Eric felt a shock of disappointment; he had hoped that his mother would express entire pleasure, and she was finding fault instead; but he controlled himself, and she continued, smiling:—
"I cannot help laughing, because my two points of criticism are really one and the same, looked at on two sides. The one view is this, that it seems to me dangerous to give your pupil, as you do, just what he desires: you follow the devious path of a young discursive mind, and just there lies the danger of private instruction. I mean, in this way it pampers the youthful mind by giving it only what it wishes for, not what it ought to have. The discipline of a definite course of study lies in the necessity of taking up and carrying forward what the connected plan requires, and not what may suit the fancy; this fits one for life too, for life does not always bring what we long for, but what we need and must have."
"And what is your second point?" asked Eric, as his mother paused.
"My second point is only a repetition of the first. I remember your father's saying once, that the first and only true support, or rather the very foundation of education, must be:—'Thou shalt, and thou shalt not; straight forward without comment, without explanation, without illustration.' Now ask yourself whether you are not weakening his character. When our Roland is brought into a conflict, I don't know whether knowledge will help him, rather than the ancient command: 'Thou shalt and thou shalt not.' I only say this to you that you may think it over; others may praise you, I must warn you. I can say, though, that you have attained one important point; the boy has a holy reverence for the spirit of the Past."
Eric grasped his mother's hand, and walked on sometime in silence. Then he explained to her how he wished to give Roland not only knowledge, but a firm foundation of self-reliance, on which his life might rest.
"My son," replied his mother, "you have set yourself a difficult task; you want to accomplish a three-fold work at once; that is not possible. Listen to me patiently. You want to complete and perfect a neglected education; you want to lead to higher aims, gaining at the same time a moral foothold and moral elevation, without using the means handed down to you; and, finally, you want to train a youth, who knows his own wealth, to be a useful, unselfish, even self-sacrificing man. Now why do you laugh, pray? I will stop, though I might add, that you want to make a boy without a family affectionate, and a boy without a country patriotic. Now tell me why you laugh."
"Forgive me, mother; there's reason in your being called Professorin; you have discoursed like a Professor from his desk. But let me tell you that the two-fold or the five-fold task is only a simple one in the end. I confess I have often said to myself that I might make it easier, but then I would ask myself whether this was not an attempt to excuse my own desire of comfort. I must make the experiment of placing a youth upon the platform of acting freely from-—-"
"Reason?" responded the mother. "Reason may give composure, but not happiness nor blessedness; reason may not be the nourishment which suits the young spirit. Remember, my son, that meat is good food, but we do not feed a new-born child on meat instead of milk. Do you understand what I mean?"
"Yes; you mean that religion is the mother's milk of the spirit."
"Exactly," said the Mother, in triumph. "Your father always said that no man had ever produced any great work, or accomplished any great deed, who did not believe in God; God is the highest object of imaginative thought. So long as philosophy cannot show a moral law which can be written, concisely and with perfect clearness, upon two tables of stone, education must make its progress through religion."