way through the outward accidents of his existence, down to the
profound springs of life where man feels himself one with other men in
all that is most intimately his own.

To aid a child to become himself and a brother it is necessary to
protect him against the violent and destructive action of the forces of
disorder. These forces are exterior and interior. Every child is menaced
from without not only by material dangers but by the meddlesomeness of
alien wills; and from within, by an exaggerated idea of his own
personality and all the fancies it breeds. There is a great outward
danger which may come from the abuse of power in educators. The right of
might finds itself a place in education with extreme facility. To
educate another, one must have renounced this right, that is to say,
made abnegation of the inferior sentiment of personal importance, which
transforms us into the enemies of others, even of our own children. Our
authority is beneficent only when it is inspired by one higher than our
own. In this case it is not only salutary, but also indispensable, and
becomes in its turn the best guarantee against the greater peril which
threatens the child from within--that of exaggerating his own
importance. At the beginning of life the vividness of personal
impressions is so great, that to establish an equilibrium, they must be
submitted to the gentle influence of a calm and superior will. The true
quality of the office of educator is to represent this will to the
child, in a manner as continuous and as disinterested as possible.
Educators, then, stand for all that is to be respected in the world.
They give to the child impressions of that which precedes it, outruns
it, envelops it: but they do not crush it; on the contrary, their will
and all the influence they transmit, become elements nutritive of its
native energy. Such use of authority as this, cultivates that fruitful
obedience out of which free souls are born. The purely personal
authority of parents, masters and institutions is to the child like the
brushwood beneath which the young plant withers and dies. Impersonal
authority, the authority of a man who has first submitted himself to the
time-honored realities before which he wishes the individual fancy of
the child to bend, resembles pure and luminous air. True it has an
activity, and influences us in its manner, but it nourishes our
individuality and gives it firmness and stability. Without this
authority the