Spontaneous Activity in Education by Maria Montessori (best historical biographies txt) 📕

And his mother is also a slave, for she cannot follow her son, whom she brought up with so much care for his body, and who cared for his moral good with all the passionate love of her heart; she is a slave, when her son is forced away from her, to go perhaps to death or to the ruin of his physical health, and to descend into moral degradation, while she can do nothing but watch him, silent and immovable. She excuses herself sadly, saying that her dignity and purity forbid her to follow her son in these paths. It is as if she were to say, "There is my son, wounded and bleeding; but I cannot follow him, because the road is muddy, and I might dirty my boots." Where is the heart of a true mother? How can maternal sentiment fall so low? "She only is dignified and pure," cries Madame de Héricourt, "who is capable of bringing up her son in such a way that he will never have anything shameful to confess to his mother."

The mother who has lost all her authority is herself lost.

Maternal dignity, on the other hand, is great and powerful. Behold in ancient times the Roman matron, Veturia, the mother of Coriolanus! Having heard that her son, a traitor to his country, was coming to attack Rome at the head of an alien army, she went bravely out from the protecting walls of the city, advanced towards the powerful leader through the hostile host, and asked him, "Art thou my son, or art thou a traitor?" At those words Coriolanus renounced his unworthy undertaking.

In the same way, in these days, the true mother should pass beyond the walls of prejudice and the frontiers of slavery, and have sufficient dignity to be able to confront her son, saying to him: "Thou wilt not be a traitor to humanity!"

What pressure can have been brought to bear on a woman to have made her lose the sacred right of saving her son? and what can have so weakened affection as to lead a youth to despise the maternal authority in order to make himself a young man?

It is this death of the soul and not external facts which pronounce our sentence.

If positive science, which has limited itself to the study of the external causes of maladies, or the causes of degeneration, and has confined itself to the inculcation of physical hygiene—that is to say, the protection of material life—has contributed so largely to morality, how much more may we hope for moral elevation from a positive science which concentrates upon the protection of the "inner life" of man?

And if the first part, scrupulously following the truth by exact research, has arrived at the social realization of Christian principles, we may presume that its continuation, conducted with the same loyalty and exactitude of research, will in like manner succeed in filling up the voids which still exist in modern civilization.

This is, I believe, the clearest and most direct reply to those who ask what can be hoped for in the morality and religion of the new generations, from our "pover-ositive" method of education.

If experimental medicine, by going back to the causes of diseases, has succeeded in solving the problems which concern health, an experimental science which concentrates upon the study of normal man's psychical activities should lead to the discovery of the superior laws of life and of the health of mankind.

This science has not yet been established, and awaits its investigators; but we may foresee that if universal hygiene, which gives humanity a guide to physical life, has come from medical research, then this new science should produce a hygiene which will give to all men practical guidance in moral life.

And if positive medicine arose in the hospitals, where sick people were collected by private and public generosity, with charitable intentions and under the guidance of empiricism, this science should, above all, concentrate and find its experiences in schools: that is to say, in the places where all children are gathered together for their social elevation, and with the empirical guidance of education.

What was the elevated note of scientific medicine which gradually superseded the empirical method? While empirical medicine believed in blood-letting and blistering, scientific medicine elevated and illustrated the ancient principle which had been forgotten, and which contained all the new wisdom in a synthesis: the medicinal force of nature, vis medicatrix naturæ. A natural power of fighting and conquering illness exists in the living organism, and it is to this that we must look in order to construct rational medicine; he who believes that the doctor and the medicine cure the sick is an empiricist; but he who knows that it is "only the organism" that can produce the cure, and that therefore we must protect and assist the force which nature gives for our salvation, is a scientist.

Now the sum of treatments necessary to protect the natural forces of defense and reorganization in positive medicine, are much more minute and are diffused in much vaster fields than the old empiricism.

The great number of specialists who replace the single type of doctor of the last century, is sufficient to emphasize the enormous difference in practise which the new tendency involves.

