smirch them with sin and vice. In advocating that children should be taught to see Nature’s works with clear eyes, I do not mean that the many wonderful and beautiful works of Man should be ignored: only with God’s works we can roam amongst them, knowing that what they teach can only be good; with Men’s we must walk warily, picking out for the help of the young only those things that speak of fine and pure intention, and that can start no train of impure thought. Of the greatest influence for good, I put the sculpture of the ancient Greeks foremost: it cannot be studied too much by the young; the more it is loved and understood the more lessons it teaches, a deep and wide sense of extreme quietness and nobility, an understanding and reverence in the truest sense of the word for the beauty of the human body, to mar or ill-treat which was a sin against all that was highest in them. A great patience and an almost superhuman effort and striving towards all that was greatest and best, a reaching out of mind and soul to do honour to Him who made them; what matter if their gods were many, the effort and the reverence were the same, and as such will surely be recorded.

Will ever a quarter be understood as to what we owe these ancient masters of art, the help they have been to thousands in their gentle and sincere teaching--only thousands, alas! for of the millions of people reared and taught in our country, it is the few who find out by accident or design the beauties and wonders of their works? It is true that bodies of school-children are escorted at intervals to the British Museum, where they are shown round by some one who is supposed to have a knowledge of the contents. Many a time have I watched the groups with a sad heart, realising how much help and joy they were missing. ‘That is a statue by So-and-so, 400 B.C.,’ on and on from one thing to another, merely a jumble of names and dates; no aid given to those muddled young minds towards their seeing and understanding the beauty they are gazing at; no chance given them to take in the message of purity and quietness that those great works send forth everlastingly to those who have learnt to see and hear. What good is there in knowing a list of famous names if the knowledge ceases at that, and the work that made those names famous is unknown and unrealised? The human being who feels a great humility and thankfulness before all beauty, whether God’s work or Man’s, says a truer and more sincere prayer than he who sits in church and parrot-like repeats long prayers to the God whose work he either knows not, or does his best to destroy.

We are told in the Bible that we are made in the likeness of God. It is wonderful how far we have managed to stray from it, and how determined we are that our children shall have no chance to attain to it. With studious care have we built up year by year a mass of customs and habits that successfully bar us from anything much higher in appearance than the apes some think we are descended from. Sometimes one sees a human face and body that has been strong enough to struggle into maturity unmarked and maimed in spite of Man’s laws, and when we see such a one, it is with a heart full of wrath and pity that we gaze around on the crippled, hideous bodies that might be like unto gods walking, and are merely distorted shapes, breeding further shapes still more distorted, and a vista of horror is opened in the mind, and one seems to hear the cries of millions of unborn children, each generation a little more horrible to look at; with minds a little lower and more sin-filled, and with less and less hope of gaining all that has been lost. More lives to work out their own hell, fewer to live in Heaven.

To keep a child’s mind filled with beautiful thoughts, and let their eyes see only beautiful things is, I know well, a difficult matter nowadays, since we have filled the world with hideous things and the minds of those about us with ugly thoughts, but the importance of doing so is, as I have said before, very great. It seems to me as if beautiful ideas and things have a very slight, delicate growth in the brain while it is in its early development, while the ugly and grotesque takes hold with giant roots, and once allow the latter to creep in first, it will oust all after attempts to replace it with the delicate plant of beauty. But keep the mind well stocked with all that is beautiful, and by the time the brain and body are developed, these plants will have attained to such strong and noble proportions that little fear need be felt of the others finding any space to live in and flourish.

There is a great deal of talk nowadays about Eugenics and theories on improving the human race. It might be well worth the experiment to try how the gospel of beauty taught in the deepest and truest sense might succeed where everything else has failed; if we were educated to see ugliness, mental and physical, as sins of the most serious description against our Maker, whether would it not prove a very powerful help towards the uplifting of the human race from the mire in which it at present lies.

TEACHERS

Having tried to show how important the teaching of the love of beauty is to children, and how important it is during the early development of the brain to keep all that is bad and repulsive away, and only present the good and the beautiful, it may not be out of place to say a little on the subject as to the difficulty of getting teachers who have ever given these ideas a thought, and if asked to carry out one’s wishes on this subject simply regard one as a harmless lunatic. A few are conscientious enough to make efforts, but even these are a hopeless failure, and for this reason, if no thought has been given during the years of training as to the necessity of keeping ugliness, physical and mental, from children, it is almost impossible, unless unusually gifted in self-control, to restrain one’s self a hundred times an hour from doing or saying something ugly before children; also, with the best endeavours in the world, the deplorable fact remains that the great majority do not know what is ugly and what is beautiful.

