onsisted in discouraging disobedience by connecting
some certain, though mild and gentle disadvantage, inconvenience, or
penalty, with every transgression. In this chapter is to be considered
another mode, which is in some respects the converse of the first, inasmuch
as it consists in the encouragement of obedience, by often--not necessarily
always--connecting with it some advantage, or gain, or pleasure; or, as
it may be stated summarily, the cautious encouragement of obedience by
rewards.

This method of action is more difficult than the other in the sense that it
requires more skill, tact, and delicacy of perception and discrimination to
carry it successfully into effect. The other demands only firm, but gentle
and steady persistence. If the penalty, however slight it may be, _always
comes,_ the effect will take care of itself. But judiciously to
administer a system of rewards, or even of commendations, requires tact,
discrimination, and skill. It requires some observation of the peculiar
characteristics of the different minds acted upon, and of the effects
produced, and often some intelligent modification of the measures is
required, to fit them to varying circumstances and times.

_Obedience must not be Bought_.

If the bestowing of commendation and rewards is made a matter of mere blind
routine, as the assigning of gentle penalties may be, the result will
become a mere system of _bribing_, or rather paying children to be good;
and goodness that is bought, if it deserves the name of virtue at all, is
certainly virtue of a very inferior quality.

Whether a reward conferred for obedience shall operate as a bribe, or
rather as a price paid--for a _bribe_, strictly speaking, is a price paid,
not for doing right, but for doing wrong--depends sometimes on very slight
differences in the management of the particular case--differences which an
undiscriminating mother will not be very ready to appreciate.

A mother, for example, going into the village on a summer afternoon, leaves
her children playing in the yard, under the general charge of Susan, who
is at work in the kitchen, whence she can observe them from time to time
through the open window. She thinks the children will be safe, provided
they remain in the yard. The only thing to be guarded against is the danger
that they may go out through the gate into the road.

_Two Different Modes of Management_.

Under some circumstances, as, for example, where the danger