50 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 



you when you act upon it in a way that it does 

 not like. Can it not show a pretty good case of 

 cat-stubbornness and strike-back-a-tive-ness, while 

 the child a.s yet is quite innocent of such action? 

 Is it sin in the kitten ? Is it the evil nature within 

 it resulting from the transgression of some primi- 

 tive Adamic cat? If this is absurd, why on simi- 

 lar evidence do we condemn the child ? Before the 

 dawn of reason and of the moral sense, is there 

 anything culpable in a being that is nothing more 

 than a nervous machine acting in a manner that 

 tends to self-preservation? At this stage, is not 

 self-defensive reaction the only virtue it can dis- 

 play? For the time divine wisdom can do noth- 

 ing more for it. 



I am sure that I shall be more than pardoned 

 for introducing the following words, so illumina- 

 tive of this point, from Prof. Edward Porter St. 

 John. He says: "In the early selfishness, which 

 later gives way to altruism, we gain another 

 glimpse of nature's way of working. . . . One 

 must get before he can give, and so she bends her 

 energies at first of all to the building up of a 

 strong personality, which shall be able to serve 

 another generation. There are certain large 

 moths in which the caterpillar stage lasts for 

 weeks or months, during which time the insect 

 lives to eat; in the adult stage, when they have 

 acquired wings, they take no food at all, and live 

 simply to prepare for the next generation. Here 

 is nature's parable of the spiritual life. Here is 



