only now and then take the child in hand, so he does not know precisely what to
expect, we really require the child to change its nature with every change in us,
and well for the child who can defy such a changeable authority, which not only
unsettles but breaks up character anew when it is just at the beginning of the
formative period. Neglect is better than this, and fear of inconsistency of
authority makes the best parents often jealous of arbitrariness in teachers. Only
thus can we develop general habits of will and bring the child to know general
maxims of conduct inductively, and only thus by judicious boldness and
hardihood in command can we bring the child to feel the conscious strength that
comes only from doing unpleasant things. Even if instant obedience be only
external at first, it will work inward, for moods are controlled by work, and it is
only will which enlarges the bounds of personality.
Yet we must not forget that even morality is relative, and is one thing for adults
and often quite another for children. The child knows nothing of absolute truth,
justice, or virtues. The various stimuli of discipline are to enforce the higher
though weaker insights which the child has already unfolded, rather than to
engraft entirely unintuited good. The command must find some ally, feeble
though it be, in the child's own soul. We should strive to fill each moment with
as little sacrifice or subordination, as mere means or conditions to the future, as
possible, for fear of affectation and insincerity. But yet the hardier and sounder
the nature, the more we may address training to barely nascent intuitions, with a
less ingredient of immediate satisfaction, and the deeper the higher element Of
interest will be grounded in the end. The child must find as he advances towards
maturity, that every new insight, or realization of his own reveals the fact that
you have been there before with commands, cultivating sentiments and habits,
and not that he was led to mistake your convenience or hobby for duty, or failed
to temper the will by temporizing with it. The young are apt to be most sincere at
an age when they are also most mistaken, but if sincerity be kept at its deepest
and best, will be least harmful and easiest overcome. If authority supplement
rather than supersede good motives, the child will so love authority as to
overcome your reluctance to apply it directly, and as a final result will choose
the state and act you have pre-formed in its slowly-widening margin of freedom,
and will be all the less liable to undue subservience to priest or boss, or fashion
or tradition later, as obedience gives place to normal, manly independence.
In these and many other ways everything in conduct should be mechanized as
early and completely as possible. The child's notion of what is right is what is
habitual, and the simple, to which all else is reduced in thought, is identified