The Moral and Religious Training of Children [pp. 26-48]

AMORAL AND RELIGIOUS TRAINING OF CHILDREVN. 33
This latter is mainly accomplished in religious training by avoiding the countless and tedious deviations, superstitions, and
errors which make up so large a part of the history of religion.
In a word, religion is the most generic kind of culture as opposed to all systems or departments which are one-sided. All
education culminates in it because it is the chief among human
interests, and because it gives inner unity to the' mind, heart,
and will.'
It only remains to be said that this common element of union,
alienation from and reunion with God, is first and most profound both logically and psychologically. The points of difference between sects, and perhaps to some extent between the
ethnic religions, have their justification in natural differences
of race, temperament, culture, and associative connections of
thought and feeling generally which are not developed in childhood. All differences of this sort should have a very subordinate place or none at all in the religious training of the young.
For a child to know more about matters that are peculiar to the
sects, or even to Protestantism as opposed to Catholicism, than
about the practical notions of religion itself would be as absurd
pedagogically as for a medical student to learn the fine points
of difference between the nativistic and empirical theories of
physiological optics before the fundamental structure of the
eye was understood. We are now ready to inquire how this
common element should be taught.
II. To be really effective and lasting, moral and religious
training must begin in the cradle. It was a profound remark of
Fr6bel, who, altho he could study only borrowed babies because
he had none of his own, has really seen further into the infant
soul than Darwin, Taine, Preyer, Kussmaul, or Romanes in their
babystudies, that the unconsciousness of a child is rest in God.
1 Cf., on this paragraph, Diesterweg, "Wegweiser zur Bildung fir Deutsche
Lehrer." 5te Auflage, I875. Bd. II. s. 3, et seq.
Th. Waitz, "Allgemeine Paidagogik." 2te Auflage, I875. Bd. II. s. 279-95.
Fr. Dittes, "Schule der Padagogik." I875. S. 432-53.
Ostermann, "Paidagogische Psychologie" (on Lotze's basis). I880. S. 6o, et
Ziller, "Allgemeine Paidagogik." I876. S. I53, et sed.
Schrader, "Erziehungs- u. Unterrichts-lehre," p. 306, et seq.-et a!.
3
.;-,q.