Chastity––For Chastity we can have no impulse higher than ‘Your bodies are the temples of the Holy Ghost’; but how inadequately do we present the thought! The inspiring ideas which should sustain all physical culture and training are very numerous, and teaching on such subjects as Chastity, Fortitude, Courage, Constancy, Prudence, Temperance, with the consideration of heroic examples, should strengthen the hands of parents and teachers for the better physical culture of their charges. Parents would do well to see to it that they turn out their children fit for service, not only by observing the necessary hygienic conditions, but by bringing their bodies under rule, training them in habits and inspiring them with the ideas of knightly service.
Prudence.––Prudence, too, is a condition of knightly service, whether to our kind or to our kin, and courage without prudence is recklessness; but, in this connection of bodily service, prudence is largely concerned with the duty of health, I have heard of a boy at a school where a good deal of hygienic teaching was given, getting quite anxious and overcharged with the care of his own health. This meaner kind of caution is not worthy to be called prudence, which should regard every physical power as a means of service and of conflict, and should think it a shame by any fool-hardiness to make any part of the body unable for its due service.
Service.––Service is another knightly quality which a child should be nerved for by heroic examples until he grudges to let slip an opportunity.
Courage.––Courage, too, should be something more than the impulse of the moment; it is a natural fire to be fed by heroic example and by the teaching that the thing to be done is always of more consequence than the doer.
Fortitude.––Touch the right spring and children are capable of an amazing amount of steady effort. I know a little boy of ten who set himself the task of a solitary race of three miles every day in the hot summer holidays because he was to compete in a race when he went back to school; and this, not because he cared much about sports, but because his eldest brother had always distinguished himself in them, and he must do the same. When we think how little power we have to do the tiresome things we set ourselves to do every day, we appreciate the compelling power a child can use, given a strong enough impulse. The long name, Fortitude, would have its effect on the little boy in the dentist’s hands. It is good to know that it is a manly and knightly virtue to be strong to bear pain and inconvenience without making any sign. The story of the Spartan boy and the fox will still wake an echo; and the girl who finds it a fine thing to endure hardness will not make a fuss about her physical sensations. She will be pained for the want of fortitude which called the reproof, ‘Could ye not watch with me one hour?’ and will brace herself to bear, that she may able to serve. Portia, the wife of Brutus, gave a fair test of her quality when she wounded her tender flesh to prove that she was fit to share her husband’s counsels.
Stimulating Ideas.––A habit becomes morally binding in proportion to the inspiring power of the idea which underlies it. When I was a child I used to have a book full of moral aphorisms from the Greek and Latin classics, translated. These fine rolling sentences, full of matter, made, I recollect, a great impression on me; and one can understand that the Greek or Roman boy, brought up on this strong meat, developed virtues in regard to which we are a little slack. In like manner the early Church personified and typified in a thousand ways the three evangelical and four cardinal virtues and the opposing seven deadly sins. We shall have to revive this kind of teaching if we would have children undertake the labour of the discipline of habit, a discipline that we can do no more than initiate.
Quick Perception.––Closely connected with that alertness is the habit of quick perception as to all that is to be seen, heard, felt, tasted, smelt in a world gives illimitable information through our five gateways of knowledge. Mr. Grant, in his most interesting studies of Neapolitan character, describes the training of a young Camorrist (the Camorra is dangerous political faction; and, ill as we may of the ends of such training, the means are worth recording). “The great object of this of his training was to teach him to observe habitually with minuteness and accuracy, and it was conducted in something like the following manner. When walking through the city the Camorrist would suddenly pause and ask, ‘How was the woman dressed who sat at the door of the fourth house in last street?’ or, ‘What were the two men talking about whom we met at the corner of the last street but three?’ or, ‘Where was cab 234 ordered to drive to?’ or perhaps it would be, ‘What is the height of that house and the breadth of its upper window?’ or ‘Where does that man live?”‘ This habit, again largely a physical habit, of quick perception has been dwelt upon in other aspects. All that now need be urged is that the quickness of observation natural to a child should not be relied upon; in time, and especially as school studies press upon him, his early quickness deserts the boy, but the trained habit of seeing all that is to be seen, hearing all that is to be heard, remains through life. I have not space to go further into these habitudes of body, which become also, mental and moral habitudes, but perhaps reading and reflection and direct teaching on such subjects as the following would be useful:
Self-control in emergencies.
