A Dominie in Doubt Part 20
"Yea, man!" said Willie Simpson, the joiner and undertaker from Tillymains.
"So there's no muckle chance o' you getting ane, Willie," said Dauvit.
The joiner smoked thoughtfully for a while.
"Na, Dauvit," he said, "there's little chance o' an undertaker gettin' a t.i.tle. You would think na that the man that coffined the likes o' Lloyd George wud get a knighthood."
Dauvit cackled.
"Honours are sold, as Jake says; they are never given for public services."
I am afraid the joke was lost on most of the a.s.sembly. Jake failed to see it. It is said that Jake has been known to laugh at a joke only once, and that was when the earth gave way beneath the minister's feet when he was conducting a service at a grave-side, and he fell into the open grave.
"Undertakin'," continued the joiner, "is a verra queer trade."
Jake shivered.
"I dinna ken how ye can do it," he said; "man, it wud gie me the scunners."
"Man, ye soon get accustomed to it," said the joiner. "Of course, it has its limitations; ye canna verra weel advertise in the front page o' _The Daily Mail_, but, man, it's what ye micht call a safe trade."
"How safe?" I asked.
"Oh, ye never need to worry aboot yer custom; it's aye there. Noo in other lines the laws o' supply and demand are tricky. I mind a gey puckle years syne there was a craze for walkin'-sticks wi' ebony handles.
Weel, I went doon to Dundee and bocht ten pund worth o' ebony, and afore the wood was delivered the fashion had changed, and the men were all buyin' cheese-cutter bonnets, so here was I left wi' ten pund worth o'
ebony on my hands . . . and if I hadna sold it to Davie Lamb the cabinet-maker for thirteen pund I micht ha' lost the money. Noo, in my trade there's no sudden change o' fashion as ye micht say; the demand is what ye micht call constant, and that's what makes me say it is a safe trade."
Dauvit winked to me surrept.i.tiously.
"Noo, joiner," he said, "will ye tell me wan thing? I want to ken the inner workin's o' an undertakker's mind. When somebody is verra ill, what's your att.i.tude? I mean to say, do ye sort o' look on the illness wi' hope or what? When ye see a fine set-up man on the road, do ye look at him wi' a professional eye and say to yersell: 'Sax feet by twa; a bonny corp!'?"
"I'm no so bad as that, Dauvit," he laughed, "though I dinna mind sayin'
that I've sometimes been a wee bit disappointed when somebody got better.
On the other hand, when big Tamson was badly, I keepit prayin' that he wud get better."
"An unbusinesslike thing to do," I laughed.
"Aweel," said the joiner, "big Tamson weighed aboot saxteen stone, and at the time I hadna the wood."
"I dinna like to hear aboot things like that," said Jake Tosh nervously; "things like that give me the creeps, and besides it's no a proper way to speak."
Dauvit turned to me.
"Man, dominie, it's a queer thing, but the more religious a man is the less he likes to hear aboot death. Jake here is an elder o' the auld kirk; he's on the straight and narrow path; he's going straight to heaven when he dees . . . and I never saw onybody so feared o' death as Jake is.
How wud ye explain that?"
"I think," I replied, "that it is due to the fact that Jake has been brought up in the fear of the Lord."
"Exactly," nodded Dauvit. "It's my belief that most religious fowk are religious not becos they want specially to play harps in the next world, but becos they dinna want to be roasted."
Dauvit's philosophy comes pretty near that of Edmond Holmes. In _What Is and What Might Be_ Holmes argues that our education system is founded on the Old Testament. Man is a sinner, p.r.o.ne to evil; a stern angry G.o.d chastises him when he transgresses. Education treats children as sinners; it punishes the wrongdoer. I believe Holmes is right, only he does not trace back education far enough. The G.o.d of the Old Testament was a man-made G.o.d (Jung says that man makes his G.o.d in his own image; his G.o.d is his ego-ideal).
The genesis of education is not the G.o.d of the Old Testament; it is the unconscious wish of the primitive men who invented that G.o.d. The religion of the Old Testament is a father complex religion; G.o.d is the hated and feared father, the authority who punishes, the provider of food and clothing, the maker of laws. Authority always makes the governed inferior and dependent; the man with a father complex cannot stand alone; he must always flee to his father or father subst.i.tute when he meets a difficulty. Thus does the Christian act; he seeks the Father; he places his burden on the Lord; he avoids responsibility. The Hebraic religion and our modern education both demand that the individual shall avoid responsibility; the good Christian and the good schoolboy must obey the Law. I think that if the world is to be free the church and the school must aim at breaking the power of the Father.
