This is more from Spontaneous Activity in Education, 1917; Maria Montessori.

When we come to analyze good and evil positively, we feel that in reality much of the "evil" we theoretically deplore in individuals may be resolved into external causes. The depravity of the masses resolves itself into the combined effects of pauperism and drunkenness; crime into degeneration; the faults of children and scholars arise from the darkness of prejudice. But as these causes are not absolute and immutable, but are related to transitory states which may be altered, the ancient philosophic conception of evil resolves itself partially into so many social questions and actions. To give work and combat the drink habit—this it is which contributes largely to morality by removing so many causes of evil. To undertake the regeneration and education of the degenerate, is to combat crime, and therefore to promote morality.

Thus, if in schools the dense darkness of prejudice is the cause of innumerable moral ills, to reform the school by the help of natural principles will be the first step towards its moralization.

It is in this direction, then, that we must face the great question, not by analytical examination of the system of prizes and punishments, of the principle of emulation, of the most opportune and practical manner of inculcating moral principles, nor by the creation of new decalogues. That which we have hitherto regarded so lightly as a didactic problem is, on the contrary, a great and veritable social question.

When a moral problem is limited to the effects of preventable causes, it is merely apparent. Thus, for instance, let us imagine for a moment a populous quarter, where pauperism is rampant and the poor will fight for a piece of bread; where dirt, drinking-shops and civic neglect degrade the inhabitants; where all, men and women alike, give [Pg 322] way readily to vice. Our sole impression of such people at the moment is: "What wicked people!" On the other hand, let us take the modern quarter of an industrious city, where the houses of the people are hygienic, where the workpeople receive a fair remuneration for their labor, where popular theaters, conducted with a true sense of art, have taken the place of public-houses, and let us enter one of the restaurants where workpeople are enjoying their food in a quiet, civilized fashion; we should be inclined to say: "What good people!" But have they really become good? Those who ameliorated their social conditions were the good people. But the individuals who have benefited by their exertions "live better"; they are not, strictly speaking, "more meritorious" in the moral sense.

If they were, we should only need to imagine a society in which the economic problem had been solved, to behold men who have become "moral" solely in virtue of having been born in a different age. It is obvious that the moral question is a very different one; it is a question of life, a question of "nature," and one which cannot be solved by external eventualities. Men may be more or less fortunate, they may be born in more or less civilized surroundings, but they will always be men confronted by a "moral question," which goes down deeper than fortune or civilization.

It is very easy to be convinced that the so-called "naughtiness" of children is the expression of a "struggle for spiritual existence"; they want to make the men within them live, and we try to hinder them; we offer them the poisons of darkness and error. They fight for their spiritual bread as the poor fight for material bread; and degrade themselves by falling victims to our seductions just as the poor [Pg 323] degrade themselves by succumbing to the fascination of alcohol; and in this struggle and this degradation children have revealed themselves as the "poor" and "needy," neglected and destitute. None has ever demonstrated more clearly than they that "man does not live by bread alone," and that the "question of bread" is not the real "question of man." All the suffering, all the struggles, all the claims of society in the past with regard to bodily needs are repeated here with amazing clarity in connection with spiritual needs. Children want to grow, to perfect themselves, to nourish their intelligence, to develop their internal energies, to form their characters and to these ends they need to be liberated from slavery, and to conquer "the means of life." It is not enough to nourish their bodies: they are hungry for intellectual food; the clothes which protect their limbs from the cold are not enough for children: they demand the garments of strength and the ornaments of grace to protect and adorn the spirit. Why have we adults stifled these wants till we have almost come to believe that the economic question is the true solution of the problem of human life? And why have we never imagined that, even after such a solution, strife, anger, despair, and degradation might reappear as a result of higher desires left unsatisfied? Such strife, anger, despair and degradation we encounter continually in the children of to-day, who are nevertheless well fed, well clothed and well warmed, in accordance with the standards of perfected physical hygiene.

To respond to the intellectual needs of man in such a manner as to satisfy them is to make an important contribution to morality. Indeed our children, when they have been able to occupy themselves freely with intelligent work, and have also been free to respond to their internal wants, to occupy themselves for a long time with chosen [Pg 324] stimuli, to perform abstract operations when they were sufficiently mature, to concentrate their minds in meditation, have shown that order and serenity have been evolved within them; and after this, grace of movement, the capacity for enjoyment of the beautiful, sensibility to music, and finally, amenity in their relations to each other, have sprung up like a jet of water from an internal fount.

All this has been a work of "liberation." We have not made our children moral by any special means; we have not taught them to "overcome their caprices" and to sit quietly at work; we have not inculcated calm and order by exhorting them to follow the examples of others, and explaining how necessary order is to man; we have not lectured them on mutual courtesy, to instil the respect due to the work of others, and the patience with which they should wait in order not to infringe the rights of others. There has been none of all this; we have merely set the child free, and helped him to "live." It is he who has taught us "how" the child lives, and what other needs he has besides his material wants.

Thereupon an activity formerly unknown among little children, together with the virtues of industry, perseverance and patience, manifested themselves amidst crises of joy, in an atmosphere of habitual serenity. These children had entered upon the paths of peace. An obstacle hitherto opposed to nature had been removed.