eans of answering
it rightly. If, for instance, we were to see men fighting over a piece
of bread, we might say: "How bad men are!" If, on the other hand, we
entered a well-warmed eating-house, and saw them quietly finding a
place and choosing their meal without any envy of one another, we
might say: "How good men are!" Evidently, the question of absolute
good and evil, intuitive ideas of which guide us in our superficial
judgment, goes beyond such limitations as these. We can, for instance,
provide excellent eating-houses for an entire people without directly
affecting the question of their morals. One might say, indeed, that to
judge by appearances, a well-fed people are _better, quieter, and
commit less crime_ than a nation that is ill-nourished; but whoever
draws from that the conclusion that to make men good it is _enough_ to
feed them, will be making an obvious mistake.
It cannot be denied, however, that _nourishment_ will be an essential
factor in obtaining goodness, in the sense that it will _eliminate_
all the _evil acts, and the bitterness_ caused by lack of bread.
Now, in our case, we are dealing with a far deeper need--the
nourishment of man's inner life, and of his higher functions. The
bread that we are dealing with is the bread of the spirit, and we are
entering into the difficult subject of the satisfaction of man's
psychic needs.
We have already obtained a most interesting result, in that we have
found it possible to present _new means_ of enabling children to reach
a higher level of calm and goodness, and we have been able to
establish these means by experience. The whole foundation of our
results rests upon these means which we have discovered, and which may
be divided under two heads--the _organization of work_, and liberty.
It is the perfect organization of work, permitting the possibility of
self-development and giving outlet for the energies, which procures
for each child the beneficial and calming _satisfaction_. And it is
under such conditions of work that liberty leads to a perfecting of
the activities, and to the attainment of a fine discipline which is in
itself the result of that new quality of _calmness_ that has been
developed in the child.
Freedom without organization of work would be useless. The child left
_free_ without means of work would go to waste, just as a new-born
baby, if _left free_ without nourishment, would die of starvation.
_The organization of the work_, theref
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