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 PART 5: '
PART6: FURTHER RESOURCES R-1

CREDITS C-1
The Origins of From Three SUBJECT INDEX I-1
Modernity Modernities to One
17 50-1900 500 1914-Present 648

22. Patterns of Nation-States and
Culture in the Atlantic World,
1750-1871
502
23. Creoles and Caudi Ilos: Latin
America in the Nineteenth Century,
1790-1917
528
24. The Challenge of Modernity: East
Asia, 1750-1910
553
25. Adaptation and Resistance: The
Ottoman and Russian Empires,
1683-1908
576
26. Industrialization and Its
Discontents, 1750-1914
598
27. The New Imperial ism in the
Nineteenth Century, 1750-1914
624
28. World Wars and Competing Visions
of Modernity, 1900-1945
650
29. Reconstruction, Cold War, and
Deco Ion ization, 1945-1962
679
30. The End of the Cold War, Western
Social Transformation, and the
Developing World, 1963-1991
707
31. A Fragi le Capita list-Democratic
World Order, 1991-2017
732

••
Vil
 MAPS xv
STUDYING WITH MAPS XVII
PREFACE XVIII
NOTE ON DATES AND SPELLINGS XXVI
ABOUT THE AUTHORS XXVII

The Rise of Empires in the Americas 337

The Legacy of Teotihuacan and the Toltecs in Mesoamerica 338

Mi Iitarism in the Mexican Basin 338
Late Maya States in Yucatan 339
Chapter 15
600-1550 CE The Legacy of Tiwanaku and Wari in the Andes 341
The Expanding State of Tiwanaku 341
The Expanding City-State of Wari 343
Features:
Patterns Up Close: American Empires: Aztec and Inca Origins and Dominance 344
Human Sacrifice and The Aztec Empire of Mesoamerica 344
Propaganda 352 The Inca Empire of the Andes 346
Against the Grain:
Amazon Rain Forest Imperial Society and Culture 350
Civilizations 355 Imperial Capitals: Tenochtitlan and Cuzco 350
Power and Its Cultural Expressions 351

Putting It All Together 353

Interactions across the Globe

1450-1750 356

Western European Overseas Expansion

and the Ottoman-Habsburg Struggle 358
Chapter 16
1450-1650 The Muslim-Christian Competition in the
East and West, 1450-1600 359
Iberian Christian Expansion, 1415-1498 359
Rise of the Ottomans and Struggle with the Habsburgs
for Dominance, 1300-1609 363

Features: The Centralizing State: Origins and Interactions 371

Patterns Up Close: State Transformation, Money, and Firearms 371
Shipbuilding 364
Imperial Courts, Urban Festivities, and the Arts 374
Against the Grain:
Tilting at Windmills 379 The Ottoman Empire: Palaces, Festivities, and the Arts 374
The Spanish Habsburg Empire: Popular Festivities and the Arts 375

Putting It All Together 377

•••
VIII
 Chapter 17 The Renaissance, New Sciences,
1450-1750 and Religious Wars in Europe 380

Cultural Transformations: Renaissance, Baroque, and New Sciences 3 81

The Renaissance and Baroque Arts 381
Features: The New Sciences 383
Patterns Up Close: The New Sciences and Their Social Impact 386
Mapping the World 390 The New Sciences: Ph ilosophica l Interpretations 389
Against the Grain:
The Digger Movement 404 Centralizing States and Religious Upheavals 390
The Rise of Centra lized Kingdoms 390
The Protestant Reformation, State Churches, and Independent Congregations 393
Religious Wars and Political Restoration 395

Putting It All Together 403

Chapter 18 New Patterns in New Worlds: Colonialism and Indigenous

1500-1800 Responses in the Americas 406

The Colonial Americas: Europe's Warm-Weather Extension 407

Features: The Conquest of Mexico and Peru 407

Patterns Up Close: The Establishment of Colonial Institutions 411

The Columbian
Exchange 420
The Making of American Societies: Origins and Transformations 419
Exploitation of Mineral and Trop ica l Resources 419
Against the Grain:
Juana Ines de la Cruz 430 Social Strata, Castes, and Ethnic Groups 422
The Adaptation of the Americas to European Culture 426

Putting It All Together 428

Chapter 19 African Kingdoms, the Atlantic Slave Trade,

1450-1800 and the Origins of Black America 432

African States and the Slave Trade 434

The End of Empires in the North and the Rise of States in the Center 434
Portugal's Explorations along the African Coast and Contacts with Eth iopia 437
Coasta l Africa and the Atlantic Slave Trade 438
Features:
Patterns Up Close:
American Plantation Slavery and Atlantic Mercantilism 441

Voodoo and Other New World
Slave Religions 450
Against the Grain:
Oglethorpe's Free
Colony 454
The Special Case of Plantation Slavery in the Americas 441
Slavery in British North America 444
The Fatal Triangle: The Economic Patterns of the Atlantic Slave Trade 446
Culture and Identity in the African Diaspora 449
A New Society: Crea l ization of the Early Atlantic World 449

Putting It All Together 452

•
IX
x Contents

Chapter 20 The Mughal Empire: Muslim Rulers and Hindu Subjects 456
1400-1750
History and Political Life of the Mughals 457
From Samarkand to Hindustan 457
The Summer and Autumn of Empire 461

Features:
Administration, Society, and Economy 466
Mansabdars and Bureaucracy 466
Patterns Up Close:
Akbar's Attempt at The Mughals and Early Modern Economy 467
Religious Synthesis 464 Society, Family, and Gender 468
Against the Grain:
Sikhism in Transition 475 Science, Religion, and the Arts 470
Science and Technology 470
Rel igion: In Search of Balance 470
Literature and Art 471

Putting It All Together 473

Chapter 21 Regulating the "Inner" and "Outer" Domains:

1500-1800 China and Japan 476

Late Ming and Qing China to 1750 477

From Expansion to Exclusion 477
The Spring and Summer of Power: The Qing to 1750 482
Village and Family Life 486

Features:
Science, Culture, and Intel lectual Life 488

Patterns Up Close: The Long War and Longer Peace: Japan, 1450- 1750 489
The "China" Trade 480
The Struggle for Un ification 489
Against the Grain:
The Tokugawa Bakufu to 1750 490
Seclusion's Exceptions 498
Growth and Stagnation: Economy and Society 493
Hothousing "Japaneseness": Cu lture, Science, and Intellectual Life 495

Putting It All Together 496

The Origins of Modernity

1750-1900 500

Patterns of Nation-States and Culture in the Atlantic World 502

Chapter 22
Origins of the Nation-State, 1750- 1815 503
1750-1871
The American, French, and Haitian Revolutions 503

Features: Enlightenment Culture: Radicalism and Moderation 512

Patterns Up Close: The En lightenment and Its Many Expressions 512

The Gu i Iloti ne 508 The Other Enlightenment: The Ideology of Ethn ic Nationalism 513
Against the Grain:
The Growth of the Nation-State, 1815- 1871 515
Defying the Th ird
Republic 526 Restoration Monarchies, 1815-1848 515
Nation-State Bu ilding in Anglo-America, 1783-1900 519
 Contents XI•

Romanticism and Realism: Philosophical and

Artistic Expression to 1850 522
Romanticism 523
Realism 523

Putting It All Together 524

Chapter 23 Creoles and Caudillos: Latin America in

1790-1917 the Nineteenth Century 528

Independence, Constitutionalism, and Landed Elites 529

Independence in the Southern Cone: State Formation in Argentina 529
Brazil: From Kingdom to Repub lic 531
Independence and State Formation in Western and Northern South America 533
Independence and Political Development in the North: Mexico 535
Features:
Patterns Up Close: Latin American Society and Economy in the Nineteenth Century 541
Slave Rebel Iions in
Rebuild ing Societies and Economies 542
Cuba and Brazil 542
Export-Led Growth 545
Against the Grain:
Early Industrialization Culture, Fam ily, and the Status of Women 549
in Chile? 551
Putting It All Together 550

Chapter 24 The Challenge of Modernity: East Asia 553

1750-1910
China and Japan in the Age of Imperialism 554
China and Maritime Trade, 1750-1839 554
The Opium Wars and the Treaty Port Era 557
Toward Revolution: Reform and Reaction to 1900 561
Features: In Search of Security through Empire: Japan in the Meij i Era 564
Patterns Up Close:
Interaction and Adaptation:
Economy and Society in Late Qing China 566

"Self-Strengthening" and The Seeds of Modernity and the New Economic Order 567
"Western Science and Eastern Culture, Arts, and Science 568
Ethics" 560
Against the Grain: Zaibatsu and Political Parties: Economy and Society in Meiji Japan 569
Reacting to Modern ity 574 Commerce and Cartels 569
"Civi lization and En Iightenment": Science, Cu lture, and the Arts 572

Putting It All Together 572

Chapter 25 Adaptation and Resistance:

1683-1908 The Ottoman and Russian Empires 576

Decentralization and Reforms in the Ottoman Empire 577

Ottoman Imperialism in the 1600s and 1700s 577
The Western Challenge and Ottoman Responses 578
Iran's Effort to Cope with the Western Challenge 586
xii Contents

Westernization, Reforms, and Industrialization in Russia 587

Features: Russia and Westernization 588

Patterns Up Close: Russia in the Early Nineteenth Century 588

Sunn i and Shiite Islam 584 The Great Reforms 591
Against the Grain: Russian Industrialization 592
Precursor to Lenin 596 The Abortive Russian Revolution of 1905 594

Putting It All Together 595

Chapter 26 Industrialization and Its Discontents 598

1750-1914
Origins and Growth of Industrialism, 1750- 1914 599
Early Industrial ism, 1750-1870 599
The Spread of Early Industrial ism 601
Later Industrialism, 1871-1914 603

