I believe it
impossible, in the very heart of social surroundings, to educate a
child up to the age of twelve years, without giving him some ideas of
the relations of man to man, and of morality in human actions. It will
suffice if we put off as long as possible the necessity for these
ideas, and when they must be given, limit them to such as are
immediately applicable. We must do this only lest he consider himself
master of everything, and so injure others without scruple, because
unknowingly. There are gentle, quiet characters who, in their early
innocence, may be led a long way without danger of this kind. But
others, naturally violent, whose wildness is precocious, must be
trained into men as early as may be, that you may not be obliged to
fetter them outright.

The Idea of Property.

Our first duties are to ourselves; our first feelings are concentrated
upon ourselves; our first natural movements have reference to our own
preservation and well-being. Thus our first idea of justice is not as
due from us, but to us. One error in the education of to-day is, that
by speaking to children first of their duties and never of their
rights, we commence at the wrong end, and tell them of what they cannot
understand, and what cannot interest them.

If therefore I had to teach one of these I have mentioned, I should
reflect that a child never attacks persons, but things; he soon learns
from experience to respect his superiors in age and strength. But
things do not defend themselves. The first idea to be given him,
therefore, is rather that of property than that of liberty; and in
order to understand this idea he must have something of his own. To
speak to him of his clothes, his furniture, his playthings, is to tell
him nothing at all; for though he makes use of these things, he knows
neither how nor why he has them. To tell him they are his because they
have been given to him is not much better, for in order to give, we
must have. This is an ownership dating farther back than his own, and
we wish him to understand the principle of ownership itself. Besides,
a gift is a conventional thing, and the child cannot as yet understand
what a conventional thing is. You who read this, observe how in this
instance, as in a hundred thousand others, a child's head is crammed
with words which from the start have no meaning to him, but which we
imagine we have taught him.

We must go back, then, to the origin of ownershi