does not this evidence seem to warrant his conclusion? The mother would reason in just the same way if similarly placed. If, in the circle of her acquaintance, she found some one who was constantly thwarting her wishes, uttering sharp reprimands, and occasionally inflicting actual penalties on her, she would pay but little attention to any professions of anxiety for her welfare which accompanied these acts. Why, then, does she suppose that her boy will conclude other wise? But now observe how different will be the results if the system we contend for be consistently pursued-if the mother not only avoids becoming the instrument of punishment, but plays the part of a friend by warning her boy of the punishments which Nature will inflict. Take a case; and that it may illustrate the mode in which this policy is to be early initiated, let it be one of the simplest cases. Suppose that, prompted by the experimental spirit so conspicuous in children, whose proceedings instinctively conform to the inductive method of inquiry-suppose that so prompted, the child is amusing himself by lighting pieces of paper in the candle and watching them burn. If his mother is of the ordinary unreflective stamp, she will either, on the plea of keeping the child "out of mischief," or from fear that he will burn himself, command him to desist; and in case of noncompliance will snatch the paper from him. On the other hand, should he be so fortunate as to have a mother of sufficient rationality, who knows that this interest with which the child is watching the paper burn results from a healthy inquisitiveness, without which he would never have emerged out of infantine stupidity, and who is also wise enough to consider the moral results of interference, she will reason thus: "If I put a stop to this, I shall prevent the acquirement of a certain amount of knowledge. It is true that I may save the child from a burn; but what then? He is sure to burn himself some time; and it is quite essential to his safety in life that he should learn by experience the properties of flame. Moreover, if I forbid him from running this present risk, he is sure hereafter to run the same or a greater risk when no one is present to prevent him; whereas, if he should have any accident now that I am by, I can save him from any great injury: add to which the advantage that he will have in future some dread of fire, and will be less likely to burn himself to death, or set the house in a flame when others are absent. Furthermore, were I to make him desist, I should thwart him in the pursuit of what is in itself a purely harmless, and indeed, instructive gratification; and he would be sure to regard me with more or less ill-feeling. Ignorant as he is of the pain from which I would save him, and feeling only the pain of a balked desire, he could not fail to look upon me as the cause of that pain. To save him from a hurt which he can not conceive, and which has therefore no existence for him, I inflict upon him a hurt which he feels keenly enough; and so become, from his point of view, a minister of evil. My best course then, is simply to warn him of the danger, and to be ready to prevent any serious damage." And following out this conclusion, she says to the child: "I fear you will hurt yourself if you do that." Suppose, now, that the child perseveres, as he will very probably do; and suppose that he ends by burning himself. What are the results? In the first place he has gained an experience which he must gain eventually, and which, for his own safety he can not gain too soon. And in the second place he has found that his mother's disapproval or warning was meant for his welfare: he has a further positive experience of her benevolence-a further reason for placing confidence in her judgment and her kindness—a further reason for loving her. Of course, in those occasional hazards where there is a risk of broken limbs or other serious bodily injury, forcible prevention is called for. But leaving out these extreme cases, the system pursued should be not that of guarding a child against the small dangers into which it daily runs, but that of advising and warning it against them. And by consistently pursuing this course a much stronger filial affection will be generated than commonly exists. If here, as elsewhere, the discipline of the natural reactions is allowed to come into play-if in all those out-of-door scramblings and in-door experiments, by which children are liable to hurt themselves, they are allowed to persevere, subject only to dissuasion more or less earnest according to the risk, there can not fail to arise an ever-increasing faith in the parental friendship and guid-back upon the lower; those who have no ance. Not only, as before shown, does sympathetic pleasures seek selfish ones; the adoption of this principle enable and hence, conversely, the maintenance fathers and mothers to avoid the chief of happier relations between parents and part of that odium which attaches to the children is calculated to diminish the infliction of positive punishment; but, as number of those offenses of which selfishwe here see, it enables them further to ness is the origin. avoid the odium that attaches to constant thwartings; and even to turn each of those incidents which commonly cause squabbles, into a means of strengthening the mutual good feeling. Instead of being told in words, which deeds seem to contradict, that their parents are their best friends, children will learn this truth by a consistent daily experience; and so learning it, will acquire a degree of trust and attachment which nothing else can give. And