t see that
in thinking to correct her you destroy her work and counteract the
effect of all her cares? In your opinion, to do without what she is
doing within is to redouble the danger. On the contrary, it is really
to avert, to mitigate that danger. Experience teaches that more
children who are delicately reared die than others. Provided we do not
exceed the measure of their strength, it is better to employ it than to
hoard it. Give them practice, then, in the trials they will one day
have to endure. Inure their bodies to the inclemencies of the seasons,
of climates, of elements; to hunger, thirst, fatigue; plunge them into
the water of the Styx. Before the habits of the body are acquired we
can give it such as we please without risk. But when once it has
reached its full vigor, any alteration is perilous to its well-being.
A child will endure changes which a man could not bear. The fibres of
the former, soft and pliable, take without effort the bent we give
them; those of man, more hardened, do not without violence change those
they have received. We may therefore make a child robust without
exposing his life or his health; and even if there were some risk we
still ought not to hesitate. Since there are risks inseparable from
human life, can we do better than to throw them back upon that period
of life when they are least disadvantageous?

A child becomes more precious as he advances in age. To the value of
his person is added that of the cares he has cost us; if we lose his
life, his own consciousness of death is added to our sense of loss.
Above all things, then, in watching over his preservation we must think
of the future. We must arm him against the misfortunes of youth before
he has reached them. For, if the value of life increases up to the age
when life becomes useful, what folly it is to spare the child some
troubles, and to heap them upon the age of reason! Are these the
counsels of a master?

In all ages suffering is the lot of man. Even to the cares of
self-preservation pain is joined. Happy are we, who in childhood are
acquainted with only physical misfortunes--misfortunes far less cruel,
less painful than others; misfortunes which far more rarely make us
renounce life. We do not kill ourselves on account of the pains of
gout; seldom do any but those of the mind produce despair.[3]

We pity the lot of infancy, and it is our own lot that we ought to
pity. Our greatest misfortunes come