ones which approximate their _regime_ to
the method of nature--which do little more than administer the natural
consequences of criminal conduct: diminishing the criminal's liberty of
action as much as is needful for the safety of society, and requiring
him to maintain himself while living under this restraint. Thus we see,
both that the discipline by which the young child is taught to regulate
its movements is the discipline by which the great mass of adults are
kept in order, and more or less improved; and that the discipline
humanly devised for the worst adults fails when it diverges from this
divinely-ordained discipline, and begins to succeed on approximating to
it. Not only is it unwise to set up a high standard of good conduct for
children, but it is even unwise to use very urgent incitements to good
conduct. Already most people recognise the detrimental results of
intellectual precocity; but there remains to be recognised the fact that
moral precocity also has detrimental results. Be sparing of commands,
but whenever you do command, command with decision and constancy.
Remember that the aid of your discipline should be to produce a
self-governing being; not to produce a being to be governed by others.

Lastly, always remember that to educate rightly is not a simple and easy
thing, but a complex and extremely difficult thing; the hardest task
which devolves on adult life. You will have to carry on your own moral
education at the same time that you are educating your children. The
last stage in the mental development of each man and woman is to be
reached only through a proper discharge of the parental duties; and when
this truth is recognised it will be seen how admirable is the
arrangement through which human beings are led by their strongest
affections to subject themselves to a discipline that they would else
elude; and we shall see that while in its injurious effects on both
parents and child a bad system is twice cursed, a good system is twice
blessed--it blesses him that trains and him that is trained.

_IV.--Physical Education_

The system of restriction in regard to food which many parents think so
necessary is based upon inadequate observation, and erroneous reasoning.
There is an over-legislation in the nursery as well as over-legislation
in the state; and one of the most injurious forms of it is this
limitation in the quantity of food. We contend that, as appetite is a
good guide to all the lower