per for years, and instead of knocking against furniture,
and breaking objects, they perfect their movements.

But we place ourselves beside these lives which are hastening
triumphantly to their salvation, and seek to bind them to ourselves,
in spite of the struggle which has begun and the fear we have already
provoked. We approach them gently and seductively; and because when a
child breaks things he is obviously grieved, and therefore would
endeavor to correct and perfect his movements, we spare him this
grief, which would be in the nature of "an act of repentance on the
part of the muscles which have transgressed," and give him unbreakable
objects: plates, basins, and drinking vessels made of metal, toys made
of stuff, woolly bears, india-rubber dolls. Henceforth his "errors"
will be concealed. Every error of the muscles will pass unnoticed by
the child: he will no longer feel the pain of evil-doing, repentance,
an effort to perfect himself. He will be able to sink into error;
behold him, clumsy, heavy, without expression in his face, a stuffed
bear in his arms! He is now bound fast to vanity and error, and has
lost all consciousness thereof.

The adult hems him in ever more closely: he does everything for the
child, dresses him, even feeds him. But the child's desire is not to
be dressed and materially nourished: his deep desire is to "do," to
exercise his own powers intelligently, and thus to rise to his higher
level. With what subtle insinuations does the adult seek to confound
him! You are exerting yourself and why? That you may be washed? That
you may put on your pinafore? You can have all this done for you
without any effort. You will find it all done with greater perfection
and ease. Without moving a finger you shall have a hundred times more
done for you than you could accomplish for yourself, even with all the
exertion of which you are capable. You need not even put the bread
into your mouth, you shall be spared even this trouble, and you will
take in nourishment all the more copiously.

The devil was less cruel when he tempted Christ in the wilderness,
showing Him all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them. "All
these things will I give Thee if thou wilt fall down and worship me."
But the child has not the power to answer like Christ: "Get thee
hence, Satan; for it is written: Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God,
and Him only shalt thou serve." The child ought to obey God, who has
prescribed tha