“But I am to limit this liberty only in so far as the use the child may make of it might be injurious to the very end of its education. Any other repression is contrary to duty, for it is contrary to the end in view. It is the very liberty of the child which must be instructed; and that this instruction be possible, the child must be free. Parents should not, therefore, through mere caprice, forbid children, with a view, as is said, to break their will: it is only where the will would run counter to the direct aims of their education that it should be broken. Here, however, parents must be the sole judges; and are answerable to their conscience alone.” “The only duty of the child,” says Fichte again, “is obedience: this should be developed before any other moral sentiment; for it is the root of all morality. Later on, when in the sphere left free by the parents, morality has become possible, the duty of obedience is still the greatest of all duties, the child should not wish to be free beyond the limits fixed by the parents themselves.”
Fichte explains next very ingeniously, how obedience is the only way by which the child can imitate the morality it cannot yet know: “The same relation which binds the full-grown man to the moral law, and to its author, God, binds the child to its parents. We should do all that duty commands us to do, absolutely and without troubling ourselves about consequences; but to be able to do this, we must suppose these consequences to be in the hands of God, and intended for our good: the same with the child in regard to parental commands. Christianity represents God in the image of a father, and justly so. But we should not simply be satisfied always and incessantly to speak of his goodness; we should also think of our obligations toward him; of our obedience, and that childlike trust free from all anxiety and uneasiness which we ought to cultivate in regard to his will. To create a similar obedience is the only means by which parents may implant the sentiment of morality in the hearts of their children: it is, therefore, a real duty for parents to exercise their children in a similar obedience. It is a very false notion, which, like many others, we owe to the ruling eudemonism[81] of the day, that wrong inclinations of the child can be thwarted by reasoning with it. There is implied in this notion the absurdity of supposing the child to be possessed of a greater share of reasoning power than ourselves: for even adults are most of the time prompted in their acts by inclination, and not by reason.[82]
“Another question presents itself now: How far, in its relation to its parents, should the child’s absolute obedience go? This question may have two sides: the one as to the extent of this obedience, and the other as to its limits; how far it should go; or in regard to length of time, how long it shall last, and, if it is to cease at all, at what particular time it is to stop?
In the first case, the question may be raised either from the child’s or from the parents’ standpoint. On the part of the child it should never be raised. The answer is this: The child should obey, and its obedience consists in its not wishing to have any more liberty than its parents permit it to have. Of the necessary limits of this obedience, the parents can alone judge; the child cannot. The doctrine that the child should obey in all reasonable cases, as we often hear it said, is a contradictory one. He who only obeys in reasonable cases does not obey, for he becomes himself then the judge of what is reasonable and what is not. If he does any thing suitable because he judges it to be so, he acts according to his own conviction, and not from obedience. Whether this obedience which they exact be reasonable or not, it is for the parents to answer for it before their own consciences; but they should not allow their children to sit in judgment over them. But, it may be asked, suppose the parents command their children to do an immoral thing? I answer: Either the immorality of it is only discovered after a laborious investigation, or it is obvious. In the first case, there can be no difficulty; for the obedient child does not suspect his parents capable of commanding him to do any wrong. In the second, the very basis of obedience—namely, the belief in the superior morality of the parents—is destroyed; and then a prolonged obedience would be contrary to duty. The same when the immorality or the shame of the parents is self-evident in the children’s eyes. Obedience then ceases because education through the parents becomes impossible.
The second question is: How long does the duty of obedience last? The answer to this is: Obedience, in the first place, is only exacted in view of education; and education is a means to an end; that end being the utilization of the child’s powers for some reasonable purpose, under whatever circumstances or through whatever mode. When that end has been attained, the child cannot judge: it is for the parents to decide. Now two cases are possible here:
One is where the father himself declares the end attained and leaves his children free to act according to their own will and judgment.
The other is where a certain result is sufficient to declare the end attained. The State is in this instance a competent outside judge. For example, if the State entrusts an office to a son, it declares the latter’s education completed; the judgment of the State is the parents’ judicial bond: they must submit to it without appeal: it binds them also morally, and they must submit to it from a sense of duty.
There is finally a third case: this is where parental education is no longer possible, as, for example, on the marriage of the children. The daughter then gives herself to her husband and becomes subject to his will: she can therefore no longer depend upon her parents’ will. The son assumes the care of his wife, conformably to her wishes; he can therefore no longer be guided by others’ wishes, not even by those of his parents.
These three cases do not yet exhaust the question; for we may suppose a fourth: the one where the children are not called to a function, by the State; when they do not marry, and when the parents are nevertheless unwilling to relax their authority, seemingly wishing to uphold the obedience of early childhood. In this case, the parents evidently overstep their rights; for it is obvious that at a given time man must belong to himself. This time has been fixed by the State; which determines when one attains to his majority. In granting to a son the free disposal of his property, the liberty to make contracts, to traffic, the right of suffrage, the right to marry, etc., the State puts an end to paternal authority as an authority armed with restraint, yet certainly not as a moral authority, for in this respect it is indelible. The son having become a person, and being in his turn invested with moral responsibility, may lay obedience aside, but he does not with this lay aside the respect, gratitude, and affection he owes his parents.
Even after the emancipation of the children, there still exists between them and their parents a moral tie.