Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-11-03
CITIZENS In EMBRYO.
Mrs. E. Lynn Linton, the Well-KnOwn
AuthOresS, Talks About
TIE CRIMINALITIES OF CHILDREN.
WHY GIRLS AND BOYS LIE AND STEAL
WRITTEN FOR THE DISPATCH. I


loved because of their helplessness, their
prettiness, and the overwhelming force OF
the instinct for race preservation without
which all things would come to standstilL
Besides being loved, they are idealized as
morally beautiful, because they are igno-
rant and undeveloped; an argument on all
fours with that paradox about the blessings
OF comparative Yz-1sitiveness, by which
we come down to the positive demonstration
that an oyster is happier than man.
1t is not everyone who remembers that
children are our embryonic selves in all
things, holding the germs of the passions
and appetites, which necessiJate laws If we
are to have society, polity, or government.
As little is it remembered that the great
difference between them and adults, and the
real meaning OF their idealized innocence,
is in certain fallow tracts both OF moral con-
Bciousness ard physical development, by
which they are free from the doubt and sus-
picion born of experience, as well as from
some actively disturbing influences which
upset important social arrangements and
trample on some of the rights secured by
law TO the individual. The whole point OF
the difference lies in the word embryonic;
for we too often forget that this is the real
distinction between children and ourselves,
and treat them as if they were as fully de-
yeloped in consciousness and conscientious
ness as grown and well-taught men and
women.
In moral consciousness children are on q
par with savages. The embryology of the
MIND, of morals, of social polity, of equit-
able dealing, follows the same law as the
pbysical; and what we have been in far of
ancestry is as clearly discernible in the
moral characteristics of the living child as
in the material conditions of the unborn.
Children have no social virtues and no per-
sonal shame They do not know the differ
ence between right and wrong-for right and
wrong are relative to conditions OF which
they know nothing, though they are begin
ming to learn the rudiments in the nursery,
which is their cosmos. The conscience must
he developed before it can be educated, and
it must be educated before it can exert in
fuence. If we inherit the potentiality, the
Elasticity given by long generations of edu-
cation, we do not inherit the clear direction.
AN UNCERTAIN QUANTITY.
We can be taught without great difficulty
the formulas of code, but that code is an
uncertain quantity and shifts its form and
pIans like a drifting cloud. A man must
be indeed short-sighted who does not see
that the whole scheme of morals-thst is the
whole development of the conscienee-is de-
termined by our own personal relations to
society, as well as by geographical position,
popular religion and historic time. The
honor in endurance of the Spartan boy does
not now exist; the cleverness Of the dacoit,
who gains kudos among his fellows, would
be rewarded with a ropes end here. To
come to one unvarying code of right and
wrong, good for all ages and countries
alike, would be to reach out to the absolute
and touch the very feet of truth. As things
are, we are taught according to the chang
ing aspect of our own environments; and
even in England, homogeneous as it looks
from the outside, children have to learn the
laws OF right and wrong not from one rigid
rule like the multiplication table, but ac-
eerding 20 the varying Light of individual
conditions.
Hence the wrongdoing of children is vari-
ously Judged of according to the moral
standpoint of their parents. Things severely
punished by one are held as unimportant by
another, or are laughed at as quaint traits
bv third, or applauded as the signs of pre-
cOcious intelligence and alert faculties by a
fourth. The child of pickpocket will be
rewarded for bringing home a strange purse
that he has found or conveyed" but the
child of an honest man who stole a turnip
out of field would probably be met with a
thrashing, as the best means known to the
father of inculcating the force of the eighth
commandment. A father known to us, of
more sternness than compassion, made his
child wear two figs, distracted from the des-
sert dish, as a necklace of shame, round her
little throat for all the evening of that fear
full day of sin. He took her to each guest in
turn, and told the story Of the theft and its
detection with the punishment to follow. till
the poor little tranSgreSsOr was nearly dead
for grief and shame. That was his way of
burning into her soul adherence of all
forms of dishonesty for the rest of her life.
But the punishment was too great for the
ofense, and less would have suficed.
UNJUST PUNISHMENT.
In the education of the young, punish
ment must of necessity be often unjust in
application as well as too severe in propor-
ton. Fallible in our own Judgment we are
angry with the results of the ignorance. un-
development, want of thought characteristic
of childhood. We judge from the stand
point OF knowledge things which can only
be rightly appreciated by this theory of ig-
Dorance and general undevelopment Be-
sides, the most candid child has not a win
dow in its breast, through which the truth
may be read; and much which looks like
willfulnessisasIi little consciously williul-as
little Intentionally recalcitrant - as the
wind that blows down the apple tree means
to do harm, or the rain that soaks the cut
hay means to prevent the carving that
night. What we judge of as obstinacy is
often simple torpor of the brain, producing
inability of action-or such entire preoecu
patton with one thing as comes to the same
result.
We, with all our senses awake and astir
do not credit an unresponsiYe child with
this sleep of the intelligence-this inatten-
ton because of absorption, which looks like
q moral fault and is not We cannot realize
this dumb, unreeeptiVe state, because we
have so long passed from it ourselves as to
have forgotten it. But those whose memory
carries them far back into the dim distances
of childhood can surely recall certain diff
culties which arose from that curious state of
temporary paralysis, and had nothing 10 do
with intentional disobedience. Looking like
obstinacy it was really the sleep OF
the brain. 1t was RESPONSIVENESS
because of preoccupation. The words
heard conveyed no practical mean
ing. They were heard and in a sense nm
derstood, but only as the wind whipping the
rose branch on the window was heard. The
mind was for the moment paralyzed, and
received but did not register, till the slug
gish current OF mental consciousness was
set loose and flowing once more bv the
sharp stimulus of physical pain. That
sharp stimulus might be wholesome enough
in its own way. 1t was none the less ap-
piled on wrong principles and for a non
existing fault-for it was neither obstinacy
nor selfshness, neither disobedience nor
willfulness, which held the eyes and bound
the tongue, and made the poor little childish
dreamer look so like tagging mule who
has to be quickened by the whip.
JEALOUSY OF Joy.