"Look here, Mac," I said last night, "I am going to pay you for my board."
Mac protested vigorously.
"You'll do nothing of the kind," he said firmly.
I went to the kitchen and made the offer to his wife, and she also protested.
This morning I cycled to Dundee and bought a knife-cleaner and a vacuum cleaner. They arrived to-night, and Mrs. Mac gave a gasp of delight.
Mac tried to frown, but he could not manage it. Both protested against what they called my idiotic kindness, but their protests were half-hearted.
It is a strange thing that money itself is considered a sordid thing.
Why should Mac refuse five pounds with anger, and accept a ten pound gift with pleasure? If anyone wants to study the psychological meaning of money I recommend Chapter XL. in Dr. Ernest Jones' _Psycho-a.n.a.lysis_. In the unconscious, at any rate, money is a.s.suredly "filthy lucre."
A teacher should know very little about the subject he professes to teach. In my London school I succeeded a line of excellent teachers of drawing. I had not been long in the school when Di, aged 15, looked over my shoulder one day and said: "Rotten! You can't draw for nuts!"
A week later Malcolm looked at a water colour of mine.
"You've got a horrible sense of colour," he said brightly.
Then I began to wonder why everyone in school was much more keen on drawing and painting than they had ever been in the days of the skilled teachers. The conclusion I came to was that my bad drawing encouraged the children. I remembered the beautiful copy-book headlines of my boyhood, and I recalled the hopelessness of ever reaching the standard set by the lithographers. No child should have perfection put before him. The teacher should never try to teach; he should work alongside the children; he should be a co-worker, not a model.
Most teachers set themselves on a pedestal. They think that they lose dignity if they are not able to answer every question that a child puts to them. One result is that the child develops a dangerous inferiority complex. I knew one boy who was a duffer at mathematics. His weakness was due to the inferiority he felt when he saw the learned mathematical master juggle with figures as easily as a conjurer juggles with billiard b.a.l.l.s. The little chap lost all hope, and when he worked problems he worked solely to escape punishment.
The difficulty is that if a teacher works at a subject year after year he is bound to become an expert. The only remedy I can think of is to make each teacher take up a new subject at the beginning of every school year.
By the time that he had been master of Mathematics, History, Drawing, English, French, German, Latin, Geography, Chemistry, Physics, Psychology, Physiology, Eurhythmics, Music, Woodwork, it would be time to retire . . . with a pension or a psychosis. The late Sir William Osier said that a man was too old at forty; my experience leads me to conclude that many a teacher is too old at twenty.
I sometimes think that every man has a certain definite psychic age fixed for him by the Almighty before he is born. I know a man of seventy who is psychically five years old, and he will never grow older. I know a boy of ten who is psychically sixty years old, and he will never grow younger.
Psycho-a.n.a.lysis is doing a lot of good, but I fear that it may do a lot of harm, for, one fine day Professor Freud or Dr. Jung will get hold of Peter Pan, take him by the back of the neck, and say: "My lad, you've got a fixation somewhere; you are the super-regression-to-the-infantile specimen; you've got to be a.n.a.lysed." And then Peter will grow up and read _The Daily News_ and own an allotment and a season ticket.
When we know all about psychology, the world will be rather dull. The Freudians have said that the play of _Hamlet_ is the result of Shakespeare's Oedipus Complex. If Shakespeare had not had an unconscious hatred of his father, _Hamlet_ would never have been written. In other words, if Bacon had discovered the psychology of the unconscious, Shakespeare might have been a.n.a.lysed and forthwith might have gone in for keeping bees instead of writing plays.
It is the neurotic who leads the world; he is a rebel and he is an idealist. Yet when you a.n.a.lyse him you find what a poor devil he is.
His n.o.ble crusade against vivisection is due to the abnormal strain of cruelty he is repressing in himself; his pa.s.sion for Socialism comes from his infant fear of and rebellion against his father. The ardent suffragette who smashes windows in a just cause is merely doing so because the vote is a symbol of freedom from an arrogant husband.
What I want to know is this: In the year 5000, when everyone is free from repressions and suppressions, will there be any rebels to spur humanity on? But then if humanity is free from unconscious urges there will be no need for rebels, for there will be no crime or prison or wars or politicians. Every man will be a superman.
I firmly believe that Freud's discovery will have a greater influence on the evolution of humanity than any discovery of the last ten centuries.
Freud has begun the road that leads to superman, and, although Jung and Adler and others have begun to lead sideroads off the main track, the sideroads are all leading forward. Theirs is a great message of hope.