Nine years ago, I started with a light heart and a happy mind to educate my eldest son in the way in which I considered all children ought to be educated: in other words only pure and good thoughts were to be instilled into his mind, and he was never to have the ugly and grotesque forced on his notice. My difficulties began with my first nurse, and they have gone on increasing through a series of nurses and governesses. That they should not understand one’s ideas on the subject was not surprising, as their upbringing made these ideas a closed book to them; but what was so heart-breaking was that after hours of explaining and reasoning, and eventually in despair almost extorting promises that they should endeavour to speak only what was truthful and good, and that they should refrain from ugly tales and dirty ideas, it began to dawn on me that most of these people who take charge of children do not know the difference between what is good and what is bad for children to see and hear, and all the explaining in the world could not teach them: proving that unless the study of these things is undertaken in youth, it is of little use later in life to try and learn it. Some of them really tried, they genuinely wished to please me, but it was hopeless from my point of view; in fact, I was talking a strange tongue to them, and with the best endeavours they could not understand a language they had never learnt. It is certainly not my wish to decry the faithful service that nurses have given to their charges, a good deal more faithful than many mothers. But what I do want to point out is that the training of nurses and teachers is as a rule far from what it ought to be, and until this training is most thoroughly altered it is worse than useless to try and raise the education of children to a higher and purer level. First of all, it must be recognised that these people on whom the future of our young so largely depends ought to be the most respected and honoured amongst people, and this feeling of responsibility and honour ought to be ingrained in the minds of those who intend to enter the vocations of nursing or teaching. Not, as so often is the case, that teaching is taken up when a failure is made at other professions, and when you find in rich houses that the teachers or nurses of the children are paid considerably less than the cook or butler. Until teaching is put upon its proper pedestal and regarded as the most honoured of professions, and one not to be entered into lightly, so will education remain at its present low level.

It is constantly being said that there are so many clever women leaving our colleges each year, and finding it difficult to earn a livelihood: surely teaching ought to give many of them a profession in life; but until the profession is regarded rightly, as one of the most high and sacred callings, clever men and women will consider it beneath them, or only to be used as a step towards something better. Certainly, latterly, there has been some improvement in the methods of imparting knowledge to the young, but I am afraid that these methods have not always been used for the good only of the child. Too many good teachers are given to cramming infants’ minds to an extent extremely harmful, only caring to produce on examination days tiny children who can repeat pages of verse and prose--in other words, at the expense of the child’s health and mind, they nurture their own vanity, showing that their idea of responsibility is as lax as their knowledge of the delicate structure they undertake to build up. The ignorance of the people to whom children are entrusted on the science of Pedagogy is truly amazing. They know nothing about the body, and still less about the working of a child’s brain. They do not know what is harmful physically, or what effect body has on brain, or _vice-versa_; they have a smattering of Physical Culture and this is used indiscriminately, and they cannot be blamed, as they have never been taught even the rudiments of a science which they ought to know thoroughly before they essay to teach. For it is, I am certain, this entire lack of knowledge as to the brain and body and the effect of one on the other, that leads to so much distress and sin, and that is such a handicap in any efforts that are made to fill the mind with only what is worth while. Excellent methods such as Dr. Montessori’s are terribly hampered by the difficulty of finding people in any quantity capable of carrying out ideas which require careful observation and a real knowledge of the child’s mind and body. They may earnestly strive, but they will fail, and consequently many good methods brought forward by clever trained people go to the wall and are labelled as useless, simply because the teachers are quite incompetent to either grasp or carry out any method which requires a real and not a superficial knowledge of Pedagogy.

Now this is all rather dreadful, and the only way to improve matters and give children a chance of starting life with a healthy and pure outlook is for all parents to band themselves together and insist that the people who volunteer to take charge of and educate children, shall have received a proper training both mentally and physically. If this was done, in one generation, education in the highest sense of the word would have a bright outlook, as people who have received a sane and clean education themselves will most certainly see that their children receive and benefit by the same. I do not think that parents can often give much thought as to the unlimited amount of harm done in their nurseries. The conversations that are carried on before young children, between nurse and nursery-maids, are five times out of six harmful, I am certain; and any observing mother can tell, from the way children behave and the things they talk about, the sort of influence that is unconsciously wielded by the nurses in charge. Looking back at my nursery days, and my memory of them is very distinct, I can easily remember the kind of topics that were discussed before me: every sort of gossip on the latest scandals, the latest murder, horrors of war, &c., all in their most gruesome details. I was, I suppose, about four or five years of age, and those conversations are clear in my memory to this day. My nurse was the dearest and most faithful of old Scotch servants, and would have given her life gladly for any of her charges, but she had never been taught herself as to what was harmful and what was not for children to see and hear, and had the uneducated person’s general idea that children up to the age of about ten years are deaf, dumb, and blind. Many and many an evil growth and crooked outlook on life is gained in those early nursery days, and they cling steadily through life. In these days of heavy doings and light thinkings, the children of the well-to-do are more and more left in the charge of others than their parents, and it seems that this would become more so than less in the future. So, surely, a giant effort should be made towards establishing a training college, or improving the ones at present in existence, and insisting that nurses and teachers are trained so as to have considerably higher ideals than they have at present, and a far deeper knowledge of the mind and body, before they are allowed to play havoc with the lives of the young.

Most certainly there are many young people who love children, and have themselves been brought up in a clean, though perhaps limited manner: opportunities should be given to them to train so as to become able to take charge of children and to fully understand the tremendous responsibilities they undertake when children are given into their charge.