STUDIES OF CHILDHOOD. 105 



STUDIES OF CHILDHOOD. 



XII. UNDER LAW. 



By JAMES SULLY, M. A., LL. D., 



GROTE PKOFESSOR OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND AND LOGIC AT THE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, 



LONDON. 



[a) THE STRUGGLE WITH LAW. 



IN the last chapter we tried to get at those tendencies of child- 

 nature which, though they have a certain moral significance, 

 may in a manner be called spontaneous and independent of the 

 institution of moral training. We will now examine the child's 

 attitude toward the moral government with which he finds him- 

 self confronted. 



Here, again, we meet with opposite views. Children, say some, 

 are essentially disobedient and lawbreaking. A child as such is 

 a rebel, delighting in nothing so much as in evading and dodging 

 the rule which he finds imposed by others. 



The view that children are instinctively obedient and law-abid- 

 ing has not, I think, been very boldly insisted on. A follower of 

 Rousseau at least, who sees only clumsy interference with natural 

 development in our attempts to govern children, would say that 

 child-nature must resist the artificial and cramping system which 

 the disciplinarian imposes. 



It seems, however, to be allowed by some that a certain num- 

 ber of children are docile and disposed to accept authority with 

 its commands. According to them, children are either obedient 

 or disobedient. This is probably the view of many mothers and 

 pedagogues. 



Here, too, it is probable that we try to make nature too simple. 

 Even the latter view, in spite of its apparent wish to be discrimi- 

 nating, does not allow for the many-sidedness of the child and for 

 the many different ways in which the instincts of child-nature 

 may vary. 



Now it is worth asking whether, if the child were naturally 

 disposed to look on authority as something wholly hostile, he 

 would get morally trained at all. Physically mastered and mor- 

 ally cowed he might, of course, become ; but this is not the same 

 thing as being morally induced into a habit of accepting law and 

 obeying it. 



In inquiring into this matter we must begin by drawing a dis- 

 tinction. There is first the attitude of a child toward the gov- 

 ernor, the parent, or other ruler, and there is his attitude toward 

 law as such. These are by no means the same thing, and a child 

 of three or four begins to illustrate the distinction. He may seem 

 to be lawless, opposed to the very idea of government, when, in 



