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The Education of the 
 
 Child.- 
 
 By 
 
 Ellen Key 
 
 Reprinted from the authorized English translation of 
 " The Century of the Child." With Introductory 
 
 Note by 
 
 Edward Bok 
 
 G. P. Putnam's Sons 
 
 New York and London 
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 copyright 
 By G. p. Putnam's Sons 
 
 1888 
 
 Entered at Stationers' Hally Londtn 
 
 By T. Fisher Unwin 
 
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 Made in the United States of America 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE 
 
 Edward Bok, Editor of the ''Ladies' Home 
 Journal^'' writes : 
 
 " Nothing finer on the wise education of the 
 child has ever been brought into print. To 
 me this chapter is a pei-fect classic ; it points 
 the way straight for every parent and it should 
 find a place in every home in America where 
 there is a child." 
 
The Education of the Child 
 
 Goethe showed long ago in his Werther a 
 clear understanding of the significance of in- 
 dividualistic and psychological training, an 
 appreciation which will mark the century of 
 the child. In this work he shows how the fu- 
 ture power of will lies hidden in the character- 
 istics of the child, and how along with every 
 fault of the child an uncorrupted germ capable 
 of producing good is enclosed. " Always," 
 he says, " I repeat the golden words of the 
 teacher of mankind, 'if ye do not become as 
 one of these,' and now, good friend, those who 
 are our equals, whom we should look upon as 
 our models, we treat as subjects; they should 
 have no will of their own; do w^e have none? 
 Where is our prerogative? Does it consist in 
 the fact that we are older and more experi- 
 enced? Good God of Heaven! Thou seest 
 old and young children, nothing else. And in 
 whom Thou hast more joy. Thy Son announced 
 ages ago. But people believe in Him and do 
 not hear Him — that, too, is an old trouble. 
 
2 'The Century of the Child 
 
 and they model their children after themselves.'* 
 The same criticism might be applied to our 
 present educators, who constantly have on 
 their tongues such words as evolution, indi- 
 viduality, and natural tendencies, but do not 
 heed the new commandments in which they say 
 they believe. They continue to educate as if 
 they believed still in the natural depravity of 
 man, in original sin, which may be bridled, 
 tamed, suppressed, but not changed. The new 
 belief is really equivalent to Goethe's thoughts 
 given above, Le.j, that almost every fault is but 
 a hard shell enclosing the germ of virtue. 
 Even men of modern times still follow in edu- 
 cation the old rule of medicine, that evil must 
 be driven out by evil, instead of the new 
 method, the system of allowing nature quietly 
 and slow^ly to help itself, taking care only 
 that the surrounding conditions help the work 
 of nature. This is education. 
 
 Neither harsh nor tender parents suspect the 
 truth expressed by Carlyle when he said that 
 the marks of a noble and original tempera- 
 ment are wild, strong emotions, that must be 
 controlled by a discipline as hard as steel. 
 People either strive to root out passions 
 altogether, or they abstain from teaching the 
 child to get them under control. 
 
The Education of the Child 3 
 
 To suppress the real personality of the child, 
 and to supplant it with another personality- 
 continues to be a pedagogical crime common 
 to those who announce loudly that education 
 should only develop the real individual nature 
 of the child. 
 
 They are still not convinced that egoism on 
 the part of the child is justified. Just as little 
 are they convinced of the possibility that evil 
 can be changed into good. 
 
 Education must be based on the certainty 
 that faults cannot be atoned for, or blotted 
 out, but must always have their consequences. 
 At the same time, there is the other certainty, 
 that through progressive evolution, by slow 
 adaptation to the conditions of environment 
 they may be transformed. Only when this 
 stage is reached will education begin to be a 
 science and art. We wdll then give up all be- 
 lief in the miraculous effects of sudden inter- 
 ference; we shall act in the psychological 
 sphere in accordance \\dth the principle of the 
 indestructibility of matter. We shall never 
 believe that a characteristic of the soul can be 
 destroyed. There are but two j)ossibilities. 
 Either it can be brought into subjection or it 
 can be raised up to a higher plane. 
 
 Madame de Stael's words show much in- 
 
4 The Century of the Child 
 
 sight when she says that only the people who 
 can play with children are able to educate 
 them. For success in training children the 
 first condition is to become as a child oneself, 
 but this means no assumed childishness, no 
 condescending baby-talk that the child im- 
 mediately sees through and deeply abhors. 
 What it does mean is to be as entirely and 
 simply taken up with the child as the child 
 himself is absorbed by his life. It means to 
 treat the child as really one's equal, that is, to 
 show him the same consideration, the same 
 kind confidence one shows to an adult. It 
 means not to influence the child to be what we 
 ourselves desire him to become but to be in- 
 fluenced by the impression of what the child 
 himself is; not to treat the child with decep- 
 tion, or by the exercise of force, but with the 
 seriousness and sincerity proper to his own 
 character. 
 
 Somewhere Rousseau says that all education 
 has failed in that nature does not fashion par- 
 ents as educators nor children for the sake of 
 education. What would happen if we finally 
 succeeded in following the directions of nature, 
 and recognised that the great secret of educa- 
 tion lies hidden in the maxim, " do not 
 educate " ? 
 
The Education of the Child 5 
 
 Not leaving the child in peace is the great- 
 est evil of present-day methods of training 
 children. Education is determined to create 
 a beautiful world externally and internally in 
 which the child can grow. To let him move 
 about freely in this world until he comes into 
 contact with the permanent boundaries of an- 
 other's right will be the end of the education 
 of the future. Only then will adults really 
 obtain a deep insight into the souls of children, 
 now an almost inaccessible kingdom. For it 
 is a natural instinct of self-preservation which 
 causes the child to bar the educator from his 
 innermost nature. There is the person who 
 asks rude questions; for example, what is the 
 child thinking about? a question which almost 
 invariably is answered with a black or a white 
 lie. The child must protect himself from an 
 educator who would master his thoughts and 
 inclinations, or rudely handle them, who with- 
 out consideration betrays or makes ridiculous 
 his most sacred feelings, who exposes faults 
 or praises characteristics before strangers, or 
 even uses an open-hearted, confidential con- 
 fession as an occasion for reproof at another 
 time. 
 
 The statement that no human being learns 
 to understand another, or at least to be pa- 
 
6 The Century of the Child 
 
 tient with another, is true above all of the in- 
 timate relation of child and parent in which, 
 understanding, the deepest characteristic of 
 love, is almost always absent. 
 
 Parents do not see that during the whole 
 life the need of peace is never greater than in 
 the years of childhood, an inner peace under 
 all external unrest. The child has to enter 
 into relations with his own infinite world, to 
 conquer it, to make it the object of his dreams. 
 But what does he experience? Obstacles, in- 
 terference, corrections, the whole livelong 
 day. The child is always required to leave 
 something alone, or to do something different, 
 to find something different, or want something 
 different from what he does, or finds, or wants. 
 He is always shunted off in another direction 
 from that towards which his own character is 
 leading him. All of this is caused by our 
 tenderness, vigilance, and zeal, in directing, 
 advising, and helping the small specimen of 
 humanity to become a complete example in a 
 model series. 
 
 I have heard a three-year-old child char- 
 acterised as " trying " because he wanted to go 
 into the woods, whereas the nursemaid wished 
 to drag him into the city. Another child of 
 six years was disciplined because she had been 
 
The Education of the Child 7 
 
 naughty to a playmate and had called her a 
 little pig, — a natural appellation for one who 
 was always dirty. These are typical ex- 
 amples of how the sound instincts of the child 
 are dulled. It was a spontaneous utterance 
 of the childish heart when a small boy, after 
 an account of the heaven of good children, 
 asked his mother whether she did not believe 
 that, after he had been good a whole week 
 in heaven, he might be allowed to go to hell 
 on Saturday evening to play with the bad lit- 
 tle boys there. 
 
 The child felt in its innermost consciousness 
 that he had a right to be naughty, a funda- 
 mental right which is accorded to adults; and 
 not only to be naughty, but to be naughty in 
 peace, to be left to the dangers and joys of 
 naughtiness. 
 
 To call forth from this " un virtue " the com- 
 plimentary virtue is to overcome evil with 
 good. Otherwise w^e overcome natural 
 strength by weak means and obtain artificial 
 virtues which will not stand the tests which 
 life imposes. 
 
