Page:Shakespeare in the Class-Room, Weld, Shakespeariana, October 1886.djvu/6

442 high force the power of conception, inasmuch as the personation of a character, necessitates its vivid conception. It also shapes and kindles distinct ideals, gives acuteness and zest to the literary appreciation, brings attention to a focus till it burns there, thus giving special vigor to that without which, mind has no power worthily to achieve. Finally, it trains the mind to such self-adjustment, that it can hold itself still, while the will compels all the powers to combine in representing its conception of the character assumed.

Besides this general educational force, it tends to break the slavery of a special class of pupils, embracing often the finest organizations. In this class are natures keenly sensitive—those lacking self-esteem—the timid—the morbidly self-conscious—the self-distrustful—those who intensely crave approbation, and wither under disparaging comment. Pupils with these peculiarities underrate their powers. In measuring themselves they judge from false data. Their intense sensitiveness stifles manifestation. Thus they can neither show nor know their own strength. Their light is within ground glass, and they judge of it by the few rays that struggle through. The manifestations of mind made by their schoolmates, they compare with their own, not considering that they cannot show what they have, their powers having to force a passage through non-conductors, which stop half of them, and so hard beset the rest, that they come out warped and battered; consequently such natures shrivel under a false sense of inferiority. This morbid sensitiveness, with the aversion to class exercises that it begets, this disheartening sense of inferiority, with the other disturbing forces in its train, not only makes the pupils miserable, but keeps half his powers dormant, and fetters the rest.

Though such cases abound in both sexes, yet far the larger numnumber [sic] of them are girls; multitudes of these writhe through their school-days, the impaled victims of a morbid self-consciousness, and diffidence, that make every movement and expression, artificial and distorted, a stifling constraint, half-paralyzing thought, utterance, and action, intensifying self-distrust, and mortification, and thus perpetuating a misery self-inflicted and intolerable. Such cases demand a special process to call out self-assertion, and to make it a habit.

Till this be done the successful development of the mind is impossible. While such a palsy sits upon the powers they cannot act. To set them free is the first thing. If you demand speed, strike off fetters, if you want ready speech—away with gags, clear vision—unbandage the eyes.

I have dwelt the longer upon these cases because they are so common, so afflictive to the subject, such a bar to development, and because, especially in the case of girls, our schools provide no adequate remedy. Each case must be prescribed for according to its own symptoms. The end to be reached in all is the same, to put the pupil into her own custody, to develop self-poise and self-sway. To