now having indicated the much more sympathetic relation which must result from the habitual use of this method, let us return to the question above put How is this method to be applied to the graver offenses? Note, in the first place, that these graver offenses are likely to be both less frequent and less grave under the régime we have described than under the ordinary régime. The perpetual ill-behavior of many children is itself the consequence of that chronic irritation in which they are kept by bad management. The state of isolation and antagonism produced by frequent punishment, necessarily deadens the sympathies; necessarily, therefore, opens the way to those transgressions which the sympathies should check. That harsh treatment which children of the same family inflict on each other is often, in great measure, a reflex of the harsh treatment they receive from adults-partly suggested by direct example, and partly generated by the ill-temper and the tendency to vicarious retaliation, which follow chastisements and scoldings. It can not be questioned that the greater activity of the af fections and happier state of feeling, maintained in children by the discipline we have described, must prevent their sins against each other from being either so great or so frequent. Moreover, the still more reprehensible offenses, as lies and petty thefts, will, by the same causes, be diminished. Domestic estrangement is a fruitful source of such transgressions. It is a law of human nature, visible enough to all who observe, that those who are debarred the higher gratifications fall For When, however, such offenses are committed, as they will occasionally be even under the best system, the discipline of consequences may still be resorted to; and if there exist that bond of confidence and affection which we have described, this discipline will be found efficient. what are the natural consequences, say, of a theft? They are of two kinds-direct and indirect. The direct consequence, as dictated by pure equity, is that of making restitution. An absolutely just ruler (and every parent should aim to be one) will demand that, wherever it is possible, a wrong act shall be undone by a right one: and in the case of theft this implies either the restoration of the thing stolen, or, if it is consumed, then the giving of an equivalent: which, in the case of a child, may be effected out of its pocket-money. The indirect and more serious consequence is the grave displeasure of parents-a consequence which inevitably follows among all peoples sufficiently civilized to regard theft as a crime; and the manifestation of this displeasure is, in this instance, the most severe of the natural reactions produced by the wrong action. "But," it will be said, "the manifestation of parental displeasure, either in words or blows, is the ordinary course in these cases: the method leads here to nothing new." Very true. Already we have admitted that, in some directions, this method is spontaneously pursued. Already we have shown that there is a more or less manifest tendency for educational systems to gravitate towards the true system. And here we may remark, as before, that the intensity of this natural reaction will, in the beneficent order of things, adjust itself to the requirements-that this parental displeasure will vent itself in violent measures during comparatively barbarous times, when the children are also comparatively barbarous; and will express itself less cruelly in those more advanced social states in which, by implication, the children are amenable to milder treatment. But what it chiefly concerns us here to observe is, that the manifestation of strong parental displeasure, produced by one of these graver offenses, will be potent for good just in proportion to the warmth of the attachment existing between parent and child. Just in proportion as the discipline of the natural consequences has been consistently pursued in other cases, will it be efficient in this case. Proof is within the experience of all, if they will look for it. For does not every man know that when he has offended another person, the amount of genuine regret he feels (of course, leaving worldly considerations out of the question) varies with the degree of sympathy he has for that person? Is he not conscious that when the person of fended stands to him in the position of an enemy, the having given him annoyance is apt to be a source rather of secret satisfaction than of sorrow? Does he not remember that where umbrage has been taken by some total stranger, he has felt much less concern than he would have done had such umbrage been taken by one with whom he was intimate? While, conversely, has not the anger of an admired and cherished friend been regarded by him as a serious misfortune, long and keenly regretted? Clearly, then, the effects of parental displeasure upon children must similarly depend upon the preëxisting relationship. Where there is an established alienation, the feeling of a child who has transgressed is a purely selfish fear of the evil consequences likely to fall upon it in the shape of physical penalties or deprivations; and after these evil consequences have been inflicted, there are aroused an antagonism and dislike which are morally injurious, and tend further to increase the alienation. On the contrary, where there exists a warm filial affection, produced by a consistent parental friendship-a friendship not dogmatically as serted as an excuse for punishments and denials, but daily exhibited in ways that a child can comprehend-a friendship which avoids needless thwartings, which warns