The Social and Economic Impact of Industrialism, 1750-1914 608

Demograph ic Changes 608
Features:
Industrial Society 610
Patterns Up Close:
"The Age of Steam" 604
Critics of Industrialism 612
Improved Standards of Living 613
Against the Grain:
The Luddites 622 Improved Urban Living 614
Big Business 615

Intellectual and Cultural Responses to Industrialism 617

Scientific and Intel lectual Developments 617
Toward Modernity in Ph ilosophy and Rel igion 619
Toward Modern ity in Literature and the Arts 619

Putting It All Together 620

Chapter 27 The New Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century 624

1750-1914
Toe British Colonies of India and Australia 625
The British East India Company 625
Direct British Rule 629
British Settler Colon ies: Austra lia 631

Features:
European Imperialism in the Middle East and Africa 632

Patterns Up Close: The Rising Appeal of Imperialism in the West 633

Mi I itary Transformations and The Scramble for Africa 636
the New Imperialism 632
Western Imperialism and Colonialism in Southeast Asia 640
Against the Grain:
An Anti- Imperial
The Dutch in Indonesia 640
Perspective 647 Spain in the Ph ilippines 641
The French in Vietnam 644

Putting It All Together 645

 •••
Contents Xlll

From Three Modernities to One

1914-PRBSBNT 648

World Wars and Competing Visions of Modernity 650

Chapter 28 The Great War and Its Aftermath 651

A Savage War and a Flawed Peace 651
1900-1945
America First: The Beginnings of a Consumer Culture
and the Great Depression 654
Features:
Great Britain and France: Slow Recovery and Troubled Empires 659
Patterns Up Close:
The Harlem Renaissance and
Latin America: Independent Democracies and Authoritarian Regimes 663
the African Diaspora 658
New Variations on Modernity: The Soviet Union and Communism 664
Against the Grain: The Communist Party and Regime in the Soviet Union 664
Righteous among the
Nations 677 The Collectivization of Agriculture and Industrialization 665

New Variations on Modernity: Supremacist Nationalism

in Italy, Germany, and Japan 666
From Fascism in Italy to Nazism in the Third Reich 666
Japan's "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" and China's Struggle for Unity 671

Putting It All Together 675

Chapter 29 Reconstruction, Cold War, and Decolonization 679

1945-1962
Superpower Confrontation: Capitalist Democracy and Communism 680
The Cold War Era, 1945-1962 680
Society and Cu lture in Postwar North America, Europe, and Japan 688

Populism and Industrialization in Latin America 689

Features: Slow Social Change 689

Patterns Up Close: Popul ist-Guided Democracy 691

Bandung and the Origins
of the Non-Aligned The End of Colonialism and the Rise of New Nations 692
Movement (NAM) 698 "Ch ina Has Stood Up" 692
Against the Grain: Decolonization, Israel, and Arab Nationalism in the Middle East 693
Postwar Counterculture 705 Decolonization and Cold War in Asia 696
Decolonization and Cold War in Africa 701

Putting It All Together 704

Chapter 30 The End of the Cold War, Western Social Transformation,

1963-1991 and the Developing World 707

The Climax of the Cold War 708

The Soviet Superpower in Slow Decl ine 708

Transforming the West 714

Civil Rights Movements 714
xiv Contents

From "Underdeveloped" to "Developing" World, 1963-1991 718

Features: China: Cultural Revolution to Four Modern izations 718

Patterns Up Close: Vietnam and Cambodia: War and Commun ist Rule 720
From Women's Liberation to The Middle East 722
Fem inism 716 Africa: From Independence to Development 725
Against the Grain: Latin America: Proxy Wars 728
The African National
Congress 730
Putting It All Together 729

Chapter 31 A Fragile Capitalist-Democratic World Order 732

1991-2017 Capitalist Democracy: The Dominant Pattern of Modernity 733

A Decade of Global Expansion: The United States and the
Features: World in the 1990s 733

Patterns Up Close: Two Communist Holdouts: China and Vietnam 740

Social Networking 752 Pluralist Democracy under Strain 741
Against the Grain:
North Korea: Lone Holdout
The Environmental Limits of Modernity 754
against the World 758
Putting It All Together 756

FURTHER RESOURCES R-1

CREDITS C-1
SUBJECT INDEX 1-1
Maps
Map 15.1 North America and Mesoamerica, Map 22.1 British North America in 1763 504
ca. 1100 340 Map 22.2 Napoleon ic Europe, 1796-1815 510
Map 15.2 Tiwanaku and Wari, ca. 1000 343 Map 22.3 Europe after the Congress of Vienna 516
Map 15.3 The Aztec Empire, ca . 1520 346 Map 22.4 Europe in 1871 519
Map 15.4 The Inca Empire, ca. 1525 348 Map 22.5 The Expanding United States in 1900 520
Map 15.5 Tenochtitlan and the Mexican Basin 350 Map 23.1 The New Nation-States of Latin
Map 16.1 Africa, the Mediterranean, and the Indian America and the Caribbean, 1831 538
Ocean, 1415-1498 361 Map 23.2 Mexico's Loss of Territory to the
Map 16.2 The Ottoman Empire, 1307-1683 367 United States, 1824-1854 539
Map 16.3 Europe and the Mediterranean, ca. 1560 368 Map 23.3 The Economy of Latin America and the
Map 16.4 Ottoman-Portuguese Competition in the Caribbean, ca . 1900 544
Indian Ocean, 1536-1580 370 Map 23.4 Non-Western Migrations in the
Map 17.1 Centers of Learning in Europe, Nineteenth Century 548
1500-1770 387 Map 24.1 The Opium Trade: Origins,
Map 17.2 European Warfare, 1450-1750 392 Interactions, Adaptations 556
Map 17.3 The Protestant Reformation, ca . 1580 395 Map 24.2 Treaty Ports and Foreign Spheres
Map 17.4 Europe in 1648 400 of Influence in China, 1842-1907 558
Map 17.5 The Expansion of Russia, 1462-1795 402 Map 24.3 The Taiping Rebellion, 1851-1864 559
Map 18.1 The European Exploration of the Americas, Map 24.4 Japanese Territorial Expansion,
1519-1542 410 1870-1905 566
Map 18.2 The Colonization of Central and South America Map 24.5 The Modernization of Japan to 1910 570
to 1750 413 Map 25.1 The Decline of the Ottoman Empire,
Map 18.3 The Colonization of North 1683-1923 580
America to 1763 417 Map 25.2 The Territorial Expansion of the
Map 18.4 The Columbian Exchange 421 Russian Empire, 1795-1914 589
Map 19.1 Peoples and Kingdoms in Map 26.1 Industrializing Britain in 1850 602
Sub-Saharan Africa, 1450-1750 435 Map 26.2 The Industrial ization of Europe by 1914 603
Map 19.2 Regions from which Captured Africans Were Map 26.3 World Population Growth, 1700-1900 608
Brought to the Americas, 1501-1867 442 Map 26.4 European Population Movements,
Map 19.3 Regions in which Enslaved 1750-1914 610
Africans Landed, 1501-1867 444 Map 27.1 The Expansion of British Power
Map 19.4 The North Atlantic System, ca. 1750 447 in India, 1756-1805 627
Map 19.5 Slave Revolts in the Americas, Map 27.2 The British Empire in India, 1858-1914 630
1500-1850 453 Map 27.3 Competitive Imperialism:
Map 20.1 Area Subjugated by Timur-i Lang, The World in 1914 634
1360-1405 458 Map 27.4 The Scramble for Africa 637
Map 20.2 The Conquests of Babur 459 Map 27.5 Western Imperialism in Southeast Asia,
Map 20.3 Mughal India under Akbar 460 1870-1914 642
Map 20.4 European Trading Ports in India and Map 28.1 Europe, the Middle East, and North
Southeast Asia, ca. 1690 468 Africa in 1914 and 1923 655
Map21.1 China in 1600 478 Map 28.2 European Empires, 1936 661
Map 21.2 World Trade Networks, ca. 1770 479 Map 28.3 World War 11 in Europe, 1939-1945 672
Map 21.3 Si Iver Flows and Centers of Map 28.4 World War II in the Pacific, 1937-1945 676
Porcelain Production 480 Map 29.1 The Cold War, 194 7-1991 682
Map 21.4 China during the Reign of Qianlong 483 Map 29.2 The Cuban Missile Crisis 687
Map 21.5 The Campaigns of Hideyoshi 491 Map 29.3 Urbanization and Population Growth in
Map 21.6 Urban Population and Major Transport Latin America and the Caribbean,
Routes in Japan, ca. 1800 493 ca. 1950 690

xv
xvi Maps

Map 29.4 Decolonization in Africa, the Middle Map 30.4 The Vietnam War 721
East, and Asia since 1945 694 Map 30.5 The Arab-Israeli Wars, 1967 and 1973 723
Map 29.5 The Palestine Conflict, 1947-1949 695 Map 31.1 The Global Distribution of Wealth, 2012 734
Map 30.1 Communist Eastern Europe, 1945-1989 710 Map 31.2 The Global Balance of Trade, 2008 735
Map 30.2 The Fall of Communism in Eastern Map 31 .3 US Security Commitments since 1945 738
Europe and the Soviet Union 713 Map31.4 World Map of Climate
Map 30.3 Governmental Participation by Women 716 Change Performance 756
Studying with Maps
MAPS
World history cannot be fully understood without a clear comprehension of the chronologies and
parameters within which different empires, states, and peoples have changed over time. Maps
facilitate this understanding by illuminating the significance of time, space, and geography in
shaping the patterns of world history.