 It seems simple enough when we say that 
 we must overcome evil with good, but practi- 
 cally no process is more involved, or more 
 tedious, than to find actual means to accom- 
 
8 The Century of the Child 
 
 plish this end. It is much easier to say what 
 one shall not do than what one must do to 
 change self-will into strength of character, sly- 
 ness into prudence, the desire to please into 
 amiability, restlessness into personal initiative. 
 It can only be brought about by recognising 
 that evil, in so far as it is not atavistic or per- 
 verse, is as natural and indispensable as the 
 good, and that it becomes a permanent evil 
 only through its one-sided supremacy. 
 
 The educator wants the child to be finished 
 at once, and perfect. He forces upon the child 
 an unnatural degree of self-mastery, a devo- 
 tion to duty, a sense of honour, habits that 
 adults get out of with astonishing rapidity. 
 Where the faults of children are concerned, at 
 home and in school, we strain at gnats, while 
 children daily are obliged to swallow the camels 
 of grown people. 
 
 The art of natural education consists in ig- 
 noring the faults of children nine times out of 
 ten, in avoiding immediate interference, which 
 is usually a mistake, and devoting one's whole 
 vigilance to the control of the environment in 
 which the child is growing up, to watching 
 the education which is allowed to go on by it- 
 self. But educators who, day in and day out, 
 are consciously transforming the environment 
 
The Education of the Child 9 
 
 and themselves are still a rare product. Most 
 people live on the capital and interest of an 
 education, which perhaps once made them 
 model children, but has deprived them of the 
 desire for educating themselves. Only by 
 keeping oneself in constant process of growth, 
 under the constant influence of the best things 
 in one's own age, does one become a companion 
 half-waj^ good enough for one's children. 
 
 To bring up a child means carrying one's 
 soul in one's hand, setting one's feet on a nar- 
 row path; it means never placing ourselves in 
 danger of meeting the cold look on the part 
 of the child that tells us without words that he 
 finds us insufficient and unreliable. It means 
 the humble realisation of the truth that the 
 ways of injuring the child are infinite, while 
 ' the ways of being useful to him are few. How 
 seldom does the educator remember that the 
 child, even at four or five years of age, is mak- 
 ing experiments with adults, seeing through 
 them, with marvellous shrewdness making his 
 own valuations and reacting sensitively to each 
 impression. The slightest mistrust, the small- 
 est unkindness, the least act of injustice or 
 contemptuous ridicule, leave wounds that last 
 for life in the finely strung soul of the child. 
 
lo The Century of the Child 
 
 While on the other side unexpected friendli- 
 ness, kind advances, just indignation, make 
 quite as deep an impression on those senses 
 which people term as soft as wax hut treat as 
 if they were made of cowhide. 
 
 Relatively most excellent was the old edu- 
 cation which consisted solely in keeping one- 
 self whole, pure, and honourable. For it did 
 not at least depreciate personality, although 
 it did not form it. It would be well if but a 
 hundredth part of the pains now taken by 
 parents were given to interference with the 
 life of the child and the rest of the ninety and 
 nine employed in leading, without interfer- 
 ence, in acting as an unforeseen, an invisible 
 providence through which the child obtains ex- 
 perience, from which he may draw his own 
 conclusions. The present practice is to im- 
 press one's own discoveries, opinions, and prin- 
 ciples on the child by constantly directing his 
 actions. The last thing to be realised by the 
 educator is that he really has before him an 
 entirely new soul, a real self whose first and 
 chief right is to think over the things with 
 which he comes in contact. By a new soul he 
 understands only a new generation of an old 
 humanity to be treated with a fresh dose of the 
 
The Education of the Child ii 
 
 old remedy. We teach the new souls not to 
 steal, not to lie, to save their clothes, to learn 
 their lessons, to economise their money, to 
 obey commands, not to contradict older peo- 
 ple, say their prayers, to fight occasionally in 
 order to be strong. But who teaches the new 
 souls to choose for themselves the path they 
 must tread? Who thinks that the desire for 
 this path of their own can be so profound 
 that a hard or even mild pressure towards 
 uniformity can make the whole of childhood 
 a torment. 
 
 The child comes into life with the inherit- 
 ance of the preceding members of the race; 
 and this inheritance is modified by adaptation 
 to the environment. But the child shov/s also 
 individual variations from the type of the 
 species, and if his own character is not to dis- 
 appear during the process of adaptation, all 
 self-determined development of energy must 
 be aided in every way and only indirectly in- 
 fluenced by the teacher, who should un- 
 derstand how to combine and emphasise the 
 results of this development. 
 
 Interference on the part of the educator, 
 whether by force or persuasion, weakens 
 this development if it does not destroy it 
 altogether. 
 
12 The Century of the Child 
 
 The habits of the household, and the child's 
 habits in it must be absolutely fixed if they 
 are to be of any value. Amiel truly says that 
 habits are principles which have become in- 
 stincts, and have passed over into flesh and 
 blood. To change habits, he continues, means 
 to attack life in its very essence, for Uf e is only 
 a web of habits. 
 
 Why does everything remain essentially the 
 same from generation to generation? Why 
 do highly civilised Christian people continue 
 to plunder one another and call it exchange, 
 to murder one another en masse, and call it 
 nationalism, to oppress one another and call it 
 statesmanship ? 
 
 Because in every new generation the im- 
 pulses supposed to have been rooted out by 
 discipline in the child, break forth again, when 
 the struggle for existence — of the individual 
 in society, of the society in the life of the state 
 — begins. These passions are not transformed 
 by the prevalent education of the day, but only 
 repressed. Practically this is the reason why 
 not a single savage passion has been overcome 
 in humanity. Perhaps man-eating may be 
 mentioned as an exception. But what is told 
 of European ship companies or Siberian pris- 
 oners shows that even this impulse, under 
 
The Education of the Child 13 
 
 conditions favourable to it, may be revived, 
 although in the majority of people a deep 
 physical antipathy to man-eating is innate. 
 Conscious incest, despite similar deviations, 
 must also be physically contrary to the ma- 
 jority, and in a number of women, modesty — 
 the unity between body and soul in relation to 
 love — is an incontestable provision of nature. 
 So too a minority would find it physically im- 
 possible to murder or steal. With this list I 
 have exhausted everything which mankind, 
 since its conscious history began, has really so 
 intimately acquired that the achievement is 
 passed on in its flesh and blood. Only this 
 kind of conquest can really stand up against 
 temptation in every form. 
 
 A deep physiological truth is hidden in the 
 use of language when one speaks of un- 
 chained passions; the passions, under the pre- 
 vailing system of education, are really only 
 beasts of prey imprisoned in cages. 
 
 While fine words are spoken about individ- 
 ual development, children are treated as if 
 their personality had no purpose of its own, 
 as if they were made only for the pleasure, 
 pride, and comfort of their parents; and as 
 these aims are best advanced when children be- 
 come like every one else, people usually begin 
 
14 The Century of the Child 
 
 by attempting to make them respectable and 
 useful members of society. 
 
 But the only correct starting point, so far 
 as a child's education in becoming a social hu- 
 man being is concerned, is to treat him as such, 
 while strengthening his natural disposition to 
 become an individual human being. 
 
 The new educator will, by regularly or- 
 dered experience, teach the child by degrees 
 his place in the great orderly system of exist- 
 ence; teach him his responsibility towards his 
 environment. But in other respects, none of 
 the individual characteristics of the child ex- 
 pressive of his life will be suppressed, so long 
 as they do not injure the child himself, or 
 others. The right balance must be kept be- 
 tween Spencer's definition of life as an adapta- 
 tion to surrounding conditions, and Nietzsche's 
 definition of it as the will to secure power. 
 
 In adaptation, imitation certainly plays a 
 great role, but individual exercise of power 
 is just as important. Through adaptation life 
 attains a fixed form; through exercise of power, 
 new factors. 
 
