Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/457

Rh punished, but was given a lecture on the words in the Revelation, 'Without are. . . whosoever loveth and maketh a lie.' I was made to see that the habit would grow and dishonor me in the sight of God and man, and left with the promise of a good whipping if I ever told another. In general, I remember that I was taught that my faults had the peculiarity of increasing at an astonishing rate; that I was a very naughty child, and that every wrong act grieved a heavenly Father who loved me and who was ever present to see both the good and the bad." "After lying I was told that I got no good from it; that teachers and friends disliked such persons; that my honest playmates would look down on me; that God was grieved with me. The room was filled with the splendor of the setting sun, and it seemed to me that God must be up there looking at me and seeing what a naughty girl I was. Then I was told that God would forgive me if only I confessed, and that in the future he would help me to be good if only I tried."

I am not afraid that any one will despise these incidents as trivial. It is easy, indeed, to recall our own childhood, to look out at what is now around us, and say that there is nothing new here; that all this is commonplace and just what any one would expect. Precisely; and in that consists its value. It all simply brings out the most familiar kind of facts, but still facts to which we shut our eyes, or else ordinarily dismiss as of no particular importance, while in reality they present considerations which are of deeper import than any other one thing which can engage attention. Every one will admit without dispute that the question of the moral attitude and tendencies induced in youth by the motives for conduct habitually brought to bear is the ultimate question in all education—whatever will admit it with a readiness and cheerfulness which imply that any one who even raises the question has a taste for moral truisms. Yet, as matter of fact, moral education is the most haphazard of all things; it is assumed that the knowledge of the right reasons to be instilled and knowledge of the methods to be used in instilling these reasons "come by nature," as reading and writing came to Dogberry. There is, if I mistake not, a disposition to resent as intrusion any discussion of the subject which goes beyond general platitudes into the wisdom of the motives and methods actually used. Yet I do not see how any successful training of children as to their conduct is possible unless the parents are first educated themselves as to what right conduct is, and what methods are fit for bringing it about. I do not see how that is to be accomplished without a free treatment of present aims and methods.

The first thing which strikes one's attention in these answers is the great gap existing at present between theory and practice.