GlobalLocator~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~­
Many of the maps in Patterns of World History
include global locators that show the area being
depicted in a larger context. '

Tame Ba)tlqar ' )

Topography - - - - - - - -r---_.:...:~~~
Many maps in Patterns of World History show JO'

J
relief--the contours of the land. Topography is an
10

important element in studying maps, because the

physical terrain has played a critical role in shap-
ing human history.
PACIFl 'C

Scale Bar
Every map in Patterns of World History includes
a scale that shows distances in both miles and O km 500

kilometers, and in some instances, in feet as well. O miles 500 Tupiz>i(j

20 ., I

Map Key --------------f ~To~e~I1:1c~a~E~m:jt.r::e-::c:a~.w~1s~2;-; s~c;:-;;E;--1

Maps use symbols to show the location of fea- Inca expansion

tures and to convey information . Each symbol is

explained in the map's key.
•• To 1438
Under Pachacuti, 1438- 1463
Under Pachacuti and Tupac
D Yupanqui, 1463-1 471

D Under Tupac Yupanqui, 1471- 1493

[:] Under Huayna Capac, 1493-1525
30•
Imperial botu1dary
30

One map in each chapter is accompanied by an Boundary between the four quarters
of the e,npire
icon that indicates that the map can be analyzed -- Inca road
D Imperial capital
in an interactive fashion (see pages xxiii-xxiv).
O Major Inca administrative center NTINA
PERU Modern-day country

••
XVII
Preface
he response to the first two editions of Pat-
terns of World History has been extraordi-
narily gratifying to those of us involved in its
development. The diversity of schools that have ad-
opted the book-community colleges as well as state
universities; small liberal arts schools as well as large
private universities-suggests to us that its central
premise of exploring patterns in world history is both
adaptable to a variety of pedagogical environments
and congenial to a wide body of instructors. Indeed,
from the responses to the book we have received thus
far, we expect that the level of writing, timeliness and
completeness of the material, and analytical approach
will serve it well as the discipline ofworld history con-
tinues to mature. These key strengths are enhanced in
the third edition of Patterns by constructive, dynamic
suggestions from the broad range of students and in-
structors who are using the book.
It is widely agreed that world history is more than
simply the sum of all national histories. Likewise, Pat-
terns of World History, Third Edition, is more than an
unbroken sequence of dates, battles, rulers, and their
activities, and it is more than the study of isolated
stories of change over time. Rather, in this textbook
we endeavor to present in a clear and engaging way
how world history "works." Instead of merely offering
a narrative history of the appearance of this or that
innovation, we present an analysis of the process by
which an innovation in one part of the world is dif-
fused and carried to the rest of the globe. Instead of
focusing on the memorization of people, places, and
events, we strive to present important facts in context
and draw meaningful connections, analyzing what-
ever patterns we find and drawing conclusions where
we can. In short, we seek to examine the interlocking
mechanisms and animating forces of world history,
without neglecting the human agency behind them.
The Patterns Approach
Our approach in this book is, as the title suggests, to
look for patterns in world history. We should say at the
outset that we do not mean to select certain categories
into which we attempt to stuff the historical events we
•••
XVIII
choose to emphasize, nor do we claim that all world
history is reducible to such patterns, nor do we mean
to suggest that the nature of the patterns determines
the outcome of historical events. We see them instead
as broad, flexible organizational frameworks around
which to build the structure of a world history in such
a way that the enormous sweep and content ofthe past
can be viewed in a comprehensible narrative, with
sound analysis and ample scope for debate and discus-
sion. In this sense, we view them much like the arma-
tures in clay sculptures, giving support and structure
to the final figure but not necessarily preordaining its
ultimate shape.
From its origins, human culture grew through
interactions and adaptations on all the continents
except Antarctica. A voluminous scholarship on all re-
gions of the world has thus been accumulated, which
those working in the field have to attempt to master
if their explanations and arguments are to sound even
remotely persuasive. The sheer volume and complex-
ity of the sources, however, mean that even the knowl-
edge and expertise of the best scholars are going to be
incomplete. Moreover, the humility with which all his-
torians must approach their material contains within
it the realization that no historical explanation is ever
fully satisfactory or final: As a driving force in the his-
torical process, creative human agency moves events
in directions that are never fully predictable, even if
they follow broad patterns. Learning to discern pat-
terns in this process not only helps novice historians
to appreciate the complex challenges (and rewards)
of historical inquiry; it also develops critical thinking
abilities in all students.
As we move through the second decade of the
twenty-first century, world historians have long since
left behind the "West plus the rest" approach that
marked the field's early years, together with economic
and geographical reductionism, in the search for a new
balance between comprehensive cultural and institu-
tional examinations on the one hand and those high-
lighting human agency on the other. All too often,
however, this is reflected in texts that seek broad cov-
erage at the expense ofanalysis, thus resulting in a kind
of "world history lite." Our aim is therefore to simplify

the study of the world-to make it accessible to the
student-without making world history itselfsimplistic.
Patterns of World History proposes the teaching of
world history from the perspective of the relationship
between continuity and change. What we advocate in
this book is a distinct intellectual framework for this
relationship and the role of innovation and historical
change through patterns of origins, interactions, and
adaptations. Each small or large technical or cultural
innovation originated in one geographical center or in-
dependently in several different centers. As people in
the centers interacted with their neighbors, the neigh-
bors adapted to, and in many cases were transformed
by, the innovations. By "adaptation" we include the
entire spectrum of human responses, ranging from
outright rejection to creative borrowing and, at times,
forced acceptance.
Small technical innovations often went through the
pattern of origin, interaction, and adaptation across the
world without arousing much attention, even though
they had major consequences. For example, the horse
collar, which originated in the last centuries BCE in
China and allowed for the replacement of oxen with
stronger horses, gradually improved the productiv-
ity of agriculture in eleventh-century western Europe.
More sweeping intellectual-cultural innovations, by
contrast, such as the spread of universal religions like
Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam and the rise of
science, have often had profound consequences-in
some cases leading to conflicts lasting centuries-and
affect us even today.
Sometimes change was effected by commodities
that to us seem rather ordinary. Take sugar, for ex-
ample: It originated in Southeast Asia and was traded
and grown in the Mediterranean, where its cultivation
on plantations created the model for expansion into
the vast slave system of the Atlantic basin from the fif-
teenth through the nineteenth centuries, forever alter-
ing the histories of four continents. What would our
diets look like today without sugar? Its history contin-
ues to unfold as we debate its merits and health risks
and it supports huge multinational agribusinesses.
Or take a more obscure commodity: opium. Opium
had been used medicinally for centuries in regions all
over the world. But the advent of tobacco traded from
the Americas to the Philippines to China, and the en-
couragement of Dutch traders in the region, created an
environment in which the drug was smoked for the
•
Preface XIX
first time. Enterprising rogue British merchants, eager
to find a way to crack closed Chinese markets for other
goods, began to smuggle it in from India. The market
grew, the price went down, addiction spread, and Brit-
ain and China ultimately went to war over China's
attempts to eliminate the traffic. Here, we have an
example of an item generating interactions on a world-
wide scale, with impacts on everything from politics
to economics, culture, and even the environment. The
legacies of the trade still weigh heavily on two of the
rising powers of the recent decades: China and India.
And opium and its derivatives, like morphine and
heroin, continue to bring relief as well as suffering on a
colossal scale to hundreds of millions ofpeople.
What, then, do we gain by studying world history
through the use of such patterns? First, if we consider
innovation to be a driving force of history, it helps to
satisfy an intrinsic human curiosity about origins-
our own and others. Perhaps more importantly, seeing
patterns of various kinds in historical development
brings to light connections and linkages among
peoples, cultures, and regions-as in the aforemen-
tioned examples-that might not otherwise present
themselves.
Second, such patterns can also reveal differences
among cultures that other approaches to world his-
tory tend to neglect. For example, the differences
between the civilizations of the Eastern and Western
Hemispheres are generally highlighted in world his-
tory texts, but the broad commonalities of human
groups creating agriculturally based cities and states
in widely separated areas also show deep parallels in
their patterns of origins, interactions, and adaptations.
Such comparisons are at the center of our approach.
Third, this kind of analysis offers insights into how
an individual innovation was subsequently developed
and diffused across space and time-that is, the patterns
by which the new eventually becomes a necessity in
our daily lives. Through all of this we gain a deeper ap-
preciation of the unfolding of global history from its
origins in small, isolated areas to the vast networks of
global interconnectedness in our present world.
Finally, our use of a broad-based understanding
of continuity, change, and innovation allows us to re-
store culture in all its individual and institutionalized
aspects-spiritual, artistic, intellectual, scientific-
to its rightful place alongside technology, environ-
ment, politics, and socioeconomic conditions. That is,
xx Preface
understanding innovation in this way allows this text
to help illuminate the full range of human ingenuity
over time and space in a comprehensive, evenhanded,
and open-ended fashion.
Options for Teaching with
Patterns of World History
For the sake of continuity and to accommodate the
many different ways schools divide the midpoint of
their world history sequence, Chapters 15-18 overlap
in both volumes; in Volume 2, Chapter 15 is given as a
"prelude" to Part Four. Those using a trimester system
will also find divisions made in convenient places,
with Chapter 10 coming at the beginning of Part Two
and Chapter 22 at the beginning of Part Five.
Patterns of Change and
Six Periods of World History
Similarly, Patterns is adaptable to both chronologi-
cal and thematic styles of instruction. We divide the
history of the world into six major time periods and
recognize for each period one or two main patterns
of innovation, their spread through interaction, and
their adoption by others. Obviously, lesser patterns
are identified as well, many of which are of more lim-
ited regional interactive and adaptive impact. We wish
to stress again that these are broad categories of analy-
sis and that there is nothing reductive or deterministic
in our aims or choices. Nevertheless, we believe the
patterns we have chosen help to make the historical
process more intelligible, providing a series of lenses
that can help to focus the otherwise confusing facts
and disparate details that comprise world history.
Part One (Prehistory-600 BCE): Origins of
human civilization-tool making and symbol
creating-in Africa as well as the origins of ag-
riculture, urbanism, and state formation in the
three agrarian centers of the Middle East, India,
and China.
Part Two (600BCE-600 CE): Emergence of the
axial-age thinkers and their visions of a transcen-
dent god or first principle in Eurasia; elevation
of these visions to the status of state religions in
empires and kingdoms, in the process forming
multiethnic and multilinguistic polities.
Part Three (600-1450): Disintegration of classi-
cal empires and formation ofreligious civilizations
in Eurasia, with the emergence of religiously
unified regions divided by commonwealths of
multiple states.
Part Four (1450-1750): Rise of new empires; in-
teraction, both hostile and peaceful, among the
religious civilizations and new empires across all
continents of the world. Origins of the New Sci-
ence in Europe, based on the use of mathematics
for the investigation of nature.
Part Five (1750-1900): Origins of scientific-
industrial "modernity," simultaneous with the
emergence of constitutional and ethnic nation-
states, in the West (Europe and North America);
interaction of the West with Asia and Africa, re-
sulting in complex adaptations, both coerced as
well as voluntary, on the part of the latter.
Part Six (1900-Present): Division ofearly Western
modernity into the three competing visions: com-
munism, supremacist nationalism, and capitalism.
After two horrific world wars and the triumph of
nation-state formation across the world, capitalism
remains as the last surviving version of modernity.
Capitalism is then reinvigorated by the increasing
use of social networking tools, which popularizes
both "traditional" religious and cultural ideas and
constitutionalism in authoritarian states.
Chapter Organization
and Structure
Each part of the book addresses the role of change and
innovation on a broad scale in a particular time and/
or region, and each chapter contains different levels of
exploration to examine the principal features of par-
ticular cultural or national areas and how each affects,
and is affected by, the patterns of origins, interactions,
and adaptations:
• Geography and the Environment: The relationship
between human beings and the geography and
environment of the places they inhabit is among