 Thoughtful people, as I have already stated, 
 talk a good deal about personality. But they 
 are, nevertheless, filled with doubts when their 
 children are not just like all other children; 
 
The Education of the Child 15 
 
 when they cannot show in their offspring all 
 the ready-made virtues required by society. 
 And so they drill their children, repressing in 
 childhood the natural instincts which will have 
 freedom when they are grown. People still 
 hardly realise how new human beings are 
 formed; therefore the old types constantly 
 repeat themselves in the same circle, — the fine 
 young men, the sweet girls, the respectable 
 officials, and so on. And new types with 
 higher ideals, — travellers on unkno^Ti paths, 
 thinkers of yet unthought thoughts, people 
 capable of the crime of inaugurating new 
 ways, — such types rarely come into existence 
 among those who are well brought up. 
 
 Nature herself, it is true, repeats the main 
 types constantly. But she also constantly 
 makes small deviations. In this way different 
 species, even of the human race, have come 
 into existence. But man himself does not yet 
 see the significance of this natural law in his 
 own higher development. He wants the feel- 
 ings, thoughts, and judgments already stamped 
 with approval to be reproduced by each new 
 generation. So we get no new individuals, 
 but only more or less prudent, stupid, amiable, 
 or bad-tempered examples of the genus 
 man. The still living instincts of the 
 
i6 The Century of the Child 
 
 ape, double, in the case of man, the effect 
 of heredity. Conservatism is for the present 
 stronger in mankind than the effort to pro- 
 duce new types. But this last characteristic 
 is the most valuable. The educator should do 
 anything but advise the child to do what every- 
 body does. He should rather rejoice when he 
 sees in the child tendencies to deviation. 
 Using other people's opinion as a standard re- 
 sults in subordinating one's self to their 
 will. So we become a part of the great mass, 
 led by the Superman through the strength of 
 his will, a will which could not have mastered 
 strong personalities. It has been justly re- 
 marked that individual peoples, like the Eng- 
 lish, have attained the greatest political and 
 social freedom, because the personal feeling of 
 independence is far in excess of freedom in a 
 legal form. Accordingly legal freedom has 
 been constantly growing. 
 
 For the progress of the whole of the species, 
 as well as of society, it is essential that educa- 
 tion shall awake the feeling of independence; 
 it should invigorate and favour the disposition 
 to deviate from the type in those cases where 
 the rights of others are not affected, or where 
 deviation is not simply the result of the desire 
 to draw attention to oneself. The child should 
 
The Education of the Child 17 
 
 be given the chance to declare conscientiously 
 his independence of a customary usage, of an 
 ordinary feeling, for this is the foundation of 
 the education of an individual, as well as the 
 basis of a collective conscience, v^hicli is the only 
 kind of conscience men now have. What does 
 having an individual conscience mean? It 
 means submitting voluntarily to an external 
 law, attested and found good by my ow^n con- 
 science. It means unconditionally heeding 
 the unwritten law, which I lay upon myself, 
 and following this inner law even when I must 
 stand alone against the whole world. 
 
 It is a frequent phenomenon, we can al- 
 most call it a regular one, that it is original 
 natures, particularly talented beings, who are 
 badly treated at home and in school. No one 
 considers the sources of conduct in a child who 
 shows fear or makes a noise, or who is ab- 
 sorbed in himself, or who has an impetuous 
 nature. Mothers and teachers show in this 
 their pitiable incapacity for the most elemen-j 
 tary part in the art of education, that is, to be I 
 able to see with their own eyes, not with peda- \ 
 gogical doctrines in their head. I 
 
 I naturally expect in the supporters of so- 
 ciety, with their conventional morality, no 
 appreciation of the significance of the child's 
 
i8 The Century of the Child 
 
 putting into exercise his own powers. Just 
 as little is this to be expected of those Christ- 
 ian believers who think that human nature 
 must be brought to repentance and humility, 
 and that the sinful body, the unclean beast, 
 must be tamed with the rod, — a theory which 
 the Bible is brought to support. 
 
 I am only addressing people who can think 
 new thoughts and consequently should cease 
 using old methods of education. This class 
 may reply that the new ideas in education 
 cannot be carried out. But the obstacle is 
 simply that their new thoughts have not made 
 them into new men; the old man in them has 
 neither repose, nor time, nor patience, to form 
 his own soul, and that of the child, according 
 to the new thoughts. 
 
 Those who have " tried Spencer and failed," 
 because Spencer's method demands intelli- 
 gence and patience, contend that the child 
 must be taught to obey, that truth lies in the 
 old rule, " As the twig is bent the tree is 
 inclined." 
 
 Bent is the appropriate word, bent accord- 
 ing to the old ideal which extinguishes person- 
 ality, teaches humility and obedience. But 
 the new ideal is that man, to stand straight and 
 upright, must not be bent at all, only sup- 
 
The Education of the Child 19 
 
 ported, and so prevented from being deformed 
 by weakness. 
 
 One often finds, in the modern system of 
 training, the crude desire for mastery still 
 alive and breaking out when the child is ob- 
 stinate. "You won't!" say father and 
 mother ; " I will teach you whether you have 
 a will. I will soon drive self-will out of you." 
 But nothing can be driven out of the child; on 
 the other hand, much can be scourged into it 
 which should be kept far away. 
 
 Only during the first few years of life is a 
 kind of drill necessary, as a pre-condition to 
 a higher training. The child is then in such 
 a high degree controlled by sensation, that a 
 slight physical pain or pleasure is often the 
 only language he fully understands. Conse- 
 quently for some children discipline is an in- 
 dispensable means of enforcing the practice 
 of certain habits. For other children, the 
 stricter methods are entirely unnecessary even 
 at this early age, and as soon as the child can 
 remember a blow, he is too old to receive one. 
 
 The child must certainly learn obedience, 
 and, besides, this obedience must be absolute. 
 If such obedience has become habitual from 
 the tenderest age, a look, a word, an intona- 
 tion is enough to keep the child straight. The 
 
20 The Century of the Child 
 
 dissatisfaction of those who are bringing him 
 up can only be made effective when it falls 
 as a shadow in the usual sunny atmosphere of 
 home. And if people refrain from laying the 
 foundations of obedience while the child is 
 small, and his naughtiness is entertaining, 
 Spencer's method undoubtedly will be found 
 unsuitable after the child is older and his ca- 
 price disagreeable. 
 
 With a very small child, one should not 
 argue, but act consistently and immediately. 
 The effort of training should be directed at an 
 early period to arrange the experiences in a 
 consistent whole of impressions according to 
 Rousseau and Spencer's recommendation. 
 So certain habits will become impressed in the 
 flesh and blood of the child. 
 
 Constant crying on the part of small child- 
 ren must be corrected when it has become clear 
 that the crjdng is not caused by illness or some 
 other discomfort, — discomforts against which 
 crying is the child's only weapon. Crying is 
 now ordinarily corrected by blows. But this 
 does not master the will of the child, and only 
 produces in his soul the idea that older people 
 strike small children, when small children cry. 
 This is not an ethical idea. But when the cry- 
 ing child i$ immediately isolated, and it is 
 
The Education of the Child 21 
 
 explained to him at the same time that whoever 
 annoys others must not be with them; if this 
 isolation is the absolute result, and cannot 
 be avoided, in the child's mind a basis is laid 
 for the experience that one must be alone when 
 one makes oneself unpleasant or disagreeable. 
 In both cases the child is silenced by interfer- 
 ing with his comfort; but one type of discom- 
 fort is the exercise of force on his will; the 
 other produces slowly the self-mastery of the 
 will, and accomplishes this by a good motive. 
 One method encourages a base emotion, fear. 
 The other corrects the will in a way that com- 
 bines it with one of the most important ex- 
 periences of life. The one punishment keeps 
 the child on the level of the animal. The other 
 impresses upon him the great principle of hu- 
 man social life, that when our pleasure causes 
 displeasure to others, other people hinder us 
 from following our pleasures; or withdraw 
 themselves from the exercise of our self-will. 
 It is necessary that small children should ac- 
 custom themselves to good behaviour at table, 
 etc. If every time an act of naughtiness is 
 repeated, the child is immediately taken aw^ay, 
 he will soon learn that whoever is disagreeable 
 to others must remain alone. Thus a right 
 application is made of a right principle. 
 
22 The Century of the Child 
 
 Small children, too, must learn not to touch 
 what belongs to other people. If every time 
 anything is touched without permission, 
 children lose their freedom of action one way 
 or another, they soon learn that a condition 
 of their free action is not to injure others. 
 
