ench the joy of
their hearts, to numb their sympathies, to cramp their expansive
energies, to narrow and darken their whole outlook on life. All this
the cruelty of his seniors would do to the child, even if he had not
been taught to believe in his own inborn wickedness. But that belief,
with which he has been indoctrinated from his earliest days,
necessarily weakens his power of resisting evil, and so predisposes
him to fall a victim to the malignant germs that cruelty sows in his
heart. We tell the child that he is a criminal, and treat him as
such, and then expect him to be perfect; and when our misguided
education has begun to deprave him, we shake our heads over his
congenital depravity, and thank God that we believe in "original
sin."[5]

In the next place, if Man is to be faithful to his model, he must
bring up the child in an atmosphere of vexatious interference and
unnatural restraint. That Man himself has been brought up in such an
atmosphere in both his schools--the Legal and the Ecclesiastical--I
need not take pains to prove. What he has suffered at the hands of
his Schoolmaster--the God of Israel (and of Christendom)--he has
taken good care to inflict on his pupil, the child. Such phrases as:
"Don't talk," "Don't fidget," "Don't worry," "Don't ask questions,"
"Don't make a noise," "Don't make a mess," "Don't do this thing,"
"Don't do that thing," are ever falling from his lips. And they are
supplemented with such positive instructions as: "Sit still," "Stand
on the form," "Hold yourself up," "Fold arms," "Hands behind backs,"
"Hands on heads," "Eyes on the blackboard." At every turn--from
infancy till adolescence, "from early morning till late in the
evening"--these "dead and deadening formulas" await the unhappy
child. The aim of his teachers is to leave nothing to his nature,
nothing to his spontaneous life, nothing to his free activity; to
repress all his natural impulses; to drill his energies into complete
quiescence; to keep his whole being in a state of sustained and
painful tension. And in order that we may see a meaning and a
rational purpose in this _regime_ of oppressive interference, we must
assume that its ultimate aim is to turn the child into an animated
puppet, who, having lost his capacity for vital activity, will be
ready to dance, or rather go through a series of jerky movements, in
response to the strings which his teacher pulls. It is the inevitable
reaction from this state of tension