the most basic factors in understanding human
societies. In this chapter segment, therefore, the
topics under investigation involve the natural en-
vironment of a particular region and the general
conditions affecting change and innovation.
Climatic conditions, earthquakes, tsunamis,
volcanic eruptions, outbreaks of disease, and so
forth all have obvious effects on how humans
react to the challenge of survival. The initial por-
tions of chapters introducing new regions for
study therefore include environmental and geo-
graphical overviews, which are revisited and ex-
panded in later chapters as necessary. The larger
issues of how decisive the impact of geography
on the development of human societies is-as
in the commonly asked question "Is geography
destiny?"-are also examined here.
Political Developments: In this segment, we
ponder such questions as how rulers and their
supporters wield political and military power.
How do different political traditions develop
in different areas? How do states expand, and
why? How do different political arrangements
attempt to strike a balance between the rulers
Features
and the ruled? How and why are political in-
novations transmitted to other societies? Why
do societies accept or reject such innovations
from the outside? Are there discernible patterns
in the development of kingdoms or empires or
nation-states?
Economic and Social Developments: The relation-
ship between economics and the structures and
workings of societies has long been regarded as
crucial by historians and social scientists. But
what patterns, if any, emerge in how these rela-
tionships develop and function among different
cultures? This segment explores such questions
as the following: What role does economics play
in the dynamics of change and continuity? What,
for example, happens in agrarian societies when
merchant classes develop? How does the accu-
mulation ofwealth lead to social hierarchy? What
forms do these hierarchies take? How do societ-
ies formally and informally try to regulate wealth
and poverty? How are economic conditions re-
flected in family life and gender relations? Are
there patterns that reflect the varying social posi-
tions of men and women that are characteristic
•
Preface XXl
of certain economic and social institutions? How
are these in turn affected by different cultural
practices?
Intellectual, Religious, and Cultural Aspects: Fi-
nally, we consider it vital to include an examina-
tion dealing in some depth with the way people
understood their existence and life during each
period. Clearly, intellectual innovation-the
generation of new ideas-lies at the heart of the
changes we have singled out as pivotal in the pat-
terns of origins, interactions, and adaptations
that form the heart of this text. Beyond this,
those areas concerned with the search for and
construction of meaning-particularly religion,
the arts, philosophy, and science-not only re-
flect shifting perspectives but also, in many cases,
play a leading role in determining the course of
events within each form of society. All of these
facets of intellectual life are in turn manifested in
new perspectives and representations in the cul-
tural life of a society.
Seeing Patterns/Thinking Through Patterns:
"Seeing Patterns" and "Thinking Through Pat-
terns" use a question-discussion format in each
chapter to pose several broad questions ("Seeing
Patterns") as advance organizers for key themes,
which are then matched up with short essays at
the end ("Thinking Through Patterns") that ex-
amine these same questions in a sophisticated
yet student-friendly fashion.
Patterns Up Close: Since students frequently
apprehend macro-level patterns better when they
see their contours brought into sharper relief,
"Patterns Up Close" essays in each chapter high-
light a particular innovation that demonstrates
origins, interactions, and adaptations in action.
Spanning technological, social, political, intel-
lectual, economic, and environmental develop-
ments, the "Patterns Up Close" essays combine
text, visuals, and graphics to consider everything
from the pepper trade to the guillotine.
Against the Grain: These brief essays consider
counterpoints to the main patterns examined
in each chapter. Topics range from visionaries
who challenged dominant religious patterns, to
xxii Preface
women who resisted various forms of patriarchy,
to agitators who fought for social and economic
justice.
Marginal Glossary: To avoid the necessity of
having to flip pages back and forth, definitions
of key terms are set directly in the margin at the
point where they are first introduced.
Today, more than ever, students and instructors
are confronted by a vast welter ofinformation on every
conceivable subject. Beyond the ever-expanding print
media, the Internet and the Web have opened hith-
erto unimaginable amounts of data to us. Despite
such unprecedented access, however, all of us are too
frequently overwhelmed by this undifferentiated-
and all too often indigestible-mass. Nowhere is this
more true than in world history, by definition the field
within the historical profession with the broadest scope.
Therefore, we think that an effort at synthesis-of
narrative and analysis structured around a clear, ac-
cessible, widely applicable theme-is needed, an effort
that seeks to explain critical patterns of the world's
past behind the billions of bits of information acces-
sible at the stroke of a key on a computer keyboard.
We hope this text, in tracing the lines of transforma-
tive ideas and things that left their patterns deeply im-
printed into the canvas of world history, will provide
such a synthesis.
Changes to the New Edition
Streamlined narrative To facilitate accessibility,
we have shortened the text by approximately
25 percent for this Brief Edition. This reduc-
tion has not come at the expense of discarding
essential topics. Instead, we have tightened the
narrative, focusing even more on key concepts
and (with the guidance of reviewers) discarding
extraneous examples. We are profoundly grate-
ful to the reviewers who pointed out errors and
conceptual shortcomings. Factual accuracy and
terminological precision are extremely impor-
tant to us.
Updated scholarship All chapters were revised and
updated, in accordance with recent develop-
ments and new scholarship. Here is a chapter-by-
chapter overview that highlights the changes we
made in the third edition:
Part One Chapter 1 includes three major
changes: a discussion of the new stone tool finds
in Kenya, dated to 3.3 million years ago; revi-
sions to our understanding of the Neanderthals,
on the basis of the new Bruniquel Cave finds;
and revisions to our understanding of the human
settlement of the Americas, resulting from new
genetic studies (2015-2016). Chapter 2 clari-
fies the conceptual transition from nature spiri-
tuality to what is commonly called polytheism.
Chapter 3 updates the material on ancient India
and Harappans, and the "Patterns Up Close" in
Chapter 5 adds the results of a new 2016 genetic
study on corn.
Part Two The title of Chapter 7 has been changed
to "Interaction and Adaptation in Western Eur-
asia: Persia, Greece, and Rome" to more emphat-
ically show the interactions among these cultural
zones. Chapter 8 contains a revised section on
Jainism, and Chapter 9 adds a survey of the con-
temporary debate about the "Han Synthesis."
Part Three Chapter 10 offers clearer discussions
of the Arab conquests of the Middle East, North
Africa, and Iberia during the 600s and early 700s
as well as of the composition of Islamic salvation
history in the 800s, including the biography of
the Prophet Muhammad. The coverage of Byz-
antium has been improved with a discussion of
iconoclasm and the split between Catholicism
and Greek Orthodoxy in 1054. Chapter 12 fo-
cuses more strongly on the Mongol interval
and adds specificity to the discussion of Neo-
Confucian philosophy. The new chapter sub-
title, "Contrasting Patterns in India and China,"
reflects these changes.
Part Four In Chapter 17 we eliminated consid-
erable detail from the presentation of the Euro-
pean religious wars and broadened the focus in
the English case to include the War of the Three
Kingdoms. Chapter 21 updates the discussion
of the Chinese rural economy and the debate
about the High Level Equilibrium Trap. It also
improves the discussion of Qjng concepts of mul-
ticultural empire.
Part Five In Chapter 22 the basic concepts of
modern nationalism are reformulated: We now
distinguish between the patterns of constitu-
tionalism and ethnic nationalism as keys for the