 It is quite true, as a young mother re- 
 marked, that empty Japanese rooms are ideal 
 places in which to bring up children. Our 
 modern crowded rooms are, so far as child- 
 ren are concerned, to be condemned. During 
 the year in which the real education of the 
 child is proceeding by touching, tasting, biting, 
 feeling, and so on, every moment he is 
 hearing the cry, " Let it alone." For the tem- 
 perament of the child as well as for the develop- 
 ment of his powers, the best thing is a large, 
 light nursery, adorned with handsome litho- 
 graphs, wood-cuts, and so on, provided with 
 some simple furniture, where he may enjoy 
 the fullest freedom of movement. But if the 
 child is there with his parents and is disobedi- 
 ent, a momentary reprimand is the best means 
 to teach him to reverence the greater world in 
 which the will of others prevails, the world in 
 which the child certainly can make a place for 
 himself but must also learn that every place 
 occupied by him has its limits. 
 
The Education of the Child 23 
 
 If it is a case of a danger, which it is desir- 
 able that the child should really dread, we must 
 allow the thing itself to have an alarming in- 
 fluence. When a mother strikes a child be- 
 cause he touches the light, the result is that he 
 does this again when the mother is away. But 
 let him burn himself with the light, then he is 
 certain to leave it alone. In riper years when 
 a boy misuses a knife, a toy, or something simi- 
 lar, the loss of the object for the time being 
 must be the punishment. Most boys would 
 prefer corporal punishment to the loss of their 
 favourite possession. But only the loss of it 
 will be a real education through experience of 
 one of the inevitable rules of life, an experience 
 which cannot be too strongly impressed. 
 
 We hear parents who have begun with 
 Spencer and then have taken to corporal pun- 
 ishment declare that when children are too 
 small to repair the clothing which they have 
 torn there must be some other kind of punish- 
 ment. But at that age they should not be pun- 
 ished at all for such things. They should have 
 such simple and strong clothes that they can 
 play freely in them. Later on, when they can 
 be really careful, the natural punishment 
 would be to have the child remain at home if 
 he is careless, has spotted his clothes, or torn 
 
 i\ 
 
24 The Century of the Child 
 
 them. He must be shoTvn that he must help 
 to put his clothes in good condition again, or 
 that he will be compelled to buy what he has 
 destroyed carelessly with money earned by him- 
 self. If the cliild is not careful, he must stay 
 at home, when ordinarily allowed to go out, 
 or eat alone if he is too late for meals. It may 
 be said that there are simple means by which 
 all the important habits of social Ufe may be- 
 come a second nature. Eut it is not possible 
 in all cases to apply Spencer's method. The 
 natural consequences occasionally endanger 
 the health of the child, or sometimes are too 
 slow in their action. If it seems necessary to 
 interfere directly, such action must be con- 
 sistent, quick, and inmiutable. How is it that 
 the child learns ver}^ soon that fire burns? 
 Because fire does so always. But the mother 
 who at one time strikes, at another threatens, 
 at another bribes the child, first forbids and 
 then immediately after permits some action; 
 who does not carr^^ out her threat, does not 
 compel obedience, but constantly gabbles and 
 scolds; who sometimes acts in one way and 
 just as often in another, has not learned the 
 effective educational methods of the fire. 
 
 The old-fashioned strict training that in its 
 crude way gave to the character a fixed type 
 
The Education of the Child 25 
 
 rested on its consistent qualities. It was con- 
 sistently strict, not as at present a lax hesita- 
 tion between all kinds of pedagogical methods 
 and psychological opinions, in which the child 
 is thrown about here and there like a ball, in 
 the hands of grown people ; at one time pushed 
 forward, then laughed at, then pushed aside, 
 only to be brought back again, kissed till it 
 is disgusted, first ordered about, and then 
 coaxed. A grown man would become insane 
 if joking Titans treated him for a single day 
 as a child is treated for a year. A child 
 should not be ordered about, but should be 
 just as courteously addressed as a grown per- 
 son in order that he may learn courtesy. A 
 child should never be pushed into notice, never 
 compelled to endure caresses, never over- 
 whelmed with kisses, which ordinarily tor- 
 ment him and are often the cause of sexual 
 hyper^esthesia. The child's demonstrations of 
 affection should be reciprocated when they 
 are sincere, but one's own demonstrations 
 should be reserved for special occasions. This 
 is one of the many excellent maxims of 
 training that are disregarded. Nor should 
 the child be forced to express regret in begging 
 pardon and the like. This is excellent train- 
 ing for hypocrisy. A small child once had 
 
26 The Century of the Child 
 
 been rude to his elder brother and was placed 
 upon a chair to repent his fault. When the 
 mother after a time asked if he was sorry, he 
 answered, " Yes," with emphasis, but as the 
 mother saw a mutinous sparkle in his eyes she 
 felt impelled to ask, " Sorry for what? " and 
 the youngster broke out, " Sorry that I did 
 not call him a liar besides." The mother was 
 wise enough on this occasion, and ever after, 
 to give up insisting on repentance. 
 
 Spontaneous penitence is full of signifi- 
 cance; it is a deeply felt desire for pardon. 
 But an artificial emotion is always and every- 
 where worthless. Are you not sorry? Does 
 it make no difference to you that your mother 
 is ill, your brother dead, your father away 
 from home? Such expressions are often used 
 as an appeal to the emotions of children. But 
 children have a right to have feelings, or not 
 have them, and to have them as undisturbed as 
 grown people. The same holds good of their 
 sympathies and antipathies. The sensitive 
 feelings of children are constantly injured by 
 lack of consideration on the part of grown peo- 
 ple, their easily stimulated aversions are con- 
 stantly being brought out. But the sufferings 
 of children through the crudeness of their 
 elders belong to an unwritten chapter of child 
 
The Education of the Child 27 
 
 psychology. Just as there are few better 
 methods of training than to ask children, when 
 they have behaved unjustly to others, to con- 
 sider whether it would be pleasant for them 
 to be treated in that way, so there is no better 
 corrective for the trainer of children than the 
 habit of asking oneself, in question small and 
 great, — Would I consent to be treated as I 
 have just treated my child? If it were only 
 remembered that the child generally suffers 
 double as much as the adult, parents would 
 perhaps learn physical and psychical tender- 
 ness without which a child's life is a constant 
 torment. 
 
 As to presents, the same principle holds 
 good as with emotions and marks of tender- 
 ness. Onl}'^ by example can generous instincts 
 be provoked. Above all the child should not 
 be allowed to have things which he immediately 
 gives away. Gifts to a child should always 
 imply a personal requital for work or sacrifice. 
 In order to secure for children the pleasure of 
 giving and the opportunity of obtaining small 
 pleasures and enjoyments, as well as of re- 
 placing property of their own or of others 
 which they may have destroyed, they should at 
 an early age be accustomed to perform seri- 
 ously certain household duties for which they 
 
28 The Century of the Child 
 
 receive some small remuneration. But small 
 occasional services, whether volunteered or 
 asked for by others, should never be rewarded. 
 Only readiness to serve, without payment, de- 
 velops the joy of generosity. When the child 
 wants to give away something, people should 
 not make a pretence of receiving it. This 
 produces the false conception in his mind that 
 the pleasure of being generous can be had for 
 nothing. At every step the child should be 
 allowed to meet the real experiences of life; 
 the thorns should never be plucked from his 
 roses. This is what is least understood in 
 present-day training. Thus we see reasonable 
 methods constantly failing. People find 
 themselves forced to " afflictive " methods 
 which stand in no relation with the realities of 
 life. 1 mean, above all, what are still called 
 means of education, instead of means of tor- 
 ture, — blows. 
 
 Many people of to-day defend blows, main- 
 taining that they are milder means of punish- 
 ment than the natural consequences of an 
 act; that blows have the strongest effect on 
 the memory, which effect becomes permanent 
 through association of ideas. 
 
 But what kinds of association? Is it not 
 with physical pain and shame ? Gradually, step 
 
The Education of the Child 29 
 
 by step, this method of training and discipline 
 has been superseded in all its forms. The 
 movement to abolish torture, imprisonment, 
 and corporal punishment failed for a long time 
 owing to the conviction that they were indis- 
 pensable as methods of discipline. But the 
 child, people answer, is still an animal, he must 
 be brought up as an animal. Those who talk 
 in this way know nothing of children nor of 
 animals. Even animals can be trained with- 
 out striking them, but they can only be trained 
 by men w^ho have become men themselves. 
 