It is interesting also to give a glance at the progress which has been made in medicine; it has begun to cure diseases; and thence it has gone on to discover the laws of normal physical life, and to show the healthy how to preserve their health. When it reached this point it found that the same measures which are necessary for preserving health are the best for curing disease; because it is the same source of life which gives health and the vis medicatrix naturæ. Thus, for example, the rational diet of to-day is not only a hygienic measure which all should adopt in order to keep themselves in health, but the most important factor in the cure of illness. Dietetics, whether for the victims of gout, pellagra, fever, tuberculosis, or diabetes, is of primary importance; lithia salts, caffeine, and creosote are useless in comparison. The modern tendency is to reject these poisonous remedies altogether, and to substitute the natural remedies of rest, medical gymnastics, hydropathic treatment, and, above all, climatic treatment. Psychiatry and neuropathology have introduced the treatment of work: that is, a course of orderly intelligent activity, to give occupation to individuals who begin to show signs of mental failure. By degrees, as progress is made in this direction, the conception of "natural healing" will triumph—the ever clearer conception, that is to say, of the forces which sustain life.

It is only Nature which can do everything, and if the doctor is to become useful he must follow in her footsteps and serve her with increasing fidelity.

It is natural that investigation should lead to attempts at interpreting these forces upon which health depends, and these studies of "immunity" have been the most brilliant, widely diffused and scientific of all medical studies.

When Metchnikoff believed he had discovered that the leucocytes in the blood absorb and digest microbes and thus save man from infection, it seemed as if a ray of clear and simple light had illuminated all the mystery. But no sooner was his theory promulgated than it was demolished by the successive studies in which it was subjected to a destructive criticism, because the leucocytes are not always able to absorb living microbes; certain "conditions" of the organism are requisite in order that they may have this power, and so the knotty point was merely shifted. Moreover, it is not the actual microbes which cause disease, but their toxines. Thus the theories of toxines seemed to be the true guide for researches; but then we entered into a sea of complications, and it is obvious that only "aspects" and "attributes" of immunity are accessible to us, but that the substance, the last word, underlying all those aspects which research has revealed is: mystery.

For this reason, there is silence to-day as to questions of immunity; that which was once familiar as a popular idea remains among the obscure studies which not even the students of the university should approach.

Nevertheless, it is "impossible" that the medical science founded upon natural forces should develop, unless the imperative necessity be recognized of studying the mystery of life which conceals its source, but continually expands its forces.

The invisible but real source of health and healing is always there, at the climax of all efforts; and the palpitating energy which springs inexhaustibly therefrom is the only reality which makes evident this revival of the living. This medical science and this mystery cannot but form a unity.

It is probable that this will be brought about by that science which studies the health and the maladies of the soul. If this should discover that the soul, too, is corruptible, subject to disease and death, that it has its laws of health and its vis medicatrix naturæ, treatments tending to respect and aid this precious force of life should multiply immeasurably; and at the same time the mysterious source whence it gushes should impose itself on modern medicine, as the question of immunity has done. Then life, morality and religion will be indissolubly united.

Let us now turn to children of two and a half and three years old, who touch everything, but especially those objects which they evidently prefer, the most simple objects, as, for example, a square block of paper, a square inkstand, or a round, shiny bell. All things which "are not meant for them."

Then the mother comes and takes them away; half caressing, and at the same time tapping the little hands, she calls out, "Don't touch! naughty!" I once was present at one of these many family scenes, which pass unnoticed. The father, who was a doctor, was sitting at the writing-table; the mother was holding in her arms a very small child, who was stretching out its little hands to the various objects upon the table. The doctor said, "That child is incorrigibly naughty, although it is so young. However much its mother and I try to cure it of this fault of touching my things, we never succeed." "Naughty! naughty!" repeated the mother, holding its little hands tightly, while the child threw itself back, howling, and throwing its feet about as if it wished to kick.

When children are three or four years older, the struggle becomes more severe: they want to do things. Those who observe them carefully discover that they have some "tendency." They wish to imitate what their mother does, if their mother is a housewife. They willingly follow her into the kitchen, they wish to share her work, to touch her things, and they try furtively to knead and cook and wash clothes, and sweep the floor. The mother feels wearied by them; she keeps on repeating, "Be quiet; leave it alone. Don't tease me. Go away." Then the child makes a great noise, throws himself on the ground, and kicks; but then he begins again to do as much as