[317.] It lowers the dignity of the teacher to take part habitually in a competition between spy and concealers. He must not demand to know everything, although he ought not to allow his confidence to be victimized by clumsy or long-continued deception.
Such difficulties, however, only make it more intensely necessary that the foundation of education be laid during the earliest years, when supervision is still easy, and the heart is reached by formative influences with greater certainty than ever afterward, and that, if possible, families should not for any length of time lose sight of their own members.
Ethical and moral judgments can be simulated; the finest maxims and principles may be learned by rote; piety may be put on as a cloak. Unmask the hypocrite, however, and turn him out, and, forthwith, he plays his game over again elsewhere. Nothing remains but recourse to severity which deters, and constant occupation under close supervision in another quarter, in order that he may get away from the hiding places of his misdeeds. Sometimes banishment is capable of bringing about improvement.
[318.] The will is most directly tractable in social relations, where it appears as common will. In infancy, the child, wholly devoted to his mother, is manageable through her; at a later period training is surest of success when it promotes attachments among the young and carefully fosters the seeds of goodness. The social ideas, purified by teaching, must gradually be added.
[319.] But as far back as boyhood, factions spring up and exclusive sets are formed, facts which the teacher cannot permit to elude his vigilance.
When a kind of authority is granted to some older and tried pupils over those younger and less mature in judgment, the former become responsible; but the latter are not on that account relieved of all reflection on their own part, nor are they obliged to submit to every, though plainly unreasonable, demand of the former.
[ CHAPTER IV
Special Faults]
[320.] First of all it is necessary to distinguish between those faults which the pupil commits and those which he has. Not all faults one commits are direct manifestations of those he possesses; but those which are committed repeatedly may grow permanent. This truth must be made clear, and must be impressed upon the mind of the pupil to the full extent of his powers of comprehension.
[321.] In the case of false steps caused from without by unnoticed pitfalls, or made in spite of a firm resolve to the contrary, the pupil is himself usually frightened by what he has done. If so, all depends on the gravity of his offence as compared with the degree of his horror.