 Others come forward with the doctrine that 
 terror and pain have been the best means of 
 educating mankind, so the child must pursue 
 the same road as humanity. This is an utter 
 absurdity. We should also, on this theory, 
 teach our children, as a natural introduction 
 to religion, to practise fetish w^orship. If 
 the child is to reproduce all the lower de- 
 velopment stages of the race, he would be 
 practically depressed beneath the level which 
 he has reached physiologically and psycho- 
 logically through the common inheritance 
 of the race. If we have abandoned torture 
 and painful punishments for adults, w^hile 
 they are retained for children, it is because we 
 have not yet seen that their soul life so far as 
 
30 The Century of the Child 
 
 a greater and more subtle capacity for suffer- 
 ing is concerned has made the same progress 
 as that of adult mankind. The numerous 
 cases of child suicide in the last decade were 
 often the result of fear of corporal punishment ; 
 or have taken place after its administration. 
 Both soul and body are equally affected by 
 this practice. Where this is not the result, 
 blows have even more dangerous consequences. 
 They tend to dull still further the feeling of 
 shame, to increase the brutality or cowardice 
 of the person punished. I once heard a child 
 pointed out in a school as being so unruly 
 that it was generally agreed he would be bene- 
 fited by a flogging. Then it w^as discovered 
 that his father's flogging at home had made 
 him what he was. If statistics were prepared 
 of ruined sons, those who had been flogged 
 would certainly be more numerous than those 
 who had been pampered. 
 
 Society has gradually given up employing 
 retributive punishments because people have 
 seen that they neither awaken the feeling of 
 guilt, nor act as a deterrent, but on the contrary 
 retribution applied by equal to equal brutal- 
 ises the ideas of right, hardens the temper, and 
 stimulates the victim to exercise the same vio- 
 lence towards others that has been endured 
 
The Education of the Child 31 
 
 by himself. But other rules are applied to the 
 psychological processes of the child. When 
 a child strikes his small sister the mother 
 strikes him and believes that he will see and 
 understand the difference between the blows 
 he gets and those he gives ; that he will see that 
 the one is a just punishment and the other 
 vicious conduct. But the child is a sharp 
 logician and feels that the action is just the 
 same, although the mother gives it a different 
 name. 
 
 Corporal punishment was long ago admir- 
 ably described by Comenius, who compared 
 an educator using this method with a musician 
 striking a badly tuned instrument with his 
 fist, instead of using his ears and his hands to 
 put it into tune. 
 
 These brutal attacks work on the active sen- 
 sitive feelings, lacerating and confusing them. 
 They have no educative power on all the in- 
 numerable fine processes in the life of the 
 child's soul, on their obscurely related com- 
 binations. 
 
 In order to give real training, the first thing 
 after the second or third year is to abandon 
 the very thought of a blow among the possi- 
 bilities of education. It is best if parents, as 
 soon as the child is born, agree never to strike 
 
32 The Century of the Child 
 
 him, for if they once begin with this con- 
 venient and easy method, they continue to use 
 corporal discipline even contrary to their first 
 intention, because they have failed while using 
 such punishment to develop the child's in- 
 telligence. 
 
 If people do not see this it is no more use to 
 speak to them of education than it would be 
 to talk to a cannibal about the world's peace. 
 
 But as these savages in educational matters 
 are often civilised human beings in other re- 
 spects, I should like to request them to think 
 over the development of marriage from the 
 time when man wooed with a club and when 
 woman was regarded as the soulless property 
 of man, only to be kept in order by blows, a 
 view which continued to be held until modern 
 times. Through a thousand daily secret in- 
 fluences, our feelings and ideas have been so 
 transformed that these crude conceptions have 
 disappeared, to the great advantage of society 
 and the individual. But it may be hard to 
 awaken a pedagogical savage to the convic- 
 tion that, in quite the same way, a thousand 
 new secret and mighty influences will change 
 our crude methods of education, when parents 
 once come to see that parenthood must go 
 through the same transformation as marriage, 
 
The Education of the Child 33 
 
 before it attains to a noble and complete 
 development. 
 
 Only when men realise that whipping a 
 child belongs to the same low stage of civilisa- 
 tion as beating a woman, or a servant, or as 
 the corporal punishment of soldiers and crimi- 
 nals, will the first real preparation begin of the 
 material from which perhaps later an educator 
 may be formed. 
 
 Corporal punishment w^as natural in rough 
 times. The body is tangible; what affects io 
 has an immediate and perceptible result. The 
 heat of passion is cooled by the blows it ad- 
 ministers; in a certain stage of development 
 blows are the natural expression of moral in- 
 dignation, the direct method by which the 
 moral will impresses itself on beings of lower 
 capacities. But it has since been discovered 
 that the soul may be impressed b}^ spiritual 
 means, and that blows are just as demoralising 
 for the one who gives them as for the one who 
 receives them. 
 
 The educator, too, is apt to forget that the 
 child in many cases has as few moral concep- 
 tions as the animal or the savage. To punish 
 for this — is only a cruelty, and to punish by 
 brutal methods is a piece of stupidity. It 
 works against the possibility of elevating the 
 
34 The Century of the Child 
 
 child beyond the level of the beast or the sav- 
 age. The educator to whose mind flogging 
 never presents itself, even as an occasional re- 
 source, will naturally direct his whole thought 
 to finding psychological methods of education. 
 Administering corporal punishment demor- 
 alises and stupefies the educator, for it in- 
 creases his thoughtlessness, not his patience, 
 his brutality, not his intelligence. 
 
 A small boy friend of mine when four years 
 old received his first punishment of this kind; 
 happily it was his only one. As his nurse re- 
 minded him in the evening to say his prayers 
 he broke out, " Yes, to-night I really have 
 something to tell God," and prayed with deep 
 earnestness, " Dear God, tear manmia's arms 
 out so that she cannot beat me any more." 
 
 Nothing would more effectively further the 
 development of education than for all flogging 
 pedagogues to meet this fate. They would 
 then learn 16 educate with the head instead 
 of with the hand. And as to public educa- 
 tors, the teachers, their position could be no 
 better raised than by legally forbidding a blow 
 to be administered in any school under penalty 
 of final loss of position. 
 
 That people who are in other respects in- 
 telligent and sensitive continue to defend 
 
The Education of the Child 35 
 
 Bogging, is due to the fact that most educa- 
 tors have only a very elementary conception 
 of their work. They should constantly keep 
 before them the feelings and impressions of 
 their own childhood in dealing with children. 
 The most frequent as well as the most danger- 
 ous of the numerous mistakes made in hand- 
 ling children is that people do not remember 
 how they felt themselves at a similar age, that 
 they do not regard and comprehend the feel- 
 ings of the child from their own past point of 
 view. The adult laughs or smiles in remem- 
 bering the punishments and other things 
 which caused him in his childhood anxious 
 days or nights, which produced the silent tor- 
 ture of the child's heart, infinite despondency, 
 burning indignation, lonely fears, outraged 
 sense of justice, the terrible creations of his 
 imagination, his absurd shame, his unsatis- 
 fied thirst for joy, freedom, and tenderness. 
 Lacking these beneficent memories, adults con- 
 stantly repeat the crime of destroying the 
 childhood of the new generation, — the only 
 time in life in w^hich the guardian of education 
 can really be a kindly providence. So strongly 
 do I feel that the unnecessary sufferings of 
 children are unnatural as well as ignoble that 
 I experience physical disgust in touching the 
 
36 The Century of the Child 
 
 hand of a human being that I know has struck 
 a child; and I cannot close my eyes after I 
 have heard a child in the street threatened with 
 corporal punishment. 
 
 Blows call forth the virtues of slaves, not 
 those of freemen. As early as Walther von 
 der Vogelweide, it was known that the hon- 
 ourable man respects a word more than a blow. 
 The exercise of physical force delivers the 
 weak and unprotected into the hands of the 
 strong. A child never believes in his heart, 
 though he may be brought to acknowledge 
 verbally, that the blows were due to love, that 
 they were administered because they were 
 necessary. The child is too keen not to know 
 that such a " must " does not exist, and that 
 love can express itself in a better way. 
 