understanding of political modernity. In addi-
tion, the process of Italian ethnic nationalist uni-
fication is presented more clearly. Chapter 23 is
completely reorganized, emphasizing in addition
the significance of the Paraguayan War of 1864-
1870. In Chapter 24, the role of the Hakkas in
the Taiping movement is described more clearly.
Chapter 26 emphasizes the importance of the
steam engine in the Industrial Revolution more
strongly and reconceptualizes the nineteenth-
century class structure in the emerging industrial
societies. Chapter 27 defines more sharply the
pattern of the New Imperialism during the nine-
teenth century.
Part Six Chapter 29 updates the "Patterns Up
Close" feature on the Non-Aligned Movement. In
Chapter 30 we shortened the text so as to create
room for an improved coverage of the Lebanese
civil war, the Iranian Islamic Revolution, the US
Vietnam War, and the Brazilian economic mira-
cle. In Chapter 31, we similarly removed text and
replaced it with paragraphs on the travails of the
Arab Spring, the new military regime in Egypt, the
"Islamic State" of Iraq and Syria, the failed coup
d'etat in Turkey, as well as the new populist anti-
globalism, complete with "Brexit" in Europe and
Donald]. Trump's electoral victory in the United
States. The "Patterns Up Close" essay on infor-
mation technology was updated to include IT's
misuse by terrorists.
Ensuring Student Success
Oxford University Press offers instructors and stu-
dents a comprehensive ancillary package for qualified
adopters.
Dashboard: Simple, informative, and mobile,
Dashboard is an online learning and assessment
platform tailored to your textbook that delivers
a simple, informative, and mobile experience for
professors and students. It offers quality content
and tools to track student progress in an intui-
tive, web-based learning environment; features
a streamlined interface that connects students
and instructors with the most important course
functions; and simplifies the learning experience
•••
Preface XXlll
to save time and put student progress first. Dash-
board for Patterns of World History, Third Edi-
tion, includes:
An embedded e-book that integrates multimedia
content, providing a dynamic learning space for
both students and instructors. Each chapter in
Patterns of World History includes:
•
image analysis document analysis
• •
[>
map analysis, Many chapters also
interactive timelines, include video analysis
and interactive
concept maps
•
audio flashcards
Three sets of quizzes per chapter for both low
stakes and high stakes testing. The quizzes are
aligned according to Bloom's Taxonomy: quiz
1 tests basic concepts and terminologies; quiz 2
provides questions that test both basic facts and
ability to apply concepts; quiz 3 tests ability to
evaluate and analyze key concepts.
The complete set of questions from the testbank
(1,500 questions), that provide for each chapter,
approximately 40 multiple-choice, short-answer,
true-or-false, and fill-in-the-blank as well as ap-
proximately 10 essay questions.
Ancillary Resource Center (ARC): This online
resource center, available to adopters of Patterns
of World History, includes:
Instructor's Resource Manual: Includes, for
each chapter, a detailed chapter outline, sug-
gested lecture topics, learning objectives, map
quizzes, geography exercises, classroom activities,
"Patterns Up Close" activities, "Seeing Patterns
xxiv Preface
and Making Connections'' activities, "Against
the Grain" exercises, biographical sketches, and
suggested Web resources and digital media files.
Also includes for each chapter approximately 40
multiple-choice, short-answer, true-or-false, and
fill-in-the-blank as well as approximately 10 essay
questions.
Oxford World History Video Library: Includes
short, two- to three-minute videos that offer over-
views of such key topics as the the Golden Age of
Islam, Genghis I(han, the steam engine, and the
atomic age.
PowerPoints: Includes PowerPoint slides and
JPEG and PDF files for all the maps and photos
in the text, an additional 400 map files from The
Oxford Atlas of World History, and approximately
1,000 additional PowerPoint-based slides from
OUP's Image Bank Library, organized by themes
and topics in world history.
Computerized testbank: Includes approxi-
mately 1,500 questions that can be customized
by the instructor.
Course cartridges: containing student and in-
structor resources are available for the most com-
monly used course management systems.
Additional Learning
Sources in Patterns ofWorld History: Volume 1:
To 1600: Includes approximately 75 text and
visual sources in world history, organized by the
chapter organization of Patterns of World History.
Each source is accompanied by a headnote and
reading questions.
Sources in Patterns ofWorld History: Volume 2:
Since 1400: Includes approximately 90 text and
visual sources in world history, organized by the
chapter organization of Patterns of World History.
Each source is accompanied by a headnote and
reading questions.
Mapping Patterns of World History, Volume 1:
To 1600: Includes approximately 50 full-color
maps, each accompanied by a brief headnote,
as well as blank outline maps and Concept Map
•
exercises.
Mapping Patterns of World History, Volume 2:
Since 1400: Includes approximately 50 full-color
maps, each accompanied by a brief headnote,
as well as blank outline maps and Concept Map
•
exercises.
Now Playing: Learning World History Through
Film: Designed specifically to accompany Pat-
terns of World History, this free supplement exam-
ines thirty-two films to show how key themes in
world history play out in a variety of time periods
and contexts.
Open Access Companion Website (www.oup
.com/us/vonsivers): Includes quizzes, note-
taking guides, and flashcards.
E-book for Patterns ofWorld History: E-books
of all the volumes, at a significant discount, are
available for purchase at www.redshelf.com or
www.vitalsource.com.
Bundling Options
Patterns of World History can be bundled at a signifi-
cant discount with any of the titles in the popular
Very Short Introductions, World in a Life, or Oxford
World's Classics series, as well as other titles from
the Higher Education division world history catalog
(www.oup.com/ us/ catalog/ he). Please contact your
OUP representative for details.
Acknowledgments
Throughout the course of writing, revising, and pre-
paring Patterns of World History for publication we
have benefited from the guidance and professionalism
accorded us by all levels of the staff at Oxford Univer-
sity Press.John Challice, vice president and publisher,
had faith in the inherent worth of our project from the
outset and provided the initial impetus to move for-
ward. Meg Botteon guided us through the revisions
and added a final polish, often helping us with substan-
tive suggestions. Katherine Schnakenberg carried out
the thankless task of assembling the manuscript and
did so with generosity and good cheer, helping us with
many details in the final manuscript. Carrie Cromp-
ton copyedited the manuscript with meticulous atten-
tion to detail, and Keith Faivre steered us through the
intricacies of production with the stoicism of a saint .
Most of all, we owe a special debt of gratitude to
Charles Cavaliere, our editor. Charles took on the
Another random document with
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the acquirement of knowledge; he sought to prepare the vase rather
than to fill it.” In the hands of Froebel the figure gains in boldness
and beauty; it is no longer a mere vase to be shaped under the
potter’s fingers; but a flower, say, a perfect rose, to be delicately and
consciously and methodically moulded, petal by petal, curve and
curl; for the perfume and living glory of the flower, why these will
come; do you your part and mould the several petals; wait, too, upon
sunshine and shower, give space and place for your blossom to
expand. And so we go to work with a touch to “imagination” here,
and to “judgment” there; now, to the “perceptive faculties,” now, to
the “conceptive;” in this, aiming at the moral, and in this, at the
intellectual nature of the child; touching into being, petal by petal, the
flower of a perfect life under the genial influences of sunny looks and
happy moods. This reading of the meaning of education and of the
work of the educator is very fascinating, and it calls forth singular
zeal and self-devotion on the part of those gardeners whose plants
are the children. Perhaps, indeed, this of the Kindergarten is the one
vital conception of education we have had hitherto.
But in these days of revolutionary thought, when all along the line
—in geology and anthropology, chemistry, philology, and biology—
science is changing front, it is necessary that we should reconsider
our conception of Education. We are taught, for example, that
“heredity” is by no means the simple and direct transmission, from
parent, or remote ancestor, to child of power and proclivity, virtue
and defect; and we breathe freer, because we had begun to suspect
that if this were so, it would mean to most of us an inheritance of
exaggerated defects: imbecility, insanity, congenital disease—are
they utterly removed from any one of us? So of education, we begin
to ask, Is its work so purely formative as we thought? Is it directly
formative at all? How much is there in this pleasing and easy
doctrine, that the drawing forth and strengthening and directing of
the several “faculties” is education? Parents are very jealous over
the individuality of their children; they mistrust the tendency to
develop all on the same plan; and this instinctive jealousy is right;
for, supposing that education really did consist in systematised
efforts to draw out every power that is in us, why, we should all
develop on the same lines, be as like as “two peas,” and (should we
not?) die of weariness of one another! Some of us have an uneasy
sense that things are tending towards this deadly sameness. But,
indeed, the fear is groundless. We may believe that the personality,
the individuality, of each of us, is too dear to God, and too necessary
to a complete humanity, to be left at the mercy of empirics. We are
absolutely safe, and the tenderest child is fortified against a
battering-ram of educational forces.
The problem of education is more complex than it seems at first
sight, and well for us and the world that it is so. “Education is a life;”
you may stunt and starve and kill, or you may cherish and sustain;
but the beating of the heart, the movement of the lungs, and the
development of the faculties (are there any “faculties”?) are only
indirectly our care. The poverty of our thought on the subject of
education is shown by the fact that we have no word which at all
implies the sustaining of a life: education (e, out, and ducere, to lead,
to draw) is very inadequate; it covers no more than those occasional
gymnastics of the mind which correspond with those by which the
limbs are trained: training (trahere) is almost synonymous, and upon
these two words rests the misconception that the development and
the exercise of the “faculties” is the object of education (we must
needs use the word for want of a better). Our homely Saxon
“bringing up” is nearer the truth, perhaps because of its very
vagueness; any way, “up” implies an aim, and “bringing” an effort.
The happy phrase of Mr. Matthew Arnold—“Education is an
atmosphere, a discipline, a life”—is perhaps the most complete and
adequate definition of education we possess. It is a great thing to
