12 



Still another infraction of the rule of respectfulness is 

 the bathing of children in the sea against their wills. There 

 seems to be in this an utter want of sympathy with the 

 child's natural dread of water, a dread which one would 

 imagine sufficiently obvious in his heart-rending cries. I have 

 known a yacht-owner say he could never bring himself to try to 

 learn swimming, because of the horror of water born of his 

 early bathing experience. 



Ridicule has no place in the training of children, and bribery 

 by rewards of such things as they value, or of eatables, is simply 

 immoral, and the last is gluttonous besides. It is just a question 

 also how much evil is put into children's heads by the elaborate 

 and fussy precautions sometimes taken for its prevention, and 

 the implication that though naughty it is nice. Nothing that 

 is naughty can be nice ultimately, and whatever is ultimately 

 nice cannot be naughty, whatever theory of morals we adopt. 

 It is perhaps thought I overrate these things, and that contact 

 with the world afterwards will soon cure such small ills. 

 Well, I do not think they are small, and why should there be 

 all the trouble of kicking out by the world what should never 

 have existed if we had performed our part truly and well. 



May we not rather recognise children as more probably 

 possible angels than certain fiends? As little friends — still 

 ignorant but intensely capable of learning — individual human 

 entities to be respected as such, and who will return that 

 respect to us ; whose capabilities and moralities grow by 

 actual active practice, not passive reception of authoritative 

 precept — who are, to use a botanical parallel, endogenous not 

 exogenous. 



This implies that a child's future is, to an extent much 

 greater than is usually supposed, a direct and certain pro- 

 duct of his environment from the first moment of his life 

 onwards. A pure, new-formed human mind is more impres- 

 sionable than wax. Every action, every movement, perhaps 

 every thought of those around it, every effort of its own leaves 

 a ripple on its unsoiled and mobile surface ; an undying mark 

 which, congealing as the child grows, moulds for ever the 



