THE CHAOS IN MORAL TRAINING. 435 



some particular act.* After acting, a number of persons note the 

 fact that they became so uncomfortable that they either owned 

 up or resolved not to do that sort of thing again. This experi- 

 ence, however, is noted only in the case of a lie told or acted. 

 Several expressly state that obedience and honesty (as a regard 

 for the property of others) appeared quite artificial, their need 

 being seen only after considerable instruction and some rather 

 crucial experiences. Obedience, in many cases, seemed quite arbi- 

 trary " necessary for children," as one puts it, " but not for grown 

 people " ; or, as another notes, " till he got big enough so he wouldn't 

 have to mind " ; while a third states that obedience, as such, was 

 always accompanied with a certain resentment and a desire to 

 have the positions reversed, so that he could do the commanding. 

 As for honesty, one says that it always seemed to him that any- 

 thing he wanted to use belonged to him ; another, that any pretty 

 thing which she admired was her own. One child notes that she 

 saved up the pennies her father had given her to take to Sunday 

 school, and bought a valentine with them, which she gave to him, 

 to surprise him. The father threw this into the fire first, and then 

 punished her, taking it for granted that she knew she was doing 

 wrong, f Not even after that, however, did she feel it was wrong, 

 but rather felt indignant and humiliated that her father had 

 treated her gift in such a way. Another child could see no wrong 

 in taking the pennies from a bank which she and her sister had in 

 common. The following instance is worth quoting in full : "Be- 

 fore I was four, I remember several instances in which I saw 

 moral delinquencies in others, which I wished to punish or did 

 punish, but none in myself. As to honesty, I claimed all the eggs 

 laid in the neighborhood as coming from my own pullet. After 

 being convinced of the physical impossibility of this, it was a long 

 time before I would believe that everything I laid hands on was 

 not mine. I was once driven off from a field where I was picking 

 berries ; this made a great impression upon me, and led to ques- 

 tions regarding the rights of others to be so exclusive. The ef- 

 fectual appeal always lay in being led to put myself in the place 

 of others." A number note that there was great difficulty in ap- 

 preciating that a fence could institute a moral barrier between 

 mine and thine. But as regards lying, a few report having been 



* This may be due, of course, to the way in which the question was put. 



f A sense of injustice seems to have been the first distinctly moral feeling aroused in 

 many. This, not on account of the wrong which the child did others, but of wrong suf- 

 fered in being punished for something which seemed perfectly innocent to the child. One 

 of the distinct painful impressions left on my own mind by the papers is the comparative 

 frequency with which parents assume that an act is consciously wrong and punish it as 

 such, when in the child's mind the act is simply psychological based, I mean, upon ideas 

 and emotions which, under the circumstances, are natural. 