 Lack of self-discipline, of intelligence, of 
 patience, of personal effort — ^these are the 
 corner-stones on which corporal punishment 
 rests. I do not now refer to the system of 
 flogging employed by miserable people year 
 in and year out at home, or, particularly in 
 schools, that of beating children outrageously, 
 or to the limits of brutality. I do not mean 
 even the less brutal blows administered by un- 
 disciplined teachers and parents, who avenge 
 themselves in excesses of passion or fatigue or 
 
The Education of the Child 37 
 
 disgust, — blows which are simply the active 
 expression of a tension of nerves, a detestable 
 evidence of the want of self -discipline and self- 
 culture. Still less do I refer to the cruelties 
 committed by monsters, sexual perverts, whose 
 brutal tendencies are stimulated by their dis- 
 ciplinary power and who use it to force their 
 victims to silence, as certain criminal trials 
 have shown. 
 
 I am only speaking of conscientious, amiable 
 parents and teachers who, with pain to them- 
 selves, fulfil what they regard as their duty 
 to the child. These are accustomed to adduce 
 the good effects of corporal discipline as a 
 proof that it cannot be dispensed with. The 
 child by being whipped is, they say, not only 
 made good but freed from his evil character, 
 and shows by his whole being that this quick 
 and summary method of punishment has done 
 more than talks, and patience, and the slowly 
 working penalties of experience. Examples 
 are adduced to prove that only this kind of 
 punishment breaks down obstinacy, cures the 
 habit of lying and the like. Those who adopt 
 this system do not perceive that they have only 
 succeeded, through this momentarily effective 
 means, in repressing the external expression 
 of an evil will. They have not succeeded in 
 
38 The Century of the Child 
 
 transforming the will itself. It requires con- 
 stant vigilance, daily self -discipline, to create 
 an ever higher capacity for the discovery of 
 intelligent methods. The fault that is re- 
 pressed is certain to appear on every occasion 
 when the child dares to show it. The educator 
 who finds in corporal punishment a short way 
 to get rid of trouble, leads the child a long 
 way round, if we have the only real develop- 
 ment in view, namely that which gradually 
 strengthens the child's capacity for self-con- 
 trol. 
 
 I have never heard a child over three years 
 old threatened with corporal punishment with- 
 out noticing that this wonderfully moral 
 method had an equally bad influence on parents 
 and children. The same can be said of milder 
 kinds of folly? coaxing children by external 
 rewards. I have seen some children coaxed 
 to take baths and others compelled by 
 threats. But in neither case was their cour- 
 age, or self-control, or strength of will in- 
 creased. Only when one is able to make the 
 bath itself attractive is that energy of will de- 
 veloped that gains a victory over the feeling 
 of fear or discomfort and produces a real ethi- 
 cal impression, viz., that virtue is its own re- 
 ward. Wherever a child is deterred from a 
 
The Education of the Child 39 
 
 bad habit or fault by corporal punishment, a 
 real ethical result is not reached. The child 
 has only learnt to fear an unpleasant conse- 
 quence, which lacks real connection with the 
 thing itself, a consequence it well knows could 
 have been absent. Such fear is as far removed 
 as heaven from the conviction that the good is 
 better than the bad. The child soon becomes 
 convinced that the disagreeable accompani- 
 ment is no necessary result of the action, that 
 by greater cleverness the punishment might 
 have been avoided. Thus the physical pun- 
 ishment increases deception not morality. In 
 the history of humanity the effect of the teach- 
 ing about hell and fear of hell illustrates the 
 sort of morality produced in children's souls 
 by corporal punishment, that inferno of child- 
 hood. Only with the greatest trouble, slowly 
 and unconsciously, is the conviction of the su- 
 periority of the good established. The good 
 comes to be seen as more productive of happi- 
 ness to the individual himself and his environ- 
 ment. So the child learns to love the good. 
 By teaching the child that punishment is a 
 consequence drawn upon oneself he learns to 
 avoid the cause of punishment. 
 
 Despite all the new talk of individuality the 
 greatest mistake in training children is still 
 
40 The Century of the Child 
 
 that of treating the " child " as an abstract 
 conception, as an inorganic or personal ma- 
 terial to be formed and transformed by the 
 hands of those who are educating him. He 
 is beaten, and it is thought that the whole ef- 
 fect of the blow stops at the moment when the 
 child is prevented from being bad. He has, 
 it is thought, a powerful reminder against fu- 
 ture bad behaviour. People no not suspect 
 that this violent interference in the physical 
 and psychical life of the child may have lifelong 
 effects. As far back as forty years ago, a 
 writer showed that corporal punishment had 
 the most powerful somatic stimulative effects. 
 The flagellation of the Middle Ages is known 
 to have had such results ; and if I could publish 
 what I have heard from adults as to the effect 
 of corporal punishment on them, or what I 
 have observed in children, this alone would be 
 decisive in doing away with such punishment 
 in its crudest form. It very deeply influences 
 the personal modesty of the child. This should 
 be preserved above everything as the main 
 factor in the development of the feeling of 
 purity. The father who punishes his daugh- 
 ter in this way deserves to see her some day 
 a " fallen woman." He injures her instinc- 
 tive feeling of the sanctity of her body, an in- 
 
The Education of the Child 41 
 
 stinct which even in the case of a small child 
 can be passionately profound. Only when 
 every infringement of sanctity (forcible ca- 
 ressing is as bad as a blow) evokes an ener- 
 getic, instinctive repulsion, is the nature of the 
 child proud and pure. Children who strike 
 back when they are punished have the most 
 promising characters of all. 
 
 Numerous are the cases in which bodily 
 punishment can occasion irremediable damage, 
 not suspected by the person who administers 
 it, though he may triumphantly declare how 
 the punishment in the specific case has helped. 
 ]\Iost adults feel free to tell how a whipping 
 has injured them in one way or another, but 
 when they take up the training of their own 
 children they depend on the effect of such 
 chastisement. 
 
 What burning bitterness and desire for 
 vengeance, what canine fawning flattery, does 
 not corporal punishment call forth. It makes 
 the lazy lazier, the obstinate more obstinate, 
 the hard, harder. It strengthens those two 
 emotions, the root of almost all evil in the 
 world, hatred and fear. And as long as blows 
 are made sj^nonymous with education, both of 
 these emotions will keep their mastery over 
 men. 
 
42 The Century of the Child 
 
 One of the most frequent occasions for re- 
 course to this punishment is obstinacy, but 
 what is called obstinacy is only fear or in- 
 capacity. The child repeats a false answer, 
 is threatened with blows, and again repeats it 
 just because he is afraid not to say the right 
 thing. He is struck and then answers rightly. 
 This is a triumph of education; refractoriness 
 is overcome. But what has happened? In- 
 creased fear has led to a strong effort of 
 thought, to a momentary increase of self-con- 
 trol. The next day the child will very likely 
 repeat the fault. Where there is real obstinacy 
 on the part of children, I know of cases when 
 corporal punishment has filled them with the 
 lust to kill, either themselves or the person 
 who strikes them. On the other hand I know 
 of others, where a mother has brought an ob- 
 stinate child to repentance and self-mastery 
 by holding him quietly and calmly on her 
 knees. 
 
 How many untrue confessions have been 
 forced by fear of blows; how much daring 
 passion for action, spirit of adventure, play 
 of fancy, and stimulus to discovery has been 
 repressed by this same fear. Even where 
 blows do not cause lying, they always hinder 
 absolute straightforwardness and the down- 
 
The Education of the Child 43 
 
 right personal courage to show oneself as one is. 
 As long as the word " blow " is used at all in 
 a home, no perfect honour v/ill be found in 
 children. So long as the home and the school 
 use this method of education, brutality will be 
 developed in the child himself at the cost of 
 humanity. The child uses on animals, on his 
 young brothers and sisters, on his comrades, 
 the methods applied to himself. He puts in 
 practice the same argument, that ** badness " 
 must be cured with blows. Only children ac- 
 customed to be treated mildly, learn to see 
 that influence can be gained without using 
 force. To see this is one of man's privileges, 
 sacrificed by man through descending to the 
 methods of the brute. Only by the child see- 
 ing his teacher alwaj^s and everywhere ab- 
 staining from the use of actual force, will he 
 come himself to despise force on all those oc- 
 casions which do not involve the defence of a 
 weaker person against physical superiority. 
 The foundation of the desire for war is to be 
 sought for less in the war games than in the 
 teachers' rod. 
 
