Page:Counter-currents, Agnes Repplier, 1916.djvu/206

Counter-Currents is involuntary, and must be cured from without, not from within. The "rights of children" include the doubtful privilege of freedom from restraint, and the doubtful boon of shelter from obligation. It seems sweet and kind to teach a child high principles and steadfastness of purpose by means of symbolic games rather than by any open exaction. Unconscious obedience, like indirect taxation, is supposed to be paid without strain. Our feverish fear lest we offend against the helplessness of childhood, our feverish concern lest it should be denied its full measure of content, drive us, burdened as we are with good intentions, past the border-line of wisdom. If we were

we might see more clearly the value of standards.

Two years ago I had sent me several numbers of a Los Angeles newspaper. They contained a spirited and 190