verance. He would be the
type of the clever, well-behaved child of the ordinary school. Very
often he came to school without any food. His _goodness_ had a
_positive_ character which became a mortal danger to himself; he
accepted mal-nutrition without revolt; he profited greatly by the
means of psychical life that were offered him, but he would never have
been able to conquer them for himself. His goodness continued to be of
the same type after as before the period of order; he showed neither
agitation nor expansion. His anthropological measurements, which were
below the normal, already indicated that he had started on life's
pilgrimage with the gait of the victim; he belonged to the company of
those "who must be saved by others."

The characteristic moral trait was "espionage." The teacher, when
observing him, noticed that the child did not work simply like the
others, but came to her very frequently to know if what he was doing
was well or ill done. And this not only during his work with the
materials, but also in reference to every act of a moral nature he
accomplished; his great preoccupation seemed to be to know whether he
was doing right or wrong. Then he endeavored to do right with the most
scrupulous exactitude. With regard to his spying tendencies, the
teacher noted the child never showed any animosity towards his
companions; he watched them attentively, and then proceeded to say of
them as he would say of himself: So and so did this; was it right or
wrong? The child was then careful to avoid what had been pronounced
"wrong" in others.

What appeared to be his spying proclivities were, in fact, a
manifestation of the problem that dominated his childish conscience:
the problem of right and wrong. The limited experience of his own life
did not suffice him; he wanted to benefit by the experience of all the
others in order to learn what things were right and what were wrong;
almost as if the one feeling that absorbed him was the desire to do
right and avoid wrong, and as if this were his sole aspiration. The
case of this child recalls a popular superstition expressed in such
terms as "too good to live." The child _A_ seemed destined for the
fate thus suggested. The needs of the body did not greatly concern
him, and he seemed equally indifferent to those of the mind; goodness
was the mainspring of his being. If society does not note such
dispositions, and assume the special protection of such frail lives,
childre