i68 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



This respect for custom is related to the imitative instincts of 

 the child. He does what he sees others do, and so tends to fall in 

 with their manner of life. We all know that these small people 

 take their cue from their elders as to what is allowable. Hence, 

 one difficulty of moral training. A little boy when two years and 

 one month old had happened to see his mother tear a piece of 

 calico. The next day he was discovered to have taken the sheet 

 from the bed and made a rent in it. When scolded, he replied 

 in his childish German, "Mamma mach 'put" i. e., myiaclit caput 

 (breaks the calico). It is well when the misleading effect of " ex- 

 ample '' is so little serious as it was in this case. 



In addition to this effect of others' doings in making things 

 allowable in the child's eyes, there is the binding influence of a 

 repeated regular manner of proceeding. This is the might of 

 " custom" in the full sense of the term, the force which underlies 

 all a child's conceptions of " right." In spite of the difficulties of 

 moral training, of drilling children into orderly habits and I do 

 not lose sight of these it may confidently be said that a child 

 has an inbred respect for what is customary and has the appear- 

 ance of a rule of life. Nor is this, I believe, altogether a reflec- 

 tion, by imitation, of others' orderly ways and of the system of 

 rules which are imposed on him by others. I am quite ready to 

 admit that the institution of social life, the regular procession of 

 the daily doings of the house, aided by the system of parental 

 discipline, has much to do with fixing the idea of orderliness or 

 regularity in the child's mind. Yet I believe the facts point to 

 something more, to an innate disposition to follow precedent and 

 rule which precedes education, and is one of the forces to which 

 education can appeal. This disposition has its roots in habit, 

 which is apparently a law of all life ; but it is more than the 

 blind impulse of habit, since it is reflective and rational and im- 

 plies a recognition of the universal. 



The first crude manifestations of this disposition to make rules 

 to rationalize life by subjecting it to a general method, is seen in 

 those actions which seem little more than the working of habit, 

 the insistence on the customary lines of procedure at meals and 

 such like. A mother writes that her boy, when five years old, was 

 quite a stickler for punctilious order in these matters. His cup 

 and spoon had to be put in precisely the right place ; the sequences 

 of the day, as the lesson before the walk, the walk before bed, 

 had to be rigorously observed. Any breach of the customary 

 was apt to be resented as a sort of impiety. This may be an ex- 

 treme instance, but my observation leads me to say that such 

 punctiliousness is not uncommon. What is more, I have seen it 

 developing itself where the system of parental government was 

 by no means characterized by severe insistence on such minutise 



