28 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 



plication to a new-born child! The child is not 

 even a person; it is only a non-moral being as 

 yet. Augustin again says: "The real objection 

 against them (the heretics) is that they refuse 

 to confess that unbaptized infants are liable to 

 the condemnation of the first man, and that orig- 

 inal sin has been transmitted to them and requires 

 to be purged by regeneration. " It is not so very 

 wonderful that such a physical disease, as sin is 

 thus thought to be, could be cured by such a phys- 

 ical remedy as baptism in material water. 



But sin and its cure can be applied only to a 

 moral being. Moral qualities pertain to persons. 

 An infant is not a person. Universal recognition 

 of this fact is evident from reference to a child 

 as it. Human law recognizes this, and the whole 

 field of common sense affirms it. It does not even 

 have a mind that functions, to say nothing of a 

 conscience. It has not self-consciousness, much 

 less moral consciousness. Theology has for long 

 been an exception to the otherwise universal ac- 

 knowledgment of this truth. At just what point 

 we shall say the child attains to personality, it is 

 difficult and somewhat arbitrary to say. That it 

 is on the way to personality at five years, ten 

 years, there will be general agreement, no doubt. 

 That it has attained full personality before the 

 close of adolescence would not be agreed to by all. 

 That it has no moral character at birth, that it 

 has full moral character at seventeen, are the two 

 fixed points. That it is a partial moral being be- 



