MORAL EDUCATION. BY HERBERT SPENCER. (From "Education.") Do not expect from a child any great amount of moral goodness. During early years every civilized man passes through that phase of character exhibited by the barbarous race from which he is descended. As the child's features-flat nose, forwardopening nostrils, large lips, wide-apart eyes, absent frontal sinus, etc. resemble for a time those of the savage, so, too, do his instincts. Hence the tendencies to cruelty, to thieving, to lying, so general among children - tendencies which, even without the aid of discipline, will become more or less modified just as the features do. The popular idea that children are "innocent," while it may be true in so far as it refers to evil knowledge, is totally false in so far as it refers to evil impulses, as half an hour's observation in the nursery will prove to any Boys when left to themselves, as at a public school, treat each other far more brutally than men do; and were they left to themselves at an earlier age their brutality would be still more conspicuous. Not only is it unwise to set up a high standard for juvenile good conduct, but it is even unwise to use very urgent incitements to such good conduct. Already most people recognize the detrimental results of intellectual precocity; but there remains to be recognized the truth that there is a moral precocity which is also detrimental. Our higher moral faculties, like our higher intellectual ones, are comparatively complex. By consequence they are both comparatively late in their evolution. And with the one as with the other, a very early activity produced by stimulation will be at the expense of the future character. Hence the not uncommon fact that those who during childhood were instanced as models of juvenile goodness, by and by undergo some disastrous and seemingly inexplicable change, and end by being not above but below par; while relatively exemplary men are often the issue of a childhood by no means so promising. Be content, therefore, with moderate measures and moderate results. Constantly bear in mind the fact that a higher morality, like a higher intelligence, must be reached by a slow growth; and you will then have more patience with those imperfections of nature which your child hourly displays. You will be less prone to that constant scolding, and threatening, and forbidding, by which many parents induce a chronic domestic irritation, in the foolish hope that they will thus make their children what they should be. This comparatively liberal form of domestic government, which does not seek despotically to regulate all the details of a child's conduct, necessarily results from the system for which we have been contending. Satisfy yourself with seeing that your child always suffers the natural consequences of his actions, and you will avoid that excess of control in which so many parents err. Leave him wherever you can to the discipline of experience, and you will so save him from that hothouse virtue which over-regulation produces in yielding natures, or that demoralizing antagonism which it produces in independ ent ones. By aiming in all cases to administer the natural reactions to your child's actions, you will put an advantageous check upon your own temper. The method of moral education pursued by many, we fear by most, parents, is little else than that of venting their anger in the way that first suggests itself. The slaps, and rough shakings, and sharp words, with which a mother commonly visits her offspring's small offenses (many of them not offenses considered intrinsically), are very generally but the manifestations of her own ill-controlled feelings result much more from the promptings of those feelings than from a wish to benefit the offenders. While they are injurious to her own character, these ebullitions tend, by alienating her children and by decreasing their respect for her, to diminish her influence over them. But by pausing in each case of transgression to consider what is the natural consequence, and how that natural consequence may best be brought home to the transgressor, some little time is necessarily obtained for the mastery of yourself; the mere blind anger first aroused in you settles down into a less vehement feeling, and one not so likely to mislead you. Do not, however, seek to behave as an utterly passionless instrument. Remember that besides the natural consequences of your child's conduct which the working of things tends to bring round on him, your own approbation or disapprobation is also a natural consequence, and one of the ordained agencies for guiding him. The terror which we have been combating is that of substituting parental displeasure and its artificial penalties, for the penalties which nature has established. But while it should not be substituted for these natural penalties, it by no means follows that it should not, in some form, accompany them. The secondary kind of punishment should not usurp the place of the primary kind; but, in moderation, it may rightly supplement the primary kind. Such amount of disapproval, or sorrow, or indignation, as you feel, should be expressed in words or manner or otherwise; subject, of course, to the approval of your judgment. The degree and kind of feeling produced in you will necessarily depend upon your own character, and it is therefore useless to say it should be this or that. All that can be recommended is, that you should aim to modify the feeling into that which you believe ought to be entertained. Beware, however, of the two extremes; not only in respect of the intensity, but in respect of the duration of your displeasure. On the one hand, anxiously avoid that weak impulsiveness, so general among mothers, which scolds and forgives almost in the same breath. On the other hand, do not unduly continue to show estrangement of feeling, lest you accustom your child to do without your friendship and so lose your influence over him. The moral reactions called forth from you by your child's actions, you should as much as possible assimilate to