and the so-called Montessori school, nursery and kindergarten schools for children from 3 to 6. But today, as then, the most important part of education is considered to be university education, because from the university come the people who have best cultivated that part of man’s mind which we call intelligence. Now that the psychologists have come to study life, there is a tendency to go to the other extreme, and there are other people besides me who say that the most important part of life is not the university, but the first period the period that extends from to 6 years, because it is during this first period that intelligence, the great instrument of man, is formed; and not only intelligence, but the whole of the psychic faculties are constructed during this period. This has made a great impression upon all who have had any sensibility towards psychic life. Today many meditate upon the small child; upon the new-born, and the one year old, who create the personality of man; and they feel the same emotion, the same deep impression as those who in olden times used to meditate upon death. What is it that takes place when death comes? This is what attracted meditation and sentimentality in the past. Today a similar meditation is being carried out upon man who has just entered the world. This is a Man, this is the being who has been created with the highest and loftiest intelligence. Why is he to have such a long and painful infancy? No animal has a period of infancy so painful and so long. This is what attracts the attention of the thinkers. “What is it that takes place during this period?” they ask themselves.
Certainly it is a period of creation because before nothing existed, and then, a year or so after birth, the child knows everything. It is not as if a child were born with a little bit of intelligence, with a little bit of memory, with a little bit of will which after a while grows. There is nothing! Individuality starts from zero! It is not as though there were a little voice that later developed, as is the case, for instance, for the kitten, who at birth is able to mew even if imperfectly, or for the bird or the calf. Man is absolutely mute. The only means of expression he has is that of crying. In the case of the human being, it is not a question of development. It is a question of creation that starts from zero. If you do not exist, you cannot hope to grow. That is the tremendous step the child takes, the step that goes from nothing to something. We are not capable of it. Our mind is not capable of it.
A type of mind different from ours, endowed with different powers is necessary to accomplish this. And it is not a small creation that the child achieves. It is the creation of all. He creates not only the language, but the organs that make it possible for us to speak. Every physical movement he creates, every side of our intelligence. He creates all that the human mind, the human individual is endowed with. It is a tremendous achievement!
This is not done with a conscious mind. We are conscious; we have a will and if we want to learn something, we go about it. There is no consciousness in the small child, no will. For both consciousness and will have to be created. The child’s mind is not the type of mind we adults possess. If we call our type of mind the conscious type, that of the child is an unconscious mind. Now an unconscious mind does not mean an inferior mind. An unconscious mind can be full of intelligence. One will find this type of intelligence in every being and every insect has it. It is not a conscious intelligence even though sometimes it looks as if it were endowed with reason. It is of an unconscious type and while he is endowed with it the child performs his wonderful achievements. The child of one year has already seen all things that are in his environment and is capable of recognizing them.
How has he been able to take in this environment? This is due to one of the special characteristics that we have discovered in the child: a power of such intense sensitivity that the things which surround him in the environment awaken in him an intense interest and such a great enthusiasm that they seem to penetrate into his very life. The child takes all these impressions not with his mind, but with his life. The acquisition of language is the most evident example of this. How is it that the child acquires language? It is said that the child is endowed with the sense of hearing, that he hears the voice of the human being and thus he learns to speak. Let us admit this. It is a fact. Why, however, amongst all the millions of different sounds and noises that surround him, does he hear just the voice of man? If it is true that the child hears, and if it is true that he takes only the language of human beings, it means that the human language must have made a great impression on the child. These impressions must be so strong, they must cause such an intensity of feeling and such a great enthusiasm as to set in motion invisible fibers within the body that begin to vibrate in order to reproduce those sounds. We can compare it to something similar in ourselves. Sometimes one goes to a concert. After a while one begins to see rapt expressions on the faces of the public; heads and hands begin to move. What has brought them into movement if not the impressions caused by the music? Something similar must happen in the unconscious mind of the child. The voice causes such impressions that the impressions aroused in us by music seem almost non-existent in comparison. One can almost see these movements of the tongue that thrills, of the minute chords that tremble and of the cheeks, everything vibrating and becoming tense, preparing in silence to reproduce those sounds that have caused so much emotion in the unconscious mind. And how is it that the child acquires language in its exactness? It is so exactly and firmly acquired that this language forms part of his psychic personality, it is called his mother-tongue, and it is as clearly distinguished from all other languages that he may learn, as a set of false teeth may be distinguished from the natural set. How is it that these sounds which in the beginning have no meaning suddenly bring to his mind understanding, ideas? He has not merely taken in the words. He has taken ‘the sentence, the construction of the sentence.’ If we do not understand the construction of the sentence, we cannot understand language. If we say, for instance, “the glass is on the table” it is the order of the words that gives the sense. If one said to them, “glass the on is table” it would be difficult to get the idea. It is the sequence of words that we understand. The child has absorbed the constructions of the language.
The Absorbent Mind
How does it take place? It is said “he remembers these things,” but in order to remember, he has to have memory and he had no memory; he has still to construct it. He would have to have the power of reasoning in order to realize that the construction of a sentence is necessary in order to understand it. But he has no reasoning power. He has to construct it.
Our mind, such as it is, could not do it; to accomplish it a different type of mind is needed, and that is what the child possesses, a type of intelligence different from ours. We might say that we acquire with our intelligence, the child absorbs with his psychic life. The child merely by going on with his life, learns to speak the language belonging to his race. It is like a mental chemistry that takes place in the child. We are vessels; impressions pour in, and we remember and hold them in our mind, but we remain distinct from our impressions, as water remains distinct from the glass. The child undergoes a transformation. The impressions not only penetrate the mind of the child, but form it. They become incarnate. The child makes its own ‘mental flesh’ by using the things that are in his environment. We have called his type of mind “Absorbent Mind” It is difficult for us to conceive the powers of the absorbent mind of the small child, but certainly it is a privileged form of mind. If only it could continue, if only it persisted! Just think. The child is born and for some months he lies in his house. After a while he walks, goes around, does things and he enjoys himself, he is happy; he lives from day to day and by doing this he learns movements; language comes into his mind with all its constructions; the possibility of directing his movements to suit his life and many other things. Whatever is in his environment comes to be part of his mind: habits, customs, religion. Think how wonderful it would be if, while merely enjoying ourselves, merely by existing, just because we had such a type of mind, we could become doctors or lawyers or engineers. Think of it. Children learn the language with all the perfection or imperfection they find in their environment without going to school. How wonderful would it be if one could learn German merely by walking with a German. Instead how hard have we to work. Arid how much have we to study when we have to learn the different subjects.
Little by little the child becomes conscious of all the things, these form his consciousness. And so we see the path followed by the child. He acquires all unconsciously,
