rds maturity--the more successful he will be.

_Ignorance of Material Properties and Laws._

In the example already given, the mental immaturity consisted in imperfect
acquaintance with the qualities and the action of the mind, and the
principles of sound reasoning; but a far larger portion of the mistakes
and failures into which children fall, and for which they incur undeserved
censure, are due to their ignorance of the laws of external nature, and of
the properties and qualities of material objects.

A boy, for example, seven or eight years old, receives from his father a
present of a knife, with a special injunction to be careful of it. He
is, accordingly, very careful of it in respect to such dangers as he
understands, but in attempting to bore a hole with it in a piece of wood,
out of which he is trying to make a windmill, he breaks the small blade.
The accident, in such a case, is not to be attributed to any censurable
carelessness, but to want of instruction in respect to the strength of such
a material as steel, and the nature and effects of the degree of tempering
given to knife-blades. The boy had seen his father bore holes with a
gimlet, and the knife-blade was larger--in one direction at least, that is,
in breadth--than the gimlet, and it was very natural for him to suppose
that it was stronger. What a boy needs in such a case, therefore, is not a
scolding, or punishment, but simply information.

A girl of about the same age--a farmer's daughter, we will suppose--under
the influence of a dutiful desire to aid her mother in preparing the table
for breakfast, attempts to carry across the room a pitcher of milk which is
too full, and she spills a portion of it upon the floor.

_The Intention good_.

[Illustration: THE INTENTION GOOD.]

The mother, forgetting the good intention which prompted the act, and
thinking only of the inconvenience which it occasions her, administers at
once a sharp rebuke. The cause of the trouble was, simply, that the child
was not old enough to understand the laws of momentum and of oscillation
that affect the condition of a fluid when subjected to movements more or
less irregular. She has had no theoretical instruction on the subject,
and is too young to have acquired the necessary knowledge practically, by
experience or observation.

It is so with a very large portion of the accidents which befall children.
They arise not from any evil design, nor even any thing that can pro