 To defend corporal discipline, children's 
 own statements are brought in evidence, they 
 are reported as saying they knew they de- 
 served such discipline in order to be made 
 
44 The Century of the Child 
 
 good. There is no lower example of hy- 
 pocrisy in human nature than this. It is true 
 the child may be sincere in other cases in say- 
 ing that he feels that through punishment he 
 has atoned for a fault which was weighing 
 upon his conscience. But this is really the 
 foundation of a false system of ethics, the 
 kind which still continues to be preached as 
 Christian, namely; that a fault may be atoned 
 for by sufferings which are not directly con- 
 nected with the fault. The basis of the new 
 morality is just the opposite as I have already 
 shown. It teaches that no fault can be atoned 
 for, that no one can escape the results of his 
 actions in any way. 
 
 Untruthfulness belongs to the faults which 
 the teacher thinks he must most frequently 
 punish with blow^s. But there is no case in 
 which this method is more dangerous. 
 
 When the much-needed guide-book for par- 
 ents is published, the well-known story of 
 George Washington and the hatchet must ap- 
 pear in it, accompanied by the remark which 
 a clever ten-year-old child added to the anec- 
 dote: "It is no trouble telling the truth when 
 one has such a kind father." 
 
 I formerly divided untruthfulness into un- 
 willing, shameless, and imaginative lies. A 
 
The Education of the Child 45 
 
 short time ago I ran across a much better divi- 
 sion of lying; first "cold" lies, that is, fully 
 conscious untruthfulness which must be 
 punished, and " hot " lies; the expression of an 
 excited temperament or of a vigorous fancy. 
 I agree with the author of this distinction that 
 the last should not be punished but corrected, 
 though not with a pedantic rule of thumb 
 measure, based on how much it exceeds or falls 
 short of truth. It is to be cured by ridicule, a 
 dangerous method of education in general, but 
 useful when one observes that this type of un- 
 truthfulness threatens to develop into real un- 
 trust worthiness. In dealing wdth these faults 
 we are very strict towards children, so strict 
 that no lawj^er, no politician, no journalist, no 
 poet, could exercise his profession if the same 
 standard were applied to them as to children. 
 The white lie is, as a French scientist has 
 shown, partly caused by pure morbidness, 
 partly through some defect in the conception. 
 It is due to an empty space, a dead point in 
 memory, or in consciousness, that produces a 
 defective idea or gives one no idea at all of 
 what has happened. In the affairs of every- 
 day life the adults are often mistaken as to 
 their intentions or acts. They may have for- 
 gotten about their actions, and it requires a 
 
46 The Century of the Child 
 
 strong effort of memory to call them back into 
 their minds; or they suggest to themselves 
 that they have done, or not done, something. 
 In all of these cases, if they were forced to 
 give a distinct answer, they would lie. In 
 every case of this kind, where a child is con- 
 cerned, the lie is assumed to be a conscious 
 one, and when on being submitted to a strict 
 cross-examination, he hesitates, becomes con- 
 fused, and blushes, it is looked upon as a proof 
 that he knows he has been telling an untruth, 
 although as a rule there has been no instance 
 of untruthfulness, except the finally extorted 
 confession from the child that he has lied. Yet 
 in all these complicated psychological prob- 
 lems, corporal punishment is treated as a 
 solution. 
 
 The child who never hears lying at home, 
 who does not see exaggerated weight placed 
 on small, merely external things, who is not 
 made cowardly by fear, who hears conscious 
 lies always spoken of with contempt, will get 
 out of the habit of untruthfulness simply by 
 psychological means. First he will find that 
 untruthfulness causes astonishment, and a 
 repetition of it, scorn and lack of confidence. 
 But these methods should not be applied to 
 imtruthfulness caused by distress or by rich- 
 
The Education of the Child 47 
 
 ness of imagination; or to such cases as origi- 
 nate from the obscure mental ideas noted 
 above, ideas whose connection with one another 
 the child cannot make clear to himself. The 
 cold untruth on the other hand, must be pun- 
 ished; first by going over it with the child, 
 then letting him experience its effect in lack 
 of confidence, which will only be restored when 
 the child shows decided improvement in this 
 regard. It is of the greatest importance to 
 show children full and unlimited confidence, 
 even though one quietly maintains an attitude 
 of alert watchfulness; for continuous and un- 
 deserved mistrust is just as demoralising as 
 blind and easy confidence. 
 
 No one who has been beaten for lying learns 
 by it to love truth. The accuracy of this 
 principle is illustrated by adults who despise 
 corporal punishment in their childhood yet 
 continue to tell untruths by word and deed. 
 Fear may keep the child from technical 
 untruth, but fear also produces untrustworthi- 
 ness. Those who have been beaten in child- 
 hood for lying have often suffered a serious 
 injury immeasurably greater than the direct 
 lie. The truest men I ever knew lie voluntar- 
 ily and involuntarily; while others who might 
 never be caught in a lie are thoroughly false. 
 
4^ The Century of the Child 
 
 This corruption of personahty begins fre- 
 quently at the tenderest age under the 
 influence of early training. Children are 
 given untrue motives, half -true information; 
 are threatened, admonished. The child's will, 
 thought, and feeling are oppressed; against 
 this treatment dishonesty is the readiest method 
 of defence. In this way educators who make 
 truth their highest aim, make children un- 
 truthful. I watched a child who was severely 
 punished for denying som^ething he had un- 
 consciously done, and noted how under the 
 influence of this senseless punishment he de- 
 veloped extreme dissimulation. 
 
 Truthfulness requires above everything un- 
 broken determination; and many nervous little 
 liars need nourishing food and life in the open 
 air, not blows. A great artist, one of the few 
 who live wholly according to the modern prin- 
 ciples of life, said to me on one occasion: " My 
 son does not know what a lie is, nor what a 
 blow is. His step-brother, on the other hand, 
 lied when he came into our house; but lying 
 did not work in the atmosphere of calm and 
 freedom. After a year the habit disappeared 
 by itself, only because it always met with deep 
 astonishment." 
 
 This makes me, in passing, note one of the 
 
The Education of the Child 49 
 
 other many mistakes of education, viz., the 
 infinite trouble taken in trying to do away with 
 a fault which disappears by itself. People 
 take infinite pains to teach small children to 
 speak distinctly who, if left to themselves, 
 would learn it by themselves, provided they 
 were always spoken to distinctly. This same 
 principle holds good of numerous other things, 
 in children's attitude and behaviour, that can 
 be left simply to a good example and to time. 
 One's influence should be used in impressing 
 upon the child habits for which a foundation 
 must be laid at the very beginning of his 
 life. 
 
 There is another still more unfortunate mis- 
 take, the mistake of correcting and judging 
 by an external effect produced by the act, by 
 the scandal it occasions in the environment. 
 Children are struck for using oaths and im- 
 proper words the meaning of which they do not 
 understand; or if they do understand, the re- 
 sult of strictness is only that they go on keep- 
 ing silence in matters in which sincerity 
 towards those who are bringing them up is of 
 the highest importance. The very thing the 
 child is allowed to do uncorrected at home, is 
 not seldom corrected if it happens away from 
 home. iSo the child gets a false idea that it 
 
so The Century of the Child 
 
 is not the thing that deserves punishment, hut 
 its publicity. When a mother is ashamed of 
 the bad behaviour of her son she is apt to strike 
 him — ^instead of striking her own breast! 
 ^ When an adventurous feat fails he is beaten, 
 ^ but he is praised when successful. These prac- 
 tices produce demoralisation. Once in a 
 wood I saw two parents laughing while the 
 ice held on which their son was sliding; when 
 it broke suddenly they threatened to whip him. 
 It required strong self-control in order not to 
 say to this pair that it was not the son who 
 deserved punishment but themselves. 
 
 On occasions like these, parents avenge 
 their own fright on their children. I saw a 
 child become a coward because an anxious 
 mother struck him every time he fell down, 
 while the natural result inflicted on the child 
 would have been more than sufficient to in- 
 crease his carefulness. When misfortune is 
 caused by disobedience, natural alarm is, as a 
 rule, enough to prevent a repetition of it. If 
 it is not sufficient blows have no restraining 
 effect; they only embitter. The boy finds that 
 adults have forgotten their own period of 
 childhood; he withdraws himself secretly from 
 this abuse of power, provided strict treat- 
 ment does not succeed in totally depressing 
 
The Education of the Child 51 
 
 the level of the child's will and obstructing his 
 energies. 
 
