♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[Jan. 



1885. 



remoter from the pai-ental type, but partakes even of 

 maLy of the characteristics of animal tjpes. The very 

 young child is in reality wanting in most of the essential 

 attributes of human types of character, in most of the 

 features which distinguish man from the lower animals. A 

 biby is an engaging animal, but still it is little more than 

 an animal. It cannot be said to reason, more at any rate 

 than a clever dog or monkey seems to reason. It has no 

 distinct ideas of right or wrong. It has appetites and 

 wants, and nearly all that it does is ruled by those appe- 

 tites and wants — at first almost wholly, later with such 

 limitations as are suggested by the effects of experience, 

 mere or less consciously acted upon. The system of training 

 ap[)ro[>riate at this stage of child-life — in fact, the only 

 system available — is akin to the system of training used 

 for animals. The tender nurse and the loving mothei 

 may object to this statement, but she acts on this 

 principle. Moreover, a parent can more fairly aot in this 

 way to the very young child than to one that begins to 

 show peculiarilie^i of character more nearly approaching to 

 those of either pai-ent, or of others of the child's near 

 kindred. Parents can hardly feel responsible for those 

 faults of character in the baby which, according 

 to the principles of heredity, have not been directly 

 handed down to the infant by them, but belong 

 to much more remote progenitors. Similar remarks apply 

 to the following stage of early childhood, the stage when 

 the child resembles in character the savage rather than 

 the mere animaL It is at these two stages, chiefly, that 

 the old-fashioned system of training can alone be adopted, 

 though even at those early stages discrimination is re- 

 quired, because of the different degrees in which animal or 

 savage peculiarities of character are recogni.sed. Some 

 babies are good little animals, though they have animal- 

 faults which require correction; others, on the contrary, 

 are bad little animals, and require for their own good 

 (and even for their own siftty) a severer system of treat- 

 ment. So with young children a stage or so later. Some 

 are very pleasant little savages, though they have some 

 savage tricks which mu:^t not be encouraged, but checked ; 

 others are terrible little barbarians, and unless ruled 

 with a rather strong hand will do mischief to others, 

 and (probably) still more serious mischief to themselves. 

 For these earlier stages of child-life, a system of training 

 and, where necessary, of control and even severity, has to 

 be adopted ; and the only considerations to be attended to 

 in selecting the most appropriate measures are those 

 depending on the individual traits of character observed at 

 this stage of the growing child's life. At this time it may 

 sometimes happen that the old-fashioned system of severity 

 — the old-fashioned doctrine that he who spareth the rod 

 hateth his child — may be unfortunately ajipropriate. Even 

 in the animal and savage stages of a child's life, however, 

 gentleness and kindness are nearly always better than 

 sternness and severity. Xearly always it is the weakness 

 of the parent rather than the fault of the child which calls 

 for correction, though correction falls on the child, not on 

 the parent. The child sees examples of ill-temper and 

 obstinacy, falls into obstinate and ill-tempered ways, and 

 is presently punished, more because its faults excite anger 

 than because, when wise'y considered, they are held to 

 require such correction as may lead to their being gradually 

 eliminated from the character. It would be difficult to say 

 what proportion of the faults of manhood have their 

 origin at this stage of life, because the faults then spring- 

 ing into existence are afterwards commingled with those 

 inherited from the parents or through the parents. But 

 there can be little doubt that for want of patient and judi- 

 cious training, and occasional correction, erring rather on 



the side of pity than of severity, many characters are seri- 

 ously impaired before the inherited traits have begun to 

 show themselves with any degree of distinctness. 



It is, however, later in life, in boyhood and girlhood, 



I young manhood and young womanhood, that we recognise 

 the more difficult part of parental training. Many parents, 

 indeed, nay most, overlook the special considerations to 

 which they ought to attend, now that the development of 

 the law of heredity has made the origin of indi^-idual 

 peculiarities of character clear ; but this dees not affect the 

 argument. In every family we see, at one or another part 

 of the chila's life, the faults and good qualities of the 

 parents or of other near relations showing themselves with 

 greater or less distinctness. Faults may be so punished 

 that the child conceals them : yet they are there. It very 

 seldom happens that they are not at some time or other 

 shown, in such sort that the parents can see what manner 

 of man or woman the child will grow up to be. Now here 

 a very difficult cjuestion of responsibility and duty presents 

 itself. A father, we will say, recognises in his child a fault 

 which he knows to be inherited both from and through 

 himself — in other words, what is called a family failing. 

 The consciousness that he himself has the fault does not in 

 any degree diminish the annoyance caused by it : rather 

 the reverse, seeing that faults in others are all the more 

 provoking if we are ourselves liable to them. But the 

 right to jiunish and the duty of punishment are curiously 

 affected by consideration of the hereditary nature of the 

 fault. I am, let us say, prone to violent fits of temper, 

 or to moroseness, or to obstinacy ; some fine day, a son 

 or daughter of mine exhibits, in a marked degree, the 

 same failing, which I know to be mine, which I know 

 I have inherited, and which I equally know I have 

 transmitted. I know that in his or her career my 

 child will suffer from the effects of this family failing, 

 unless every pains be taken either to eradicate it or to 

 bring it under mastery, making of it a servant instead 

 of a tyrant Of old, my course would have been clear 

 enough, though painful. I should have felt it my obvious 

 duty to use correction of such degree of severity — and no 

 more — as was neces.-ary to compel my child to master his 



j fault or temper. (Of course, I am considering here the 

 case of a parent who recognises his duty in such matters ; 

 one who does not would probably thrash his son or punish 

 his daughter in such severe ways as might occur to him, 

 with no other object but to get rid of the annoyance 

 caused by the child's fault.) But when the parent 

 recognises the fault of disposition or of temper 

 as in reality his own, though manifested by the 

 child, the position becomes difficult and painful. A 

 parent may be obliged by a sense of iluty to punish his 

 own fault in his child, being all the while conscious that 

 for the existence of the fault in the child he is himself 

 responsible. It is easily seen, too, that in the case of 

 far-seeing persons (those farthest removed from the savage 

 state), the sense ( f duty, or rather the feeling of doubt and 

 difficulty in this matter, would extend further. The father 

 who, knowing that some fault of temper has been a 

 source of sorrow or misery to himself, feels that, let it 

 have come how it may (not that he has any doubt whence 

 it came), this fault in his child must be corrected, might 

 very well consider thaf, since children could only be bom 

 to him at the risk of inheriting this source of sorrow and 

 misery, it would not be well that children should be bom 

 to him at all. The old argument against Malthusian 

 doctrines, that a child bom into the world may possibly 

 become one in the choir of heaven, singing God's praises 

 everlastingly, so that all doctrines by which the number 

 of such children may be diminished (as by late marriage, 



