processes of growth are within him and the best you can do is to give
them scope. He is _free_ and you are _bound_ to minister to his best
freedom. The common school age is the _formative period_. At six a
child is morally immature; at fifteen the die has been stamped. This
youthful wilderness must be crossed. We can't turn back. There is no
other way of reaching the promised land. But there are rebellions and
baitings and disorderly scenes.

This is a tortuous road! Isn't there a quicker and easier way? The
most speedily constructed road across this region is _a short treatise_
on morals for teacher and pupil. In this way it is possible to have
all the virtues and faults tabulated, labeled, and transferred in brief
space to the minds of the children (if the discipline is rigorous
enough). Swallow a catechism, reduced to a verbal memory product.
Pack away the essence of morals in a few general laws and rules and
have the children learn them. Some day they may understand. What
astounding faith in memory cram and dry forms! We _can_ pave such a
road through the fields of moral science, but when a child has traveled
it is he a whit the better? No such paved road is good for anything.
It isn't even comfortable. It has been tried a dozen times in much
less important fields of knowledge than morals. Moral ideas spring up
out of experience with persons either in real life or in the books we
read. Examples of moral action drawn from life are the only thing that
can give meaning to moral precepts. If we see a harsh man beating his
horse, we get an ineffaceable impression of harshness. By reading the
story of the Black Beauty we acquire a lively sympathy for animals.
Then the maxim "A merciful man is merciful to his beast" will be a good
summary of the impressions received. Moral ideas always have a
concrete basis or origin. Some companion with whose feelings and
actions you are in close personal contact, or some character from
history or fiction by whose personality you have been strongly
attracted, gives you your keenest impressions of moral qualities. To
begin with abstract moral teaching, or to put faith in it, is to
misunderstand children. In morals as in other forms of knowledge,
children are overwhelmingly interested in personal and individual
examples, things which have form, color, action. The attempt to sum up
the important truths of a subject and present them as abstractions to
children is al