Page:Home Education by Isaac Taylor (1838).djvu/65

 If there be not, in the natural dispositions of parents and children, enough kindly warmth of feeling to effect implicit obedience by the means of the gentle affections, and without frequent recurrence to measures of severity, home education had better not be attempted. Children may be governed at school by motives of fear, without entirely depraving their sentiments; because school is not their and they have still a home, and a sphere of love to think of. But to rule them in any such way at home itself, is to wind out of their hearts, by a slow but certain process, every root and fibre of the affections; nor will it fail to render them, in the end, murky, obdurate, crafty, selfish, and malign. In mere mercy let children be sent to school, who must be so schooled if kept at home.

It can hardly be necessary to say, that this natural warmth of affection, which we name as requisite to the conduct of home education, is not that anxious sensitive fondness, existing chiefly on the parent's side, which, to be made any use of, must be perpetually talked of, and pointed at, and adduced, in support of the trembling parental authority. What is wanted, is not a sentiment worn, and hackneyed, and fretted, until it has become little else than a confused feeling of suspicion, weariness, and distaste; it is not a spring that has no force, except when it is strained; or a fire that has neither sparks nor warmth, except so long as it is blown.

There is truth in the common observation, that parental affection is a much stronger feeling than the reciprocal affection of children toward their parents; and yet if it be so, we need not be disquieted so long as it is found to be also true, that, when parental love is sustained by energy and intelligence, it generates a sentiment in the bosoms of children strong enough to bear all the stress that ought to be laid upon it, and which we may securely confide in for carrying any measures of moral or intellectual discipline,