e is restless as when his desires are unsatisfied. Toys are too
light to satisfy arms which require to make the efforts necessary in
lifting and moving objects; they are too complex to satisfy senses
which need to analyze a single sensation. They are vanity, and in
themselves they represent simulacra and parodies of actual life. And
yet they form the world of our children, in which they are constrained
to "consume" their potential powers in a continuous exasperation,
which incites them to destroy things.

Happily, children do not hear the pronouncement of the common formula,
that children have an "instinct" for destruction. Nor are they
familiar with the other axiom which contradicts this: That the
instinct of "property," in other words, selfishness, is strongly
developed in them. On the contrary, the child has merely the
overpowering instinct to "grow," and therefore to raise and to perfect
himself; in every period of life he seeks instinctively to prepare
himself for the next period. This fact is very much more
comprehensible than the strange instincts we calumniously attribute to
him.

Just try the experiment of allowing children to act for themselves;
they are at once "transformed." In the Guerrieri Gonzaga Children's
House, it sufficed to provide a comb, to transform the naughtiest,
most rebellious of the children, the one whom the teacher designated
as in need of "taming," into a lively and attractive little girl, who
combed the hair of her companions most carefully, with evident
delight. We had only to say to an awkward, lethargic child, who came
forward holding out her arms to have her sleeves pulled down for her:
"Do it yourself," and there was a flash of intelligence in her eyes,
her weary face was lighted up by an expression of satisfied pride and
amazement, and she began to pull down her sleeves with positive
delight. When these children were given a little basin and a piece of
soap, how carefully they emptied and replaced the receptacle, fearing
to break it, and how caressingly they handled the soap, laying it
down very gently! It seemed as if the task had been confided to a
mechanism of moving figures, with an accompaniment of music: the
figures were the children, the music was their own joy.

These children, occupied in dressing, cleaning, washing, combing,
cleansing, and arranging their environment, work _themselves_. As a
result, they love useful objects so much that they will preserve a
piece of pa