have said it; and our wiser posterity may see in that “profound and
exquisite remark” the fruition of a lifetime of critical effort. Observe
how it covers the question from the three conceivable points of view.
Subjectively, in the child, education is a life; objectively, as affecting
the child, education is a discipline; relatively, if we may introduce a
third term, as regards the environment of the child, education is an
atmosphere.
We shall examine each of these postulates later; at present we
shall attempt no more than to clear the ground a little, with a view to
the subject of this paper, “Parents as Inspirers”—not “modellers,” but
“inspirers.”
It is only as we recognise our limitations that our work becomes
effective: when we see definitely what we are to do, what we can do,
and what we cannot do, we set to work with confidence and courage;
we have an end in view, and we make our way intelligently towards
that end, and a way to an end is method. It rests with parents not
only to give their children birth into the life of intelligence and moral
power, but to sustain the higher life which they have borne. Now that
life, which we call education, receives only one kind of sustenance; it
grows upon ideas. You may go through years of so-called
“education” without getting a single vital idea; and that is why many a
well-fed body carries about a feeble, starved intelligence; and no
society for the prevention of cruelty to children cries shame on the
parents. Only the other day we heard of a girl of fifteen who had
spent two years at a school without taking part in a single lesson,
and this by the express desire of her mother, who wished all her time
and all her pains to be given to “fancy needlework.” This, no doubt, is
a survival (not of the fittest), but it is possible to pass even the
Universities’ Local Examinations with credit, without ever having
experienced that vital stir which marks the inception of an idea; and,
if we have succeeded in escaping this disturbing influence, why we
have “finished our education” when we leave school; we shut up our
books and our minds, and remain pigmies in the dark forest of our
own dim world of thought and feeling.
What is an idea? A live thing of the mind, according to the older
philosophers, from Plato to Bacon, from Bacon to Coleridge. We say
of an idea that it strikes us, impresses us, seizes us, takes
possession of us, rules us; and our common speech is, as usual,
truer to fact than the conscious thought which it expresses. We do
not in the least exaggerate in ascribing this sort of action and power
to an idea. We form an ideal—a, so to speak, embodied idea—and
our ideal exercises the very strongest formative influence upon us.
Why do you devote yourself to this pursuit, that cause? “Because
twenty years ago such and such an idea struck me,” is the sort of
history which might be given of every purposeful life—every life
devoted to the working out of an idea. Now is it not marvellous that,
recognising as we do the potency of an idea, both the word and the
conception it covers enter so little into our thought of education?
Coleridge brings the conception of an “idea” within the sphere of
the scientific thought of to-day; not as that thought is expressed in
Psychology—a term which he himself launched upon the world with
an apology for it as an insolens verbum,[1] but in that science of the
correlation and interaction of mind and brain, which is at present
rather clumsily expressed in such terms as “mental physiology” and
“psycho-physiology.”
In his method he gives us the following illustration of the rise and
progress of an idea:—
“We can recall no incident of human history that impresses the
imagination more deeply than the moment when Columbus, on an
unknown ocean, first perceived that startling fact, the change of the
magnetic needle. How many such instances occur in history, when
the ideas of nature (presented to chosen minds by a Higher Power
than Nature herself) suddenly unfold, as it were, in prophetic
succession, systematic views destined to produce the most
important revolutions in the state of man! The clear spirit of
Columbus was doubtless eminently methodical. He saw distinctly
that great leading idea which authorised the poor pilot to become a
‘promiser of kingdoms.’”
Notice the genesis of such ideas—“presented to chosen minds by
a Higher Power than Nature;” notice how accurately this history of an
idea fits in with what we know of the history of great inventions and
discoveries, with that of the ideas which rule our own lives; and how
well does it correspond with that key to the origin of “practical” ideas
which we find elsewhere:—
“Doth the plowman plow continually to ... open and break the
clods of his ground? When he hath made plain the face thereof, doth
he not cast abroad the fitches, and scatter the cummin, and put in
the wheat in rows, and the barley in the appointed place, and the
spelt in the border thereof? For his God doth instruct him aright, and
doth teach him....
 “Bread corn is ground; for he will not ever be threshing it.... This
also cometh forth from the Lord of hosts, which is wonderful in
counsel and excellent in wisdom.”[2]
Ideas may invest as an atmosphere, rather than strike as a
weapon. “The idea may exist in a clear, distinct definite form, as that
of a circle in the mind of a geometrician; or it may be a mere instinct,
a vague appetency towards something, ... like the impulse which fills
the young poet’s eyes with tears, he knows not why.” To excite this
“appetency towards something”—towards things lovely, honest, and
of good report, is the earliest and most important ministry of the
educator. How shall these indefinite ideas which manifest
themselves in appetency be imparted? They are not to be given of
set purpose, nor taken at set times. They are held in that thought-
environment which surrounds the child as an atmosphere, which he
breathes as his breath of life; and this atmosphere in which the child
inspires his unconscious ideas of right living emanates from his
parents. Every look of gentleness and tone of reverence, every word
of kindness and act of help, passes into the thought-environment,
the very atmosphere which the child breathes; he does not think of
these things, may never think of them, but all his life long they excite
that “vague appetency towards something” out of which most of his
actions spring. Oh! the wonderful and dreadful presence of the little
child in the midst.
That he should take direction and inspiration from all the casual
life about him, should make our poor words and ways the starting-
point from which, and in the direction of which, he develops—this is
a thought which makes the most of us hold our breath. There is no
way of escape for parents; they must needs be as “inspirers” to their
children, because about them hangs, as its atmosphere about a
planet, the thought-environment of the child, from which he derives
those enduring ideas which express themselves as a life-long
“appetency” towards things sordid or things lovely, things earthly or
divine.
Let us now hear Coleridge on the subject of those definite ideas
which are not inhaled as air, but conveyed as meat to the mind:—[3]
 “From the first, or initiative idea, as from a seed, successive ideas
germinate.”
“Events and images, the lively and spirit-stirring machinery of the
external world, are like light, and air, and moisture to the seed of the
mind, which would else rot and perish.”
“The paths in which we may pursue a methodical course are
manifold, and at the head of each stands its peculiar and guiding
idea.”
“Those ideas are as regularly subordinate in dignity as the paths
to which they point are various and eccentric in direction. The world
has suffered much, in modern times, from a subversion of the natural
and necessary order of Science ... from summoning reason and faith
to the bar of that limited physical experience to which, by the true
laws of method, they owe no obedience.”
“Progress follows the path of the idea from which it sets out;
requiring, however, a constant wakefulness of mind to keep it within
the due limits of its course. Hence the orbits of thought, so to speak,
must differ among themselves as the initiative ideas differ.”
Have we not here the corollary to, and the explanation of, that law
of unconscious cerebration which results in our “ways of thinking,”
which shapes our character, rules our destiny? Thoughtful minds
consider that the new light which biology is throwing upon the laws of
mind is bringing to the front once more the Platonic doctrine, that “An
idea is a distinguishable power, self-affirmed, and seen in its unity
with the Eternal Essence.”
The whole subject is profound, but as practical as it is profound.
We absolutely must disabuse our minds of the theory that the
functions of education are, in the main, gymnastic. In the early years
of the child’s life it makes, perhaps, little apparent difference whether
his parents start with the notion that to educate is to fill a receptacle,
inscribe a tablet, mould plastic matter, or nourish a life; but in the end
we shall find that only those ideas which have fed his life are taken
into the being of the child; all the rest is thrown away, or worse, is
like sawdust in the system, an impediment and an injury to the vital
processes.
This is, perhaps, how the educational formula should run:
Education is a life; that life is sustained on ideas; ideas are of
spiritual origin; but,
“God has made us so,”
that we get them chiefly as we convey them to one another. The duty
of parents is to sustain a child’s inner life with ideas as they sustain
his body with food. The child is an eclectic; he may choose this or
that; therefore, in the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening
withhold not thy hand, for thou knowest not which shall prosper,
whether this or that, or whether they both shall be alike good.
The child has affinities with evil as well as with good; therefore,
hedge him about from any chance lodgment of evil suggestion.
The initial idea begets subsequent ideas; therefore, take care that
children get right primary ideas on the great relations and duties of
life.
Every study, every line of thought, has its “guiding idea;” therefore
the study of a child makes for living education, as it is quickened by
the guiding idea “which stands at the head.”
In a word, our much boasted “infallible reason”—is it not the
involuntary thought which follows the initial idea upon necessary
logical lines? Given, the starting idea, and the conclusion may be
predicated almost to a certainty. We get into the way of thinking such
and such manner of thoughts, and of coming to such and such
conclusions, ever further and further removed from the starting-point,
but on the same lines. There is structural adaptation in the brain
tissue to the manner of thoughts we think—a plan and a way for
them to run in. Thus we see how the destiny of a life is shaped in the
nursery, by the reverent naming of the Divine Name; by the light
scoff at holy things; by the thought of duty the little child gets who is
made to finish conscientiously his little task; by the hardness of heart
that comes to the child who hears the faults or sorrows of others
spoken of lightly.
 FOOTNOTES:
[1] “We beg pardon for the use of this insolens verbum, but it is
one of which our language stands in great need.”—S. T.
Coleridge.
[2] Isaiah xxviii.
[3] Method—S. T. Coleridge.
 CHAPTER V

