A Full Life: The Works of Charlotte Mason

CHAPTER XVIII - SENSATIONS AND FEELINGS

Feelings Educable by Parents

1. What do you understand by reflected sensations?
2. Show that we have here a reason why open-air memories should be stored.
3. Show that delightful memories are a source of bodily well-being.
4. And of mental restoration.
5. Distinguish between sensations and feelings.
6. Show that feelings should be objective, not subjective.
7. Show what the feelings are and are not.
8. Show that every feeling has its positive and its negative mode.
9. Are the feelings moral or immoral?
10. Show the connection between unremembered feelings and acts.
11. Certain trifling acts may be ‘the best portion of a good man’s life.’ Why so?
12. Is perception of character a feeling?
13. Show its delicacy and importance.
14. Show how feelings influence conduct.
15. Discuss enthusiasm.
16. Give the genesis of our activities.
17. Show that in educating the feelings we modify the character.

18. What is to be said of the sixth sense of tact?
19. Why must we beware of words?
20. How is a feeling communicated?
21. What feelings especially differentiate persons?
22. Show that to deal with the feelings of the young is a delicate task.

To Deal with the Feelings of the Young a Delicate Task––There is only one case in which the feelings may not have free play, and that is when they reflect the consciousness of the ego. What are commonly called sensitive feelings––that is, susceptibility for oneself and about oneself, readiness to perceive neglect or slight, condemnation or approbation––through belonging to a fine and delicate character, are in themselves of less worthy order, and require very careful direction lest morbid conditions should be set up. To ignore wisely is an art, and the girl who craves to know what you thought of her when she said this or did the other, need not be told brutally that you did not think of her at all; it is quite enough for her to perceive that your regard is fixed upon something impersonal both to her and you; she takes the hint and looks away from herself, and nothing is said to cause her pain. It appears to be an immutable law that our feelings, as our sensations, must find their occupation in things without; the moment they are turned in upon themselves harm is done. The task of dealing with the susceptibilities of young people is one of the most delicate that falls to us elders, whether we be parents or friends. Undiscriminating sympathy is very perilous, and bluntness of perception is very damaging; we are between Scylla and Charybdis, and must needs walk humbly and warily in this delicate work of dealing with the feelings of children and young people. Our only safeguard is to cherish in ourselves ‘the soft, meek, tender soul,’ sensitive to the touch of God, and able to deal in soft, meek, tender ways with children, beings of fine and delicate mould as they are.

Persons are Differentiated by their Powers of Appreciation or Depreciation––An appreciative habit of feeling is a cause of tranquil joy to its possessor, and of ease and contentment to the people connected with him. A depreciative habit, on the contrary, though it affords a little pleasurable excitement because it ministers to the vanity of the ego (I dislike this person or this thing, therefore I know better or am better than others), disturbs tranquillity and puts the person out of harmony with himself and with his surroundings; no stable joy comes of depreciation. But even in dealing with feelings of class we must remember that tact, sympathy and communicable feeling are our only implements; feelings are not thoughts to be reasoned down; they are neither moral nor immoral to challenge our praise or our blame; we cannot be too reticent in our dealings with them in children, nor too watchfully aware that the least inadvertence may bruise some tender blossom of feeling.

Some Danger in Persiflage––This is the risk which attends the habit of persiflage and banter in family talk; a little is thoroughly good and whole some, but this kind of play should be used with very great tact, especially by the elders. Children understand each other so well that there is far less risk of hurt feelings from the tormenting schoolboy than from the more considerate elder.

A Feeling is Communicated by Sympathy––The sense of spiritual touch is our only guide in this region of the feelings, but with this alone we may tune the spirits of the children to great issues, believing that they are capable of all things great. We wish them to revere. Now, reverence is a feeling before it becomes a thought or an act, and it is a communicable feeling, but communicable, like the light of a torch, only by contact. The sentiment of reverence fills our own souls when we see a bird on its nest, an old man at his cottage door, a church in which have centred the aspirations of a village for many an age; we feel, and the children feel our feeling, and they feel too; a feeling is communicated by sympathy, but perhaps in no other way. The ignoble habit of depreciation is in the first place a feeling. It is quite easy to put the children into that other attitude of feeling called forth by the fitness and goodness of the thing regarded, and we all know that it is easy to appreciate or depreciate the same thing. These two feelings alone illustrate the importance of the delicate culture we have in view, for among the minor notes of character none tend more to differentiate persons than this of perceiving cause of satisfaction in an object or a person, or of perceiving cause of dissatisfaction in the same object or person.