Self-restraint in indulgences.
Self-discipline in habits.
Alertness to seize opportunities.
Promptness and vigour in bodily exercises.
Quick perception as to that which is to be seen, heard, felt, tasted, smelt.
Alertness.––Many a good man and woman thinks regretfully of the opportunities in life they have let slip through a certain physical inertness. They missed the chance of doing some little service, or some piece of courtesy, because they did not see in time. It is well to bring up children to think it is rather a sad failure if they miss a chance of going a message, opening a door, carrying a parcel, any small act of service that presents itself. They should be taught to be equally alert to seize opportunities of getting knowledge; it is the nature of children to regard each grown-up person they meet as a fount of knowledge on some particular subject; let their training keep up the habit of eager inquiry. Success in life depends largely upon the cultivation of alertness to seize opportunities, and this is largely a physical habit. We all know how opportunity is imaged––a figure flying past so rapidly that there is no means of catching him but, in advance, by the forelock which overhangs his brow.
Local Habits.––The fact that habits have a tendency to become local, that in one house a child will be neat, prompt, diligent; in another untidy, dawdling, and idle, points to the necessity for self-discipline on the part of even a young child.
”Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,
These three alone lead life to sovereign power.”
This subject of training in becoming habits is so well understood amongst us that I need only add that such habits are not fully formed so long as supervision is necessary. At first, a child wants the support of constant supervision, but, by degrees, he is left to do the thing he ought of his own accord. Habits of behaviour; habits of deportment, habits of address, tones of voice, etc., all the habits of a gentleman-like bearing and a kind and courteous manner, fall under this head of self-discipline in bodily habits.
”When first thou camest––such a courtesy
Spake through the limbs and in the voice––I knew
For one of those who eat in Arthur’s hall.”
Self-discipline.––The discipline of habit is never complete until it becomes self-discipline in habits. It is not a trifle that even the nursery child messes his feeder, spills his milk, breaks his playthings, dawdles about his small efforts. The well-trained child delights to bring himself into good habits in these respects. He knows that to be cleanly, neat, prompt, orderly, is so much towards making a man of him, and man and hero are in his thought synonymous terms. Supposing that good habits have not been set up at home, parents look to school life to supply the omission; but the habits practised in school and relaxed at home, because ‘it’s holidays now, you know,’ do not really become habits of the life.
Self-control.––Self-control in emergencies is another habit of the disciplined life in which a child should be trained from the first; it is the outcome of a general habit of self-control. We all see how ice accidents, boat accidents, disasters by fire (like a late melancholy event in Paris), might be minimised in their effects if only one person present were under perfect self-control, which implies the power of organising and controlling others. But the habit of holding oneself well in hand, the being impervious to small annoyances, cheerful under small inconveniences, ready for action with what is called ‘presence of mind’ in all the little casualties of the hour––this is a habit which should be trained in the nursery. If children were sent into the world with this part of their panoply complete, we should no longer have the spectacle of the choleric Briton and of the nervous and fussy British lady at every foreign doûane; people would not jostle for the best places at a public function; the mistresses of houses would not be fretted and worn out by the misdoings of their maids; the thousand little sorenesses of social life would be soothed, if children were trained to bear little hurts body and mind without sign. ‘If you are vexed, don’t show it,’ is usually quite safe teaching, because every kind of fretfulness, impatience, resentfulness, nervous irritability generally, grows with expression and passes away under self-control. It is worth while to remember that the physical signs promote mental state just as much as the mental state causes the physical signs.