But up to this point, and even for many days afterwards, there is no indication, no possible recognition, even of a rough outline of a human form. And yet in this confusion of atoms we exist. Here our passions lie sleeping; on this whitish leaflet are written in undecipherable characters those links of heredity which connect us with our family and with past generations. As from the scarcely visible germ in the heart of the acorn the majestic oak will spring to reign over the forest, so from this indistinct cellular mass a being will be formed to represent in his microcosm the whole history of the human race, with its fears, diseases, instincts, passions, its hate, vileness, and grandeur.
The terrible legend of curses blasting the innocence of unborn babes, the blessings cast forth into the future for the enjoyment of generations yet to come, are not wholly a foolish fable. Destiny loads each one of us with a fatal inheritance. Though we were abandoned in the forest, imprisoned in the dungeon of a tower, without a guide, without example, without light, there yet would awake in us, like a mysterious dream, the experience of our parents and our earliest ancestors.
What we call instinct is the voice of past generations reverberating like a distant echo in the cells of the nervous system. We feel the breath, the advice, the experience of all men, from those who lived on acorns and struggled with the wild beasts, dying naked in the forests, down to the virtue and toil of our father, to the fear and love of our mother.
II
Methods of education are essentially two in number, severity and indulgence. Which is better? It is impossible to give a categorical answer, for we are not concerned with the education of a brain or a man in general, but of the brain and man of a special case.
Some say that until the child has become a rational being it must be considered and treated as a little animal, because it has no sense of shame, nor of the rights of property, nor of social duty; that the didactic methods which it most fears must be adopted, that is to say, those only which serve to tame and domesticate animals—punishments, the whip, blows.
Happily, in the midst of the animal instincts a light is soon diffused in the child’s brain which will place him above all the animals of the earth, and none can say with certainty when these first flashes of reason appear.
The pain of a blow must always appear to him so out of proportion to all his instinctive, involuntary movements, that instead of softening him it will rouse profound resentment in him, and impress him with the distressing idea of permanently threatening dangers and of the strangeness of his surroundings, in which, without any plausible reason, caresses alternate with blows.
The same methods should be followed in education as in the teaching of science, which are those giving to man the firmest and most lasting convictions. Whatever may be the force of authority, it can never be compared in efficacy to that of conviction; we should never issue any command without showing the reasons why it should be done in this way rather than in another.
Children should be brought up as though they were rational, because the animal in them disappears, the man remains. Recourse should be had to the most intelligible and convincing means; if it is seen that they have acquired bad habits, the opportunities for ill-doing should be removed and the effort made, by offering them other attractions, to preserve them from the temptation of those acts or those things which they are to avoid.