those which you conceive would be called forth from a parent of perfect nature. Be sparing of commands. Command only in those cases in which other means are inapplicable, or have failed. frequent orders the parents' advantage is more considered than the child's," says Richter. As in primitive societies a breach of law is punished, not so much because it is intrinsically wrong as because it is a disregard of the king's authoritya rebellion against him; so in many families the penalty visited on a transgressor proceeds less from reprobation of the offense than from anger at the disobedience. Listen to the ordinary speeches-"How dare you disobey me?" "I tell you I'll make you do it, sir." "I'll soon teach you who is master" and then consider what the words, the tone, and the manner imply. A determination to subjugate is much more conspicuous in them than an anxiety for the child's welfare. For the time being the attitude of mind differs but little from that of the despot bent on punishing a recalcitrant subject. The right feeling parent, however, like the philanthropic legislator, will not rejoice in coercion, but will rejoice in dispensing with coercion. He will do without law in all cases where other modes of regulating conduct can be successfully employed; and he will regret the having recourse to law when it is necessary. As Richter remarks—the best rule in politics is said to be 'pas trop gouverner': it is also true in education." And in spontaneous conformity with this maxim parents, whose lust of dominion is restrained by a true sense of duty, will aim to make their children control themselves wherever it is possible, and will fall back upon absolutism only as a last resort. But whenever you do command, command with decision and consistency. If the case is one which really cannot be otherwise dealt with, then issue your fiat, and having issued it, never afterwards swerve from it. Consider well beforehand what you are going to do; weigh all the consequences; think whether your firmness of purpose will be sufficient; and then, if you finally make the law, enforce it uniformly at whatever cost. Let your penalties be like the penalties inflicted by inanimate nature inevitable. The hot cinder burns a child the first time he seizes it; it burns him the second time; it burns him the third time; it burns him every time; and he very soon learns not to touch the hot cinder. If you are equally consistent-if the consequences which you tell your child will follow certain acts follow with like uniformity, he will soon come to respect your laws as he does those of Nature. And this respect once established will prevent endless domestic evils. Of errors in education one of the worst is that of inconsistency. As in a community, crimes multiply when there is no certain administration of justice; so in a family, an immense increase of transgressions results from a hesitating or irregular infliction of penalties. A weak mother, who perpetually threatens and rarely performs, who makes rules in haste and repents of them at leisure, who treats the same offense now with severity and now with leniency, according as the passing humor dictates, is laying up miseries both for herself and her children. She is making herself contemptible in their eyes; she is setting them an example of uncontrolled feelings; she is encouraging them to transgress by the prospect of probable impunity; she is entailing endless squabbles and accompanying damage to her own temper and the tempers of her little ones; she is reducing their minds to a moral chaos, which after years of bitter experience will with difficulty bring into order. Better even a barbarous form of domestic government carried out consistently, than a humane one inconsistently carried out. Again we say, avoid coercive measures whenever it is possible to do so; but when you find despotism really necessary, be despotic in good earnest. Bear constantly in mind the truth that the aim of your discipline should be to produce a self-governing being; not to produce a being to be governed by others. Were your children fated to pass their lives as slaves, you could not too much accustom them to slavery during their childhood; but as they are by and by to be free men, with no one to control their daily conduct, you cannot too much accustom them to self-control while they are still under your eye. This it is which makes the system of discipline by natural consequences so especially appropriate to the social state which we in England have now reached. Under early, tyrannical forms of society, when one of the chief evils the citizen had to fear was the anger of his superiors, it was well that during childhood parental vengeance should be a predominant means of government. But now that the citizen has little to fear from any one now that the good or evil which he experiences throughout life is mainly that which in the nature of things results from his own conduct, it is desirable that from his first years he should begin to learn, experimentally, the good or evil consequences which naturally follow this or that conduct. Aim, therefore, to diminish the amount of parental government as fast as you can substitute for it in your child's mind that self-government arising from a foresight of results. In infancy a considerable amount of absolutism is necessary. A three-year-old urchin, playing with an open razor, cannot be allowed to learn by this discipline of consequences; for the consequences may, in such case, be too serious. But as intelligence increases, the number of instances calling for peremptory interference may be, and should be, diminished, with the view of gradually ending them as maturity is approached. All periods of transition are dangerous; and the most dangerous is the transition from the restraint of the family circle to the non-restraint of the world. Hence the importance of pursuing the policy we advocate, which, alike by cultivating a child's faculty of self-restraint, by continually increasing the degree in which it is left to its self-constraint, and by so bring |