PARENTS AS INSPIRERS

Part III
It is probable that parents as a class feel more than ever before the
responsibility of their prophetic office. It is as revealers of God to
their children that parents touch their highest limitations; perhaps it is
only as they succeed in this part of their work that they fulfil the
Divine intention in giving them children to bring up—in the nurture
and admonition of the Lord.
How to fortify the children against the doubts of which the air is
full, is an anxious question. Three courses are open—to teach as we
of an older generation have been taught, and to let them bide their
time and their chance; to attempt to deal with the doubts and
difficulties which have turned up, or are likely to turn up; or, to give
children such hold upon vital truth, and, at the same time, such an
outlook upon current thought, that they shall be landed on the safe
side of the controversies of their day, open to truth, in however new a
light presented, and safeguarded against mortal error.
The first course is unfair to the young: when the attack comes,
they find themselves at a disadvantage; they have nothing to reply;
their pride is in arms; they jump to the conclusion that there is no
defence possible of that which they have received as truth; had there
been, would they not have been instructed to make it? They resent
being made out in the wrong, being on the weaker side—so it seems
to them,—being behind their times; and they go over without a
struggle to the side of the most aggressive thinkers of their day.
 Let us suppose that, on the other hand, they have been fortified
with “Christian Evidences,” defended by bulwarks of sound dogmatic
teaching. Religion without definite dogmatic teaching degenerates
into sentiment, but dogma, as dogma, offers no defence against the
assaults of unbelief. As for “evidences,” the rôle of the Christian
apologist is open to the imputation conveyed in the keen proverb, qui
s’excuse, s’accuse; the truth by which we live must needs be self-
evidenced, admitting of neither proof nor disproof. Children should
be taught Bible history with every elucidation which modern research
makes possible. But they should not be taught to think of the
inscriptions on the Assyrian monuments, for example, as proofs of
the truth of the Bible records, but rather as illustrations, though they
are, and cannot but be subsidiary proofs.
Let us look at the third course; and first, as regards the outlook
upon current thought. Contemporary opinion is the fetish of the
young mind. Young people are eager to know what to think on all the
serious questions of religion and life. They ask what is the opinion of
this and that leading thinker of their day. They by no means confine
themselves to such leaders of thought as their parents have elected
to follow; on the contrary, the “other side” of every question is the
attractive side for them, and they do not choose to be behind the
foremost in the race of thought.
Now, that their young people should thus take to the water need
not come upon parents as a surprise. The whole training from
babyhood upward should be in view of this plunge. When the time
comes, there is nothing to be done; openly, it may be, secretly if the
home rule is rigid, the young folk think their own thoughts; that is,
they follow the leader they have elected; for they are truly modest
and humble at heart, and do not yet venture to think for themselves;
only they have transferred their allegiance. Nor is this transfer of
allegiance to be resented by parents; we all claim this kind of
“suffrage” in our turn when we feel ourselves included in larger
interests than those of the family.
But there is much to be done beforehand, though nothing when
the time comes. The notion that any contemporary authority is
infallible may be steadily undermined from infancy onwards, though
at some sacrifice of ease and glory to the parents. “I don’t know”
must take the place of the vague wise-sounding answer, the random
shot which children’s pertinacious questionings too often provoke.
And “I don’t know” should be followed by the effort to know, the
research necessary to find out. Even then, the possibility of error in a
“printed book” must occasionally be faced. The results of this kind of
training in the way of mental balance and repose are invaluable.
Another safeguard is in the attitude of reservation, shall we say?
which it may be well to preserve towards “Science.” It is well that the
enthusiasm of children should be kindled, that they should see how
glorious it is to devote a lifetime to patient research, how great to find
out a single secret of nature, a key to many riddles. The heroes of
science should be their heroes; the great names, especially of those
who are amongst us, should be household words. But here, again,
nice discrimination should be exercised; two points should be kept
well to the front—the absolute silence of the oracle on all ultimate
questions of origin and life, and the fact that, all along the line,
scientific truth comes in like the tide, with steady advance, but with
ebb and flow of every wavelet of truth; so much so, that, at the
present moment, the teaching of the last twenty years is discredited
in at least half a dozen departments of science. Indeed, it would
seem to be the part of wisdom to wait half a century before fitting the
discovery of to-day into the general scheme of things. And this, not
because the latest discovery is not absolutely true, but because we
are not yet able so to adjust it—according to the “science of the
proportion of things”—that it shall be relatively true.
But all this is surely beyond children? By no means; every walk
should quicken their enthusiasm for the things of nature, and their
reverence for the priests of that temple; but occasion should be
taken to mark the progressive advances of science, and the fact that
the teaching of to-day may be the error of to-morrow, because new
light may lead to new conclusions even from the facts already
known. “Until quite lately, geologists thought ... they now think ... but
they may find reason to think otherwise in the future.” To perceive
that knowledge is progressive, and that the next “find” may always
alter the bearings of what went before; that we are waiting, and may
have very long to wait, for the last word; that science also is
“revelation,” though we are not yet able fully to interpret what we
know; and that ‘science’ herself contains the promise of great
impetus to the spiritual life—to perceive these things is to be able to
rejoice in all truth and to wait for final certainty.
In another way we may endeavour to secure for the children that
stability of mind which comes of self-knowledge. It is well that they
should know so early, that they will seem to themselves always to
have known, some of the laws of thought which govern their own
minds. Let them know that, once an idea takes possession of them,
it will pursue, so to speak, its own course, will establish its own place
in the very substance of the brain, will draw its own train of ideas
after it. One of the most fertile sources of youthful infidelity is the fact
that thoughtful boys and girls are infinitely surprised when they come
to notice the course of their own thoughts. They read a book or listen
to talk with a tendency to what is to them “free-thought.” And then,
the “fearful joy” of finding that their own thoughts begin with the
thought they have heard, and go on and on to new and startling
conclusions on the same lines! The mental stir of all this gives a
delightful sense of power, and a sense of inevitableness and
certainty too; for they do not intend or try to think this or that. It
comes of itself; their reason, they believe, is acting independently of
them, and how can they help assuming that what comes to them of
itself, with an air of absolute certainty, must of necessity be right?
But what if from childhood they had been warned, “Take care of
your thoughts, and the rest will take care of itself; let a thought in,
and it will stay; will come again to-morrow and the next day, will
make a place for itself in your brain, and will bring many other
thoughts like itself. Your business is to look at the thoughts as they
come, to keep out the wrong thoughts, and let in the right. See that
ye enter not into temptation.” This sort of teaching is not so hard to
understand as the rules for the English nominative, and is of
infinitively more profit in the conduct of life. It is a great safeguard to
know that your “reason” is capable of proving any theory you allow
yourself to entertain.
 We have touched here only on the negative side of the parent’s
work as prophet, inspirer. There are perhaps few parents to whom
the innocence of the babe in its mother’s arms does not appeal with
pathetic force. “Open me the gates of righteousness, that I may go in
unto them,” is the voice of the little unworldly child; and a wish,
anyway, that he may be kept unspotted from the world is breathed in
every kiss of his mother, in the light of his father’s eyes. But how
ready we are to conclude that children cannot be expected to
understand spiritual things. Our own grasp of the things of the Spirit
is all too lax, and how can we expect that the child’s feeble
intelligence can apprehend the highest mysteries of our being? But
here we are altogether wrong. It is with the advance of years that a
materialistic temper settles upon us. But the children live in the light
of the morning-land. The spirit-world has no mysteries for them; that
parable and travesty of the spirit-world, the fairy-world, where all
things are possible, is it not their favourite dwelling-place? And fairy
tales are so dear to children because their spirits fret against the
hard and narrow limitations of time and place and substance; they
cannot breathe freely in a material world. Think what the vision of
God should be to the little child already peering wistfully through the
bars of his prison-house. Not a far-off God, a cold abstraction, but a
warm, breathing, spiritual Presence about his path and about his bed
—a Presence in which he recognises protection and tenderness in
darkness and danger, towards which he rushes as the timid child to
hide his face in his mother’s skirts.
A friend tells me the following story of her girlhood. It so
happened that extra lessons detained her at school until dark every
day during the winter. She was extremely timid, but, with the
unconscious reserve of youth, never thought of mentioning her fear
of “something.” Her way home lay by a river-side, a solitary path
under trees—big trees, with masses of shadow. The black shadows,
in which “something” might lie hid—the swsh-sh, swsh-sh of the
river, which might be whisperings or the rustle of garments—filled
her night by night with unabated terror. She fled along that river-side
path with beating heart; but, quick as flying steps and beating heart,
these words beat in her brain, over, and over, and over, the whole
length of the way, evening by evening, winter after winter: “Thou art
my hiding-place; Thou shalt preserve me from trouble; Thou shalt
compass me about with songs of deliverance.” Years after, when the
woman might be supposed to have outgrown girlish terrors, she
found herself again walking alone in the early darkness of a winter’s
evening under trees by the swsh-sh of another river. The old terror
returned, and with it the old words came to her, and kept time the
whole length of the way with her hasty steps. Such a place to hide
him in should be the thought of God to every child.
Their keen sensitiveness to spiritual influences is not due to
ignorance on the part of the children. It is we, not they, who are in
error. The whole tendency of modern biological thought is to confirm
the teaching of the Bible: the ideas which quicken come from above;
the mind of the little child is an open field, surely “good ground,”
where, morning by morning, the sower goes forth to sow, and the
seed is the Word. All our teaching of children should be given
reverently, with the humble sense that we are invited in this matter to
co-operate with the Holy Spirit; but it should be given dutifully and
diligently, with the awful sense that our co-operation would appear to
be made a condition of the Divine action; that the Saviour of the
world pleads with us to “Suffer the little children to come unto Me,”
as if we had the power to hinder, as we know that we have.
This thought of the Saviour of the world implies another
conception which we sometimes leave out of sight in dealing with
children. Young faces are not always sunny and lovely; even the
brightest children in the happiest circumstances have their clouded
hours. We rightly put the cloud down to some little disorder, or to the
weather, but these are the secondary causes which reveal a deep-
seated discontent. Children have a sense of sin acute in proportion
to their sensitiveness. We are in danger of trusting too much to a
rose-water treatment; we do not take children seriously enough;
brought face to face with a child, we find he is a very real person, but
in our educational theories we take him as “something between a
wax doll and an angel.” He sins; he is guilty of greediness,
falsehood, malice, cruelty, a hundred faults that would be hateful in a
grown-up person; we say he will know better by-and-by. He will
never know better; he is keenly aware of his own odiousness. How
many of us would say about our childhood, if we told the whole truth,
“Oh, I was an odious little thing!” and that, not because we recollect
our faults, but because we recollect our childish estimate of
ourselves. Many a bright and merry child is odious in his own eyes;
and the “peace, peace, where there is no peace,” of fond parents
and friends is little comfort. It is well that we “ask for the old paths,
where is the good way;” it is not well that, in the name of the old
paths, we lead our children into blind alleys, nor that we let them
follow the new into bewildering mazes.
 CHAPTER VI