The Sixth Sense of Tact––The instrument to be employed in this culture is always the same––the blessed sixth sense of Tact. It is possible to call up the feeling one desires by a look, a gesture; to dissipate it entirely by the rudeness of a spoken word. Our silence, our sympathy, our perception, give place and play to fit feelings, and, equally, discourage and cause to slink away ashamed the feeling which should not have place.

Beware of Words––But let us beware of words; let us use our eyes and our imagination in dealing with the young; let us see what they are feeling and help them by the flow of our responsive feeling. But words, even words of praise and tenderness, touch this delicate bloom of nature as with a hot finger, and behold! it is gone. Let us consider carefully what feelings we wish to stimulate, and what feelings we wish to repress in our children, and then, having made up our minds, let us say nothing. We all know the shrinking, as of a sore place, with which children receive some well-meant word from a tactless friend.

In Educating the Feelings we Modify the Character––But our feelings, as our thoughts, depend upon what we are; we feel in all things as ’tis our nature to,’ and the point to be noticed is that our feelings are educable, and that in educating the feelings we modify the character. A pressing danger our day is that the delicate task of educating shall be exchanged for the much simpler one of blunting the feelings. This is the almost inevitable result of a system where training is given en masse; but not the necessary result, because the tone of feeling of a headmaster or mistress is almost with certainty conveyed, more or less, to a whole school. Still, perhaps, the perfect bloom of the feelings can only be preserved under quite judicious individual culture, and, therefore, necessarily devolves upon parents!

The Orator Plays upon Feelings––The orator plays, by preference, upon the gamut of the feelings. He throws in arguments by the way; brightens his discourse with graphic word-picture, metaphor, simile; for his final effect he relies upon the impression has been able to make upon the feelings of audience, and the event proves him to be right.

Enthusiasm––Not only our little nameless acts, but the great purposes of our lives, arise out of our feelings. Enthusiasm itself is not thought, though it arises when we are

     ’stung with the rapture of a sudden thought’;

it is a glowing, malleable condition of the forces of our nature, during which all things are possible to us, and we only wait for a lead. Enthusiasm in its earliest stage is inconsequent, incoherent, devoid of purpose, and yet is the state out of which all the great purposes of life shape themselves. We feel, we think, we say, we do; this is the genesis of most of our activities.

The Perception of Character one of our Finest Feelings––Here is another aspect of the feelings, of very great importance to us who have the education of children.

     ’I do not like you, Doctor Fell,
     The reason why I cannot tell,’

is a feeling we all know well enough, and is, in fact, that intuitive perception of character––one of our finest feelings and best guides in life––which is too apt to be hammered out of us by the constant effort to beat down our sensibilities to the explicit and definite. One wonders why people complain of faithless friends, untrustworthy servants, and disappointed affections. If the feelings were retained in truth and simplicity, there is little doubt that they would afford for each of us such a touchstone of character in the persons we come in contact with, that we should be saved from making exigeant demands on the one hand, and from suffering disappointment on the other.

These Trifling Acts the Best Portion of a Good Man’s Life––Nameless as they are, the poet does not hesitate to rank these trifling acts as the ‘best portion of a good man’s life.’ But it is only out of the good man’s heart that these good issues come, because, as we have said, the feelings are not in themselves moral; they act upon that which is there, and the point brought before us is, that the influence of the feelings is, at the same time, powerful and indirect. Why should the recollection of Tintern Abbey cause a good man to do some little kind thing? We can only give the ultimate answer that ‘God has made us so,’ that a feeling of even unremembered pleasure prompts the good man to give forth out of the good treasure of his heart in kindness and in love. We have but to think of the outcome of feelings at the negative pole to convince us of the nice exactitude of the poet’s psychology. Suppose, that we are not exactly displeased, but unpleased, dull, not quickened by any feeling of pleasure: let us ask ourselves if; in this condition of our feelings, we are prompted to any outpouring of love and kindness upon our neighbours.

Connection between Unremembered Feelings and Acts––Even the feeling of ‘unremembered pleasure’––for it is possible to have the spring of association touched so lightly that one recovers the feeling of former pleasure without recovering the sensation, or the image which produced the sensation, but only just the vague feeling of the pleasure, as when one hears the word ‘Lohengrin’ and does not wait, as it were, to recover the sensation of musical delight, but just catches a waft of the pleasure which the sensation brought––the feeling of unremembered pleasure, intangible, indefinite, as it is, produces that glow of the heart which warms a good man to ‘acts of kindness and of love,’ as little, as nameless, and as unremembered as the feelings out of which they spring.