his age demands. From the first, assign him to his
true place, and keep him there so effectually that he will not try to
leave it. Then, without knowing what wisdom is, he will practise its
most important lesson. Never, absolutely never, command him to do a
thing, whatever it may be.[6] Do not let him even imagine that you
claim any authority over him. Let him know only that he is weak and
you are strong: that from his condition and yours he is necessarily at
your mercy. Let him know this--learn it and feel it. Let him early
know that upon his haughty neck is the stern yoke nature imposes upon
man, the heavy yoke of necessity, under which every finite being must
toil.

Let him discover this necessity in the nature of things; never in human
caprice. Let the rein that holds him back be power, not authority. Do
not forbid, but prevent, his doing what he ought not; and in thus
preventing him use no explanations, give no reasons. What you grant
him, grant at the first asking without any urging, any entreaty from
him, and above all without conditions. Consent with pleasure and
refuse unwillingly, but let every refusal be irrevocable. Let no
importunity move you. Let the "No" once uttered be a wall of brass
against which the child will have to exhaust his strength only five or
six times before he ceases trying to overturn it.

In this way you will make him patient, even-tempered, resigned, gentle,
even when he has not what he wants. For it is in our nature to endure
patiently the decrees of fate, but not the ill-will of others. "There
is no more," is an answer against which no child ever rebelled unless
he believed it untrue. Besides, there is no other way; either nothing
at all is to be required of him, or he must from the first be
accustomed to perfect obedience. The worst training of all is to leave
him wavering between his own will and yours, and to dispute incessantly
with him as to which shall be master. I should a hundred times prefer
his being master in every case.

It is marvellous that in undertaking to educate a child no other means
of guiding him should have been devised than emulation, jealousy, envy,
vanity, greed, vile fear,--all of them passions most dangerous,
readiest to ferment, fittest to corrupt a soul, even before the body is
full-grown. For each instruction too early put into a child's head, a
vice is deeply implanted in his heart. Foolish teachers think they are
doing wonders when