the stress of
the conflicts of suggestion, born right out of his imitative
hesitations; and just this is the analogy which he must assimilate and
depend upon in his own conflicts for self-control and social
continence. So impressively true is this from the human point of view
that, in my opinion--formed, it is true, from the very few data
accessible on such points, still a positive opinion--friendships of a
close exclusive kind should be discouraged or broken up, except when
under the immediate eye of the wise parent or guardian; and even when
allowed, these relationships should, in all cases, be used to entrain
the sympathetic and moral sentiments into a wider field of social
exercise.

One of the merits of the great English schools and of the free schools
of America is that in them the boys acquire, from necessity, the
independence of sturdy character, and the self-restraint which is
self-imposed. The youth brought up to mind a tutor often fails of the
best discipline.

4. The remainder of this section may be devoted to the further
emphasis of the need of close observation of children's games,
especially those which may be best described as "society games." All
those who have given even casual observation to the doings of the
nursery have been impressed with the extraordinary facility of the
child's mind, from the second year onward, in imagining and plotting
social and dramatic situations. It has not been so evident, however,
to these casual observers, nor to many really more skilled, that they
were observing in these fancy plays the putting together anew of
fragments, or larger pieces, of the adult's mental history. Here, in
these games, we see the actual use which our children make of the
personal "copy" material which they get from you and me. If a man
study these games patiently in his own children, and analyze them out,
he gradually sees emerge from within the inner consciousness a picture
of the boy's own father, whom he aspires to be like, and whose actions
he seeks to generalize and apply. The picture is poor, for the child
takes only what he is sensible to. And it does seem often, as Sighele
pathetically notices on a large social scale, and as the Westminster
divines have urged without due sense of the pathetic and home-coming
point of it, that he takes more of the bad in us for reproduction than
of the good! But, be this as it may, what we give him is all he gets.
Heredity does not stop with birth; it is