against impending evil consequences, and which sympathizes with juvenile pursuits-there the state of mind caused by parental displeasure will not only be salutary as a check to future misconduct of like kind, but will also be intrinsically salutary. The moral pain consequent upon having, for the time being, lost so loved a friend, will stand in place of the physical pain usually inflicted; and where this attachment exists, will prove equally, if not more, efficient. While instead of the fear and vindictiveness excited by the one course, there will be excited by the other more or less of sympathy with parental sorrow, a genuine regret for having caused it, and a desire, by some atonement, to reestablish the habitual friendly relationship. Instead of bringing into play those purely egoistic feelings whose predominance is the cause of criminal acts, there will be brought into play those altruistic feelings which check criminal acts. Thus the discipline of the natural consequences is applicable to grave as well as trivial faults; and the practice of it conduces not simply to the repression, but to the eradication of such faults. In brief the truth is, that savageness begets savageness, and gentleness begets gentleness. Children who are unsympathetically treated become relatively unsympathetic; whereas treating them with due fellow-feeling is a means of cultivating their fellow-feeling. With family governments as with political ones, a harsh despotism itself generates a great part of the crimes it has to repress; while conversely, a mild and liberal rule not only avoids many causes of dissension, but so ameliorates the tone of feeling as to diminish the tendency to transgression. As John Locke long since remarked: "Great severity of punishment does but very little good, nay, great harm in education; and I believe it will be found that, cæteris paribus, those children who have been most chastised seldom make the best men." In confirmation of which opinion we may cite the fact not long since made public by Mr. Rogers, Chaplain of the Pentonville Prison, that those juvenile criminals who have been whipped are those who most frequently return to prison. On the other hand, as exhibiting the beneficial effects of a kinder treatment, we will instance the fact stated to us by a French lady in whose house we recently staid in Paris. Apologizing for the disturbance daily caused by a little boy who was unmanageable both at home and at school, she expressed her fear that there was no remedy save that which had succeeded in the case of an elder brother; namely, sending him to an English school. She explained that at various schools in Paris this elder brother had proved utterly untractable; that in despair they had followed the advice to send him to England; and that on his return home he was as good as he had before been bad. And this remarkable change she ascribed entirely to the comparative mildness of the English discipline. After this exposition of principles, our remaining space may best be occupied by a few of the chief maxims and rules deducible from them; and with a view to brevity we will put these in a more or less hortatory form. 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, forward-opening 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 one. 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. 66 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 independent 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 Not only is it unwise to set up a high most, parents, is little else than that of standard for juvenile good conduct, but it venting their anger in the way that first is even unwise to use very urgent incite- suggests itself. The slaps and rough ments to such good conduct. Already shakings, and sharp words, with which a most people recognize the detrimental re- mother commonly visits her offspring's sults of intellectual precocity; but there small offenses (many of them not offenses remains to be recognized the truth that considered intrinsically) are very gener there is a moral precocity which is also ally but the manifestations of her own illdetrimental. Our higher moral faculties controlled feelings result much more like our higher intellectual ones, are com- from the promptings of those feelings than paratively complex. By consequence from a wish to benefit the offenders. they are both comparatively late in their While they are injurious to her own chaevolution. And with the one as with the racter, these ebullitions tend, by alienatother, a very early activity produced by ing her children and by decreasing their stimulation will be at the expense of the respect for her, to diminish her influence future character. Hence the not uncom- over them. But by pausing in each case mon fact that those who during childhood of transgression to consider what is the were instanced as models of juvenile good-natural consequence, and how that natural ness, 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 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 | a rebellion against him; so in many famivehement 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 error 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 acccompany 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 the 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. "In 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 authority VOL. XLIV.-NO. II. lies, the penalty visited on a transgressor proceeds less from reprobation of the of fense 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 can not 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 11 |