American essays -- 20th century; Child development; Children; Education
The new ideals of the parenthood, education, romance, are now being
introduced and promulgated by pioneers long since emerged from the old
litter and humus. Education will mean first of all a turning for power
to the Unseen. The quest of the Swan and the Star and the Beloved, are
never carried along on the levels and inequalities of the earth--always
the uplifted face for the saint and the sage and the seer. Great
parents kneel beside their children and beg to be delivered from the
heaviness which holds them to the dim shadows, where the child sees
face to face. Education will mean finding his intrinsic task for the
child--the intensive cultivation of the human spirit from the Soul
outward, not alone from the brain inward.
The quest of the passing age was for Gold. The real meaning and
symbol and glory of gold, as the highest, smoothest and most finished
of minerals, has been lost in the bulkier products and possessions
it meant to measure and signify. More and more has gold itself hid
away from vulgar hands and been represented by objects intrinsically
inferior. We now behold a civilisation destroying itself for
commodities and destroying the commodities for which the destruction
began.
Gold itself will serve Beauty in the coming age; commerce will serve
æsthetics. The lovers of Beauty begin with the sand, with the clay.
They love nature from the ground up; they are fervent for light and
air, for sun and sky and water, for fruits and grains and bees, for
stars and rains and romances. They say such things are holy. Words are
inadequate for their loves and appreciations. They find the ways to
love God infinite. They see Him in stone and stream; they see Him in
the eyes of the deep down men; they see Him risen and inevitable in the
eyes of their lovers....
Straight goodness will not do for the New Race, nor straight
intellectuality. Artists, singers, painters and idealists will be the
heroes of the generations to come, for they will add the quest of
Beauty to the unwashed goodness of the saints and pilgrims.
These are but flaring points; one is embarrassed in short space because
of a myriad things to say. Free verse is a sign of the New, also the
dream of a free world and the planetary patriotism. The immanence of
the _spirit_ of all things, is a sign; the sense of the underlying
oneness of humanity; not alone the Fatherland, but the Kinterland,
where new Fountains are established and sages and masters come for
inspiration--all these, like a passing train of wonder, a glimpse of
many cars....
I think I can bring the picture in closer by using a few pages of work
from one of the young men with me. His name is Steve. I called him The
Dakotan,[1] in the book, _Child and Country_. We've romped and ridden
together for three years, and I've known Steve better every day--still
far from the end. The rest of the chapter is Steve's writing:
[1] H.A. Sturtzel.
NORTH AMERICANS
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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