PARENTS AS INSPIRERS

Part IV
“One of the little boys gazing upon the terrible desolation of the scene, so unlike
in its savage and inhuman aspects anything he had ever seen at home, nestled
close to his mother, and asked with bated breath, ‘Mither, is there a God here?’”—
John Burroughs.
The last chapter introduced the thought of parents in their highest
function—as revealers of God to their children. To bring the human
race, family by family, child by child, out of the savage and inhuman
desolation where He is not, into the light and warmth and comfort of
the presence of God, is, no doubt, the chief thing we have to do in
the world. And this individual work with each child, being the most
momentous work in the world, is put into the hands of the wisest,
most loving, disciplined, and divinely instructed of human beings. Be
ye perfect as your Father is perfect, is the perfection of parenthood,
perhaps to be attained only in its fulness through parenthood. There
are mistaken parents, ignorant parents, a few indifferent parents,
even, as one in a thousand, callous parents; but the good that is
done upon the earth is done, under God, by parents, whether directly
or indirectly.
Parents, who recognise that their great work is to be done by the
instrumentality of the ideas they are able to introduce into the minds
of their children, will take anxious thought as to those ideas of God
which are most fitting for children, and as to how those ideas may
best be conveyed. Let us consider an idea which is just now causing
some stir in people’s thoughts.
 “We read some of the Old Testament history as ‘history of the
Jews,’ and Job and Isaiah and the Psalms as poetry—and I am glad
to say he is very fond of them; and parts of the Gospels in Greek, as
the life and character of a hero. It is the greatest mistake to impose
them upon children as authoritative and divine all at once. It at once
diminishes their interest: we ought to work slowly up through the
human side.”[4]
Here is a theory which commends itself to many persons because
it is “so reasonable.” But it goes upon the assumption that we are
ruled by Reason, an infallible entity, which is certain, give it fair play,
to bring us to just conclusions. Now the exercise of that function of
the mind which we call reasoning—we must decline to speak of “the
Reason”—does indeed bring us to inevitable conclusions; the
process is definite, the result convincing; but whether that result be
right or wrong depends altogether upon the initial idea which, when
we wish to discredit it, we call a prejudice; when we wish to exalt, we
call an intuition, even an inspiration. It would be idle to illustrate this
position; the whole history of Error is the history of the logical
outcome of what we happily call misconceptions. The history of
Persecution is the tale of how the inevitable conclusions arrived at by
reasoning pass themselves off for truth. The Event of Calvary was
due to no hasty mad outburst of popular feeling. It was a triumph of
reasoning: the inevitable issue of more than one logical sequence;
the Crucifixion was not criminal, but altogether laudable, if that is
right which is reasonable. And this is why the hearts of religious
Jews were hardened and their understanding darkened; they were
truly doing what was right in their own eyes. It is a marvellous thing
to perceive the thoughts within us driving us forward to an inevitable
conclusion, even against our will. How can that conclusion which
presents itself to us in spite of ourselves fail to be right?
Let us place ourselves for one instant in the position of the logical
and conscientious Jew. “‘Jehovah’ is a name of awe,
unapproachable in thought or act except in ways Himself has
specified. To attempt unlawful approach is to blaspheme. As
Jehovah is infinitely great, presumptuous offence is infinitely
heinous, is criminal, is the last crime as committed against Him who
is the First. The blasphemer is worthy of death. This man makes
himself equal with God, the unapproachable. He is a blasphemer,
arrogant as Beelzebub. He is doubly worthy of death. To the people
of the Jews is committed in trust the honoured Name; upon them it is
incumbent to exterminate the blasphemer. The man must die.” Here
is the secret of the virulent hatred which dogged the steps of the
blameless Life. These men were following the dictates of reason,
and knew, so they would say, that they were doing right. Here we
have the invincible ignorance which the Light of the world failed to
illumine; and He,
“Who knows us as we are,
Yet loves us better than He knows,”

offers for them the true plea, “They know not what they do.” The
steps of the argument are incontrovertible; the error lies in the initial
idea,—such conception of Jehovah as made the conception of Christ
inadmissible, impossible. Thus reasoned the Jew upon whom his
religion had the first claim. The patriotic Jew, to whom religion itself
was subservient to the hopes of his nation, arrived by quite another
chain of spontaneous arguments at the same inevitable conclusion:
—“The Jews are the chosen people. The first duty of a Jew is
towards his nation. These are critical times. A great hope is before
us, but we are in the grip of the Romans; they may crush out the
national life before our hope is realised. Nothing must be done to
alarm their suspicions. This Man? By all accounts He is harmless,
perhaps righteous. But He stirs up the people. It is rumoured that
they call Him King of the Jews. He must not be permitted to ruin the
hopes of the nation. He must die. It is expedient that one man die for
the people, and that the whole nation perish not.” Thus the
consummate crime that has been done upon the earth was done
probably without any consciousness of criminality; on the contrary,
with the acquittal of that spurious moral sense which supports with
its approval all reasonable action. The Crucifixion was the logical
and necessary outcome of ideas imbibed from their cradles by the
persecuting Jews. So of every persecution; none is born of the
occasion and the hour, but comes out of the habit of thought of a
lifetime.
 It is the primal impulse to these habits of thought which children
must owe to their parents; and, as a man’s thought and action
Godward is—
“The very pulse of the machine,”
the introduction of such primal ideas as shall impel the soul to God is
the first duty and the highest privilege of parents. Whatever sin of
unbelief a man is guilty of, are his parents wholly without blame? Let
us consider what is commonly done in the nursery in this respect. No
sooner can the little being lisp than he is taught to kneel up in his
mother’s lap, and say “God bless ...” and then follows a list of the
near and dear, and “God bless ... and make him a good boy, for
Jesus’ sake. Amen.” It is very touching and beautiful. I once peeped
in at an open cottage door in a moorland village, and saw a little
child in its nightgown kneeling in its mother’s lap and saying its
evening prayer. The spot has ever since remained to me a sort of
shrine. There is no sight more touching and tender. By-and-by, so
soon as he can speak the words,
“Gentle Jesus, meek and mild,”
is added to the little one’s prayer, and later, “Our Father.” Nothing
could be more suitable and more beautiful than these morning and
evening approaches to God, the little children brought to Him by their
mothers. And most of us can “think back” to the hallowing influence
of these early prayers. But might not more be done? How many
times a day does a mother lift up her heart to God as she goes in
and out amongst her children, and they never know! “To-day I talked
to them” (a boy and girl of four and five) “about Rebekah at the well.
They were very much interested, especially about Eliezer praying in
his heart and the answer coming at once. They said, ‘How did he
pray?’ I said, ‘I often pray in my heart when you know nothing about
it. Sometimes you begin to show a naughty spirit, and I pray for you
in my heart, and almost directly I find the good Spirit comes, and
your faces show my prayer is answered.’ O. stroked my hand and
said, ‘Dear mother, I shall think of that!’ Boy looked thoughtful, but
didn’t speak; but when they were in bed I knelt down to pray for them
before leaving them, and when I got up, Boy said, ‘Mother, God filled
my heart with goodness while you prayed for us; and, mother, I will
try to-morrow.’” Is it possible that the mother could, when alone with
her children, occasionally hold this communing out loud, so that the
children might grow up in the sense of the presence of God? It would
probably be difficult for many mothers to break down the barrier of
spiritual reserve in the presence of even their own children. But
could it be done, would it not lead to glad and natural living in the
recognised presence of God?
A mother who remembered a little penny scent-bottle as an early
joy of her own, took three such small bottles home to her three little
girls. They got them next morning at the family breakfast and
enjoyed them all through the meal. Before it ended the mother was
called away, and little M. was sitting rather solitary with her scent-
bottle and the remains of her breakfast. And out of the pure well of
the little girl’s heart came this, intended for nobody’s ear, “Dear
mother, you are too good!” Think of the joy of the mother who should
overhear her little child murmuring over the first primrose of the year,
“Dear God, you are too good!” Children are so imitative, that if they
hear their parents speak out continually their joys and fears, their
thanks and wishes, they too will have many things to say.
Another point in this connection: the little German child hears and
speaks many times a day of der liebe Gott; to be sure he addresses
Him as “Du,” but du is part of his everyday speech; the circle of the
very dear and intimate is hedged in by the magic du. So with the little
French child, whose thought and word are ever of le bon Dieu; he
also says Tu, but that is how he speaks to those most endeared to
him. But the little English child is thrust out in the cold by an archaic
mode of address, reverent in the ears of us older people, but
forbidding, we may be sure, to the child. Then, for the Lord’s Prayer,
what a boon would be a truly reverent translation of it into the
English of to-day. To us, who have learned to spell it out, the present
form is dear, almost sacred; but we must not forget that it is after all
only a translation; and is, perhaps, the most archaic piece of English
in modern use: “which art,”[5] commonly rendered “chart,” means
nothing for a child. “Hallowed” is the speech of a strange tongue to
him—not much more to us; “trespasses” is a semi-legal term, never