The child and the adult are both working to satisfy two very different needs. The one works to build society and the other works to build man. Little importance has been attributed to the second worker. For when we look at the child we, more often than not, still see before us a little man, playing and living in a world of make belief. We still resist and fail to recognize the significance of the child’s present in building the adult of the future. When we finally come Six weeks into gestation a movement is detected in a tiny human embryo that is no larger than a pomegranate seed.
A heart begins to beat and it will continue beating for an entire lifetime. Its work will cease only at the moment of death. At no point along its life’s course will this heart stop to take a rest.
Watch the unending activity of the flowing stream or the growing tree. See the breakers of the ocean, the unceasing movements of the Earth, the planets, the sun and the stars. […] Have they asked for some rest?1 All creation is in constant movement—shifting, realigning, modifying, evolving. All movement in creation has a purpose. At times this movement is turbulent, dramatic, and visible, but more often than not, creation happens
without us being able to detect movement of any kind, at least not in a lifetime. All living creatures are constantly working to fulfil their function in sustaining life. In this we are united. Some are conscious of the changes their actions bring about, but for the most part, this work happens unconsciously, unknowingly.
Τo understand the value of this little worker, and attribute to him the rights that have been given to him by nature, society will undergo the biggest revolution of all times.
This peaceful revolution will have been brought about by little hands that will show us the way to love our work and how to view all work as a creative contribution to the well-being of man.
Τo understand the value of this little worker, and attribute to him the rights that have been given to him by nature, society will undergo the biggest revolution of all times.
Man, a fully conscious being, makes some sense of what he sees happening around him. He can see what is happening ‘above the surface’, because there is also something going on ‘below the surface’, that is not so easily explained or deciphered and does not always meet the requirements of a reasoning mind. We all have a sense of there being a ‘plan’, a plan which is gradually unfolding and is a process of evolution which follows certain laws. Few of us are able to see this plan, or even recognize it, even though we all unknowingly comply with it. It is a plan over which we have little control. However, we do have a choice: We may choose to corroborate with this plan by obeying the laws of nature and thereby come to sustain the existence of all creation, or we can choose to disobey these laws and thereby arrive at the destruction of the very creation we are part of! This is as true on the macro scale of evolution in regard to life on our planet as it is on the micro scale of the development of every human being.
Only by obeying the laws as laid down by nature will every creature, however big or small, be able to participate in the unfolding of its life. The laws that rule our life are hidden Montessori tells us,2 so we must look for them. The study of human nature from the moment of birth gives us an 48 AMI Journal 2021-2024insight into these laws, and for the newly born is the best vehicle that leads us directly to them. And what do we see?
Nature has planted in man a natural urge to obey. Rather than enslave, and this obedience is what elevates every living being so that its full potential may be expressed.
It is this obedience that allows for activity with a finite aim. Any transgression from these laws, bares consequences. The love of activity, the yearning for freedom, the urge for obedience, the impulse to conform to laws, which are at the heart of all creation—these qualities make man the unparalleled work of Nature