Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-11-03

| we must, however. nave euuCdblOh ahN
teaching, whatever the method we employ.
! We must make the ignorant and non-dls-
| cerning child the critical and analytical
man, but the difficulty is as to the method.
How best to come to the desired end is no
more settled to-day than it was when Raoe-
lais drew his sketch of a perfect education,
and Montaigne told how tenderly his father
had dealt by hun.
Children have to be taught everything
that makes society possible and citizenship
honorable. Truth, honesty, decency, retl-
cence, caution, humanity, unselfshness, jus
tice-all these the gradual results OF clVlll-
zation-the tardy growths of the slow de-
velopment-have to be implanted In the
childish mind, naturally of itself as empty
of conscience as a savage's-as barren OF
moral perception as that of bird of prey.
We cannot remember this too clearly.
Virtues have to be taught They are not
natural to the individual like his'eyes and
his hair. They have been formulated bit
| by bit, according to the social needs and
moral perceptions of human development,
as man grew higher in the scale of mental
consciousness and came into clearer light
of spiritual truths.
WHY CHILD STEALS.
Take stealing for an instance. A child
clutches at what it wants without the re-
motest idea of such thing as stealing. This
is branch of ethics understood as little as
mathematics. 1t takes the sugar from the
table, the toy from its sister-anything it
fancies-the subtleties of the moral law be-
ing like creatures in drop of water without
the microscope. There they are, but the
sense is not there which can discern them.
The child has to be taught how to reason, to
| judge, to spiritually ken. Because we are
unable to reach that latent moral conscious
ness by words, we touch it by pain. We
punish the sinless thief by slapping its
hands aud taking away from 1t what it
must not have. We approach the mind
through the body, as in other matters. We
teach it by pain-pain which begets fear
which begets lying. The one-year-old
msrauder took its sugar boldly-clutched at
its sisters dolly openly-thinking no evil
and knowing none-wishing only to crafty
its appetite, as was natural The 2-year-old,
grown thief, conscious of punishment to
follow, steals what it wants-takes it slyly,
! furtIvely, hoping to escape detection
| glancing round at nurse to see if it is
watched. This, too, is instructive, and has
no element as vet of conscious immortality.
To be afraid of punishment is not to be con-
scious of wrongdoing in any moral sense.
To break law is not always to "star" the
conscience-witness the trespassers on for
hidden ground, and the irrepresSible little
woman who dives under the denying rope.
! This fear of punishment, however, is the be-
! ginning of wisdom; but the beginning is not
| the end. Still the education has to go on,
and our 2-year-old must learn not to take
! what is not given, and that to break this
1 Il sN-
"whips'-in preparation for the time when
it shall understand more clearly.
Truth again is a difficulty with children.
They tell lies for fear Of being found out
and this is but another word for seli-preser-
walton. Nature herself does the same when
she makes her stick and leaf insects exactly
like the sticks and leaves among which they
live-mottles the under wings of her butter
flies like the moss or bark on whtlh they
settle-stripes her tigers like the bamboo
canes in the midst Of which they crouch
and gives innocuous caterpillars the color of
the noXious, that they may be preserved by
the deceived senses of their pursuers. To
protect ourselves In every way possible to
us is one of the first laws of nature; and
lying and denying come into the elements
of this law until crowded out" bv a nobler
morality. We have to teach children that
| lying is base, mean, vile, cowardly, i'm
moral-what you will; but to be angry with
them for their instructive art of sel:-protec-
tion, brought about by our own method of
punishment, is unphilosophie and cruel.
LYING AND CRUELTY.
Children tell lies too from the simple
! force of the imagination. So do savages
when they construct their cosmogonies and
give fanciful genesis for natural phenom-
ena. A child comes running to you from
the garden and tells you that she has met
and talked with the most beautiful blue
fairy. She tells you all that has been said
and sticks to her point. With infinite pains
and patience and sympathy-if you are of
the right sort-You unravel the tangle and
come to the straight end. She has seen,
caught, talked to, and idealized a shining
blue beetle, on which slender basis she has
constructed her fairy edifce.
Again, there is the splendide mendax of
childish heroism; when the sturdy little
champion takes the thrashing due to the
weaker and gentler, and never tells that he
has not done this naughty mischief, and that
the other more nervous and delicate little
coward has five were to class this kind
of untruth with the lies that demand punish
ment we should hammer down one of the
finest of all the towers built BY the virtues
and inhabited by nobleness of nature. After
all. this whole tract of truth aud lies is in
stinctive, belonging to the time of life and
the special development characteristic of
that time. 1t is all inchoate, all embryonic;
and to judge of it as one would Judge of
adult lapses is to go far astray from wisdom
and common sense.
Cruelty IN children is for the most part
h. II l.
Imagination. Just as the blue fairy that
grew out of the blue beetle was the result of
creative imagination unchastened by
scientific accuracy, SO is cruelty the exact
converse Children want to see chow
funny" q fy looks with its wings torn off.
They watch the movements of a wasp cut in
two and wonder how it can sting at the one
end and peep at the other, independent of
relation. They think it rare sport when the
frightened dog rushes helter-skelter bv.
clattering the tin kettle tied to his tail as be
goes. They are charmed when the startled
horse, terrified out of his five wits by the
sudden shout and stone from over the
hedge, capers over the field, tail and name
fying and its wild ewes distraught with
fear As for cruelty, they have no notion
Of it.
Still-we repeat tive have to educate
chlloren 70 the clear perception OF right and
wrong as men and women have determined.
But we have to educate wisely. We must
not judge the young as we judge ourselves,
nor ever in the punishments which must be
awarded treat them as willfully wicked. We
must always remember that they are ignor-
ant and undeveloped; and we must allow for
this, putting our energy into teaching, not
wasting it in wrath. All the same, wemust
never forget that childish evil is extant-
that childish crlminalities are possible-and
that the alteration of childish innocence is a
pretty fallacy, useful in its own way but not
good for guidance. In all that we have to
do with our young we ought to possess our
own minds in clearness of perception and
philosophic calmness. To be angry with
them is to 60 down to their own level, when