ffice less pregnant with meaning or less
suggestive of reality than that of God. It is towards God, then, not
towards the Devil, that the ripening, expansive forces of Nature
which are at work in the child, are directing the process of his
growth. We are taught that Man is by nature a "child of wrath." The
more closely we study his ways and works when, as a young child, he
is left (more or less) to his own devices, the stronger does our
conviction become that he is by nature a "child of God." Those who
are in a position to speak tell us that the normal child is born
physically healthy. If the men of science would study the other sides
of his being as carefully as they have studied his physique, they
would, I feel sure, be able to tell us that he is also born mentally,
morally, and spiritually healthy, and that on these sides, as well as
on the physical side, his growth might be and ought to be a natural
movement towards perfection. For some of my readers such arguments as
these are perhaps too much in the air to be convincing. Well, then,
let us appeal to experience. Let us see what the systematic
cultivation of his natural faculties has done for the child in
Utopia. I have already pointed out that the unselfishness of the
children--the complete absence of self-seeking and self-assertion--is
one of the most noticeable features of the life of their school. Now
there is no place for moral teaching on the time-table of the
school: and I can say without hesitation that the direct inculcation
of morality is wholly foreign to Egeria's conception of education.
How, then, has the emancipation of the child from the first enemy of
Man's well-being--from all those narrowing, hardening, and
demoralising influences which we speak of collectively as egoistic or
selfish--been effected in Utopia? By no other means than that of
allowing the child's nature to unfold itself, on many sides of its
being and under thoroughly favourable conditions. The twofold desire
which we all experience,--to accept and rest in the ordinary
undeveloped self, and at the same time to exalt and magnify it,--is
the surest and most fruitful source of moral evil. Indeed, it may be
doubted if there is any source of moral evil, apart from those which
are purely sensual, which has not at least an underground connection
with this. If we are to "cap" this deadly fountain, and so prevent it
from desolating human life, we must realise, once and for all, that
the two de