Little children certainly, of all persons, are oftenest found in this condition when

"Love is an unerring light,
And joy its own security."

And that "other strength," which must come by reflection on and study of the unfolding nature of the child in the felt presence of the Inspirer of Duty, will certainly be needed by the kindergartner who will receive children not always from the hands of natural and faithful mothers, but of uncultured servant-maids. (It is but justice to the latter to say that there are occasionally found among the Irish nurses those who could teach many mothers. The Irish nature is not altogether bad material for the production of good motherly nurses; but it must not be left wild; it needs a great deal of discipline; and I hope the time may come when schools for the education of children's nurses, such as Frœbel established in Hamburg, which still exist, may be founded in all our cities.) Though I think the education of mothers is still more important and the first thing to aim at, as it would render nursery maids comparatively unnecessary. It is so short a period of a mother's life when she has young children, and the book of nature which these few years open to her is so rich, that, for her own being's sake as well as for the children's, it seems to me a terrible loss for her to delegate her maternal cares to others during the nursery period. On the other hand, when the age for the kindergarten comes, the mother needs to be relieved of the increasing care; and children, in their turn, need other influences than can be had in a family, especially in families where parents have work to do outside of their homes. It is, indeed, "a consummation devoutly to be wished," that the time may come when labor may be so organized that no mothers may be obliged to leave their children's souls uncared for in order to get the wherewithal to sustain their bodies.

The deepest reason why a child should be taken care of in its earliest infancy by its mother rather than by a person comparatively uninterested in its personality, is this, that only a mother can respect a child's personality sufficiently. All others regard the child for its manifested qualities; but with the mother, it is the child itself that she loves, quite irrespective of any qualities that he manifests. Phenomenally, a little child is a complex of self-assertion and generosity (or a desire for union with its kind); a desire or a feeling of finiteness in strange contrast with that instinct to "have dominion" which gives vitality to self-assertion. We call this primal desire for union his heart, and this primal self-assertion his will. The will expresses itself in efforts to change its environments, putting what is at rest in motion, knocking down, tearing up, because it does not yet know how to put in order, or to change things artistically. The child acts without external motive,—doing things merely because it can. Even after a child is old enough to think and talk, and has done some act for which you see no reason or motive, when you ask him why he did it, he not unfrequently will say, "because." I remember when I was a child of six or seven, that I would give this answer with a perfect sense of satisfaction that it was an answer; and when it would sometimes be said, "because is no reason," or "because is an old woman's reason," I recollect my feeling of surprise. I seemed to myself to have given the most substantial reason. The word meant to me a great deal. And I now think I was truly philosophical in this, for I affirmed the primal truth, that a self-determining person in spontaneous action, if only of some instinct, is a first cause[4]—an absolute cause—to the extent of consciousness. It was an intuition.

Now to retain the sense of this causal personality is at the root of all stability of character, all nobleness of manifestation. But self-assertion in an ignorant child is more apt than otherwise to be disorderly, discordant, and perhaps destructive; it therefore provokes resistance in the unthinking, but challenges the thoughtful to give guidance. It is of life-and-death importance to the child whether this force shall meet mere hard resistance, which shall utterly crush it or increase it by reaction, or whether it shall meet with a genial sympathetic guidance to which it will voluntarily and gladly surrender itself. A mother loves this little ignorant force of self-will and wants it to have free course. She cannot help desiring to have her child have its own way. She does not want it to be opposed by others. She will, as far as possible, further or humor it, as we say. And when she finds it necessary to control it, she will try to do it by awakening the child's affectionateness, and so captivating its fancy as to make it feel it is doing as it likes, though it be something different from what it was impelled to do at first; in short, she inspires him to will the better thing, and so educates the blind instinct of self-assertion into a harmonizing and beneficent power, and preserves the child's dignity and nobleness instead of crushing its personality. We hear of "breaking the child's will." A child's will should never be broken, but opened up into harmony with God's will through a lower harmony with the will of its loving and loved mother or kindergartner. But a mother will be more sure than any one else to bring about this result, because she acts from an impulse of the heart deeper than all thought, while the kindergartner by thought must cultivate in herself the impulse.

There are those who deprecate motherly indulgence as if it were the greatest evil. Doubtless it will become a great evil if it be not properly subordinated to the wisdom which appreciates the divinity of order, or if it is alternated with capricious severities; in short, if the indulgence proceeds from indolence or self-love instead of love of the child. The indulgence that really comes from the last is a recognition (unconscious, it may be) of the divine possibilities of the child,—a spark of the divine creativeness! Of the two evils, extreme indulgence is not so deadly a mistake as extreme severity. Indulged children return from afar. The prodigal of the Gospel story may have been over-indulged, perhaps, in being allowed to take his portion of goods, and go off by himself, out of the reach of his father's counsel and authority, and left to his own uneducated self-will. But the sinner, when he came to himself (observe that expression), recognized the self-forgetting, fatherly love in that very indulgence; and it was the immeasurableness of that love that revived his self-respect and hope, and saved him; for the hope was not disappointed. Love giveth, "upbraiding not."

The one fatal thing is to wound the child's heart. It is better to give up the point of controlling its will to righteousness for the moment, than to do that; and a parent is the least likely of all persons to wound his child's heart.

When nothing can be done without wounding, the parent who trusts his own heart will leave the rebel to the consequences which God holds in his gracious hands for the final salvation of every one of his children.

Besides, to choose to give up one's own will is the only complete and salutary giving up, enabling the soul to mount up spiritually like the eagle and renew its strength. There are families in which the act of disobedience is absolutely unknown, in earlier or in later life; where there is no necessity for uttered commands, because expressed wishes are enough. The most perfect, if not the only real, obedience I have ever seen, has been that of strong men to an unexacting, tender mother.

This is a subject on which I feel very strongly, for it seems to me that the greatest social disorders that exist in the nations among which the "order that reigns in Warsaw"[5] is foremost, is the consequence of unreasoning obedience to wills not infinitely wise and good. The worth and duty of obedience is precisely in ratio with the validity of the command; and a command is valid only so far as it is inspired by a disinterested and proper respect for the being who is commanded. Children should only obey their parents, in the Lord; and parents should never "provoke their children to wrath."