Lewistown gazette. [volume] (Lewistown, Pa.) 1843-1944, 1864-12-14
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On Understanding Things.


sir, your creed will be the shortest of any
persons | know answered the gentleman
b whom he spoke, to the silencing, it is to
be hoped, of the shallow prater.
Bot such persons we continually meet,
and it seems to me very often among
teachers at least, often see at teachers
associations or institutes those who say
Teach nothing you can not make the pu-
pill understand; and | suppose they be-
lieve this and then the above reply comes
TO my mind AS lie out here upon the
grass this bright afternoon, under the
shade of this large apple-tree, and almost
conceive that hear the springing of the
grass and the growing of the corn, | find
nay powers OF understanding limited; and
/ must suppose those of the child to be
so also. can not with all my study un-
derstand how the grass grows from its tiny
seed, or the tree puts forth leaf and bud
and blossom, and loads itself with fruit
The botanist tells me, indeed, of germina
tion-the radicale, the piumure,-and, 60
ing into chemistry, Of starch and sugar
and diastase, and of certain conditions
necessary; but all these only talk about
tie thing, and do not tell the thing itself.
| see this little ant, laborously and busily
dragging along dead fly, so much larger
than itself that its efforts seem preposterous,
and | question it OF its life, and of the life
that but now animated the mass it is drag.
ging homeward, but can get no response.
Kirby aud Spence are equally at fault with
the veriest infant. The former may indeed
tell me more facts, but of reasons they and
we are alike ignorant. | am hungry, and
l ask for food; but the wisest Psychologist
can not tell me why that satisfies the desire,
nor how the mysterious life that feel
throbbing within me is kept up by it. In
his long discourse about chyme and chyle,
and lacteals and blood, | detect only igno-
rance and not wisdom. turn away to hide
my face from the rays Of the sun that have
at last pierced my leafy screen, and | ques-
ton the astronomer about that orb that
with its silent influence binds unto itself
this earth, and moons, and planets, and |
hear of attraction, and centrifugal and Gen.
tripetal forces, etc, etc but the reason is
still not given, and | am still unsatis6ed.
And so in all sciences find that we have
at last to rest satisfied that certain things
are facts, and never go beyond them. Per.
hsps in that higher and perfect manhood,
TO which this earth-life is the childhood,
We may understand more of these things;
but even there [ think we shall still find
God unsearchable and his ways past finding
out
Now it seems to me that this very pratt
ing about understanding things, which is
all very well in due time and season, is
really at the bottom of good deal of the
shallowness Of our day. Do not teach
child what it can not understand seems
very plausible; but alas! in the endeayor
to get things down to the chiId's compre-
hension the life is all taken out of them,
aud what can be comprehended is so uery
small And so the poor teacher, and the
poorer parent, and the still poorer pupil,
think that certain study has been finished,
merely because most crude and bare out
line has been gone through with
viii you have your bread mummed
(mumbled, } or crumbed? asked toothless
old lady near the White Mountains of
traveller, who had called aud requested
bowl of bread, and milk The traveller, to
whom mumbling was new, choose that :;
but conceive his horror when she be-
gan to chew his bread for him and drop it
into the milk So it seems to me with too
much of the mental food of TO- day: we
try to get it too soft and too easy of masti
cation, forgetting that God has given teeth
for their appropriate work. In other words,
believe that, although due explanation
should be given of such things as the child
can comprehend, it should often be required
to study that which it can not as yet un-
derstand; and by persistent effort fix in the
memory that which future years alone will
enable it to see the value and use of, and
to understand if at all. / am sick of see
ing philosophers running around in short
jackets and pantslets. 1t doesn't accord
with my idea of the fitness of things. |
have seen this, that the 6rst and most
necessary thing for the child to learn is the
due acknowledgement of authority, parental
and all The parent who never REQUIRES
the child to obey unless he can see the
reasonableness of the requirement will soon
find himself in the dilemma to which
reverend friend--now, alas, prisoner in
the land of Dixie found himself reduced
His son Ned was to be reasoned with ALWAYS:
but at last he found that Ned had no idea
of obeying unless he was beaten in argu.
ment, and that he was pretty skillfui in
finding reasons to support his side, and so
tha. he didn't mind at all. Now my friend
was a man of sense, and when he found he
must either give up his pet theory or ruin
his boy he chose the former; and thence.
forward Ned obeyed because his father told
him to, not because he saw the reasonable.
ness of it. But I am rambling on to a
great extent.
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