The Importance of Movement

It is very clear that since the adult has had no notion of how important activity is to the child, he has simply prevented such disturbing activity.

It is not equally clear how scientists and teachers have failed to note the supreme importance of activity in the building up of the man to be. The very word “animal” implies the idea of animation, that is, of activity: the difference between animals and vegetables is that vegetables stand still and animals move. How then could it ever have been thought desirable to subdue the activities of a child?

Various expressions of praise show a subconscious acceptance of such an attitude. The child is called a “little flower”, something that keeps still. Or else, “a little angel”, that is, a being that moves, nay, flies, but in another world from the world of men.

All this reveals the mysterious blindness of the human soul extending far beyond the narrow limits assigned by Freud[26] to psychological scotoma[27], which he describes as a partial blindness existing in the unconscious of humanity.

This blindness is deep indeed if science, with its systematic methods for discovering the unknown, has passed by the most formidable testimony of human life without revealing it.

All have agreed on the importance of the senses in building up the mind. No one doubts that the mind of a deaf mute, or of a blind child, encounters extraordinary difficulties in its development, for sight and hearing are the gates of the mind; they are known as the intellectual senses. It is also agreed that intrinsic conditions being equal, the intelligence of deaf mutes and of the blind remains inferior to that of men who enjoy the use of all their senses. Yet the sufferings of the blind and deaf are plain to all, though they are other than physical sufferings, and even compatible with perfect health. No one would be so absurd as to suppose that by artificially depriving children of sight and hearing they would be made better able to assimilate intellectual culture and social morality. Nor could anyone ever think that for the progress of civilization we must look to the deaf and blind.

But it would be hard to gain acceptance for the idea that movement has as much and more importance for the moral and intellectual building up of man. Man, if he builds himself, neglecting his organs of movement, will have an arrested development and remain permanently in a graver state of inferiority than that which arises from the absence of one of the intellectual senses.

The sufferings of the man who remains the prisoner of his flesh present a more tragic and significant picture than the sufferings of those deaf or blind. The blind and the deaf lack only the elements in their environment that act as external means to their development. The soul has such powers of adaptation that up to a certain point the keenness of one sense may supply the deficiency of another. But movement is a part of man’s very personality, and nothing can take its place. The man who does not move is injured in his very being and is an outcast from life. * * *

When people speak of muscles they have at once the idea of a mechanism, indeed of the mechanism of a machine. And this seems very far removed from the idea we have formed of the spirit, which is remote from matter and mechanisms.

To attribute to movement even greater importance than to the so-called intellectual senses in the development of mind and in the intellectual evolution of a man, seems a defiance of accepted ideas.

But in the eye and ear there are mechanisms. Nothing could be more perfect than the sublime, living camera we find in the eye. And the ear is an assembly of many-stringed harps with a jazz-band complete even to the drum!

When, however, we speak of the importance of these sublime instruments in building up the intelligence, we do not think of them as mechanisms, but we think of the ego that uses them. Through these marvelous vital instruments the ego comes into relation with the world and uses them according to its psychological needs. The sight of the beauties of nature, of sunrise or sunset, or of works of art, the sonorous impressions of the outer world, man’s voice, or music, all these manifold and continuous impressions give the inner ego the delights of psychic life and the nourishment necessary for its conservation.

The ego is the real agent, the single arbiter, and the recipient of the sense impressions. If there were no ego to see and enjoy, what would be the use of the mechanisms of the sensory organs? It is not the fact of seeing or hearing that is important, but the fact that the ego should form itself, grow, enjoy and maintain itself, through seeing and hearing.

Now we can draw an analogy between this and movement. Movement, without any doubt, has its mechanical organs, though these are not rigid and fixed like the membrane of the tympanum or the crystal lens of the eye. Now the fundamental problem of human life and hence of education is that the ego should be able to animate and master its own instruments of motion, in order that in its actions it should be guided by something higher than material objects or the functions of vegetative life, something which is generally instinct, but which in man is openly a creative spirit, clothed with intelligence.

If the ego cannot attain this essential condition its unity will be shattered. It will be as though an instinct were to go about the world separated from the body it should animate.

Montessori, Maria. The Secret of Childhood (Montessori series Book 22) (p. 88 - 90). Kindle Edition.