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CHAP. I.] children to the tender mercies of servants, saying, "Oh, it will be time enough for us to look after them when they are older. You can't do anything with babies." In this they are wrong, however: for the first, the earliest impressions are those which are most important for the future of the child, and they are so for a physiological reason. The whole period of growth is important; but, since from birth to about the age of seven years the growth and development of bodily and mental functions are immensely more rapid than at any period of after-life, it follows that greater care is required during these early years, when the consequences of a step in a wrong direction are more injurious than at any other time.

Of course, as Spencer says, parents sin not through malice, but through ignorance; yet surely it is not a Utopian aspiration, nor an unreasonable demand, that fathers and mothers should endeavour, by study and thought, to acquaint themselves with those laws of life a knowledge of which is necessary for the well-being of the tender creatures for whose future they are responsible. These laws are not difficult of understanding, and they are explained in a hundred good and easily accessible books, yet they are universally neglected—a neglect which is perhaps partially to be attributed to a fatalistic idea that "whatever is, is right," and that things should be allowed to take their course.

The do-nothing policy is, however, a great mistake. If things could take their natural course