 This is certainly a danger, but the most seri- 
 ous effect of corporal punishment is that it 
 has established an unethical morality as its 
 result. Until the human being has learnt to 
 see that effort, striving, development of 
 power, are their own reward, life remains an 
 unbeautiful affair. The debasing effects of 
 vanity and ambition, the small and great 
 cruelties produced by injustice, are all due to 
 the idea that failure or success sets the value 
 to deeds and actions. 
 
 A complete revolution in this crude theory 
 of value must come about before the earth can 
 become the scene of a happy but considerate 
 development of power on the part of free and 
 fine human beings. Every contest decided 
 by examinations and prizes is ultimately an 
 immoral method of training. It awakens 
 only evil passions, envy and the impression of 
 injustice on the one side, arrogance on the 
 other. After I had during the course of 
 twenty years fought these school examina- 
 tions, I read with thorough agreement a short 
 time ago, Ruskin's views on the subject. He 
 believed that all competition was a false basis 
 of stimulus, and every distribution of prizes 
 
52 The Century of the Child 
 
 a false means. He thought that the real sign 
 of talent in a boy, auspicious for his future 
 career, was his desire to work for work's sake. 
 He declared that the real aim of instruction 
 should be to show him his own proper and 
 special gifts, to strengthen them in him, not 
 to spur him on to an empty competition 
 with those who were plainly his superiors in 
 capacity. 
 
 Moreover it ought not to be forgotten that 
 success and failure involve of themselves their 
 own punishment and their own reward, the 
 one bitter, the other sweet enough to secure 
 in a natural way increased strength, care, 
 prudence, and endurance. It is completely 
 unnecessary for the educator to use, besides 
 these, some special punishments or special re- 
 wards, and so pervert the conceptions of 
 the child that failure seems to him to be a 
 wrong, success on the other hand as the 
 right. 
 
 No matter where one turns one's gaze, it is 
 notorious that the externally encouraging or 
 awe-inspiring means of education, are an ob- 
 stacle to what are the chief human character- 
 istics, courage in oneself and goodness to 
 others. 
 
 A people whose education is carried on by 
 
The Education of the Child 53 
 
 gentle means only (I mean the people of 
 Japan), have shown that manliness is not in 
 danger where children are not hardened by 
 corporal punishment. These gentle means 
 are just as effective in calling forth self -mast- 
 ery and consideration. These virtues are so 
 imprinted on children, at the tenderest age, 
 that one learns first in Japan what attraction 
 considerate kindliness bestows upon life. In 
 a country where blows are never seen, the first 
 rule of social intercourse is not to cause dis- 
 comfort to others. It is told that when a 
 foreigner in Japan took up a stone to throw 
 it at a dog, the dog did not run. No one had 
 ever thrown a stone at him. Tenderness to- 
 wards animals is the complement in that coun- 
 try of tenderness in human relationship, a 
 tenderness whose result is observed, among 
 other effects, in a relatively small number of 
 crimes against life and security. 
 
 War, hunting for pleasure, corporal disci- 
 pline, are nothing more than different expres- 
 sions of the tiger nature still alive in man. 
 When the rod is thrown away, and when, as 
 some one has said, children are no longer boxed 
 on their ears but are given magnifying glasses 
 and photographic cameras to increase their 
 capacity for life and for loving it, instead of 
 
54 The Century of the Child 
 
 learning to destroy it, real education In hu- 
 manity will begin. 
 
 For the benefit of those who are not con- 
 vinced that corporal punishment can be dis- 
 pensed with in a manly education, by so remote 
 and so distant an example as Japan, I should 
 like to mention a fact closer to us. Our Ger- 
 manic forefathers did not have this method of 
 education. It was introduced with Christianity. 
 Corporal discipline was turned into a religious 
 duty, and as late as the seventeenth century 
 there were intelligent men who flogged their 
 children once a week as a part of spiritual 
 guardianship. I once asked our great poet, 
 Victor Rydberg, and he said that he had found 
 no proof that corporal punishment was usual 
 among the Germans in heathen times. I 
 asked him whether he did not believe that the 
 fact of its absence had encouraged the ener- 
 getic individualism and manliness in the North- 
 ern peoples. He thought so, and agreed with 
 me. Finally, I might note from our own 
 time, that there are many families and schools, 
 our girls' schools for example, and also boys' 
 schools in some countries, where corporal pun- 
 ishment is never used. I know a family with 
 twelve children whose activity and capacity 
 are not damaged by bringing them under the 
 
The Education of the Child 55 
 
 rule of duty alone. Corporal punishment is 
 never used in this home ; a determined but mild 
 mother has taught the children to obey volun- 
 tarily, and has known how to train their wills 
 to self-control. 
 
 By "voluntary obedience," I do not mean 
 that the child is bound to ask endless questions 
 for reasons, and to dispute them before he 
 obeys. A good teacher never gives a com- 
 mand without there being some good reason, 
 but whether the child is convinced or not, he 
 must always obey, and if he asks " why " the 
 answer is very simple; every one, adults as 
 well as children, must obey the right and must 
 submit to what cannot be avoided. The great 
 necessity in life must be imprinted in child- 
 hood. This can be done without harsh means 
 by training the child, even previous to his 
 birth, by cultivating one's self-control, and 
 after his birth by never giving in to a child's 
 caprices. 
 
 The rule is, in a few cases, to work in op- 
 position to the action of the child, but in other 
 cases work constructively; I mean provide the 
 child with material to construct his own per- 
 sonahty and then let him do this w^ork of 
 construction. This is, in brief, the art of 
 education. The worst of all educational 
 
56 The Century of the Child 
 
 methods are threats. The only effective ad- 
 monitions are short and infrequent ones. The 
 greatest skill in the educator is to be silent 
 for the moment and then so reprove the fault, 
 indirectly, that the child is brought to correct 
 himself or make himself the object of blame. 
 This can be done by the instructor telling 
 something that causes the child to compare his 
 ov/n conduct with the hateful or admirable 
 types of behaviour about which he hears in- 
 formation. Or the educator may give an 
 opinion which the child must take to himself 
 although it is not applied directly to him. 
 
 On many occasions a forceful display of in- 
 dignation on the part of the elder person is 
 an excellent punishment, if the indignation is 
 reserved for the right moment. I know 
 children to whom nothing was more frightful 
 than their father's scorn; this was dreaded. 
 Children who are deluged with directions and 
 religious devotions, who receive an ounce of 
 morality in every cup of joy, are most certain 
 to be those who will revolt against all this. 
 Nearly every thinking person feels that the 
 deepest educational influences in his life have 
 been indirect; some good advice not given to 
 him directly; a noble deed told without any 
 direct reference. But when people come them- 
 
The Education of the Child 57 
 
 selves to train others they forget all their own 
 personal experience. 
 
 The strongest constructive factor in the 
 education of a human being is the settled, quiet 
 order of home, its peace, and its duty. Open- 
 heartedness, industry, straightforwardness at 
 home develop goodness, desire to work, and 
 simplicity in the child. Examples of artistic 
 work and books in the home, its customary life 
 on ordinary days and holidays, its occupa- 
 tions and its pleasures, should give to the emo- 
 tions and imagination of the child, periods of 
 movement and repose, a sure contour and a 
 rich colour. The pure, warm, clear atmos- 
 phere in which father, mother, and children 
 live together in freedom and confidence ; where 
 none are kept isolated from the interests of the 
 others; but each possesses full freedom for his 
 own personal interest; where none trenches on 
 the rights of others; where all are willing to 
 help one another when necessary, — in this at- 
 mosphere egoism, as well as altruism, can 
 attain their richest development, and individu- 
 ality find its just freedom. As the evolution 
 of man's soul advances to undreamed-of pos- 
 sibilities of refinement, of capacity, of pro- 
 fundity; as the spiritual life of the generation 
 becomes more manifold in its combinations 
 
58 The Century of the Child 
 
 and in its distinctions; the more time one has 
 for observing the wonderful and deep secrets 
 of existence, behind the visible, tangible, world 
 of sense, the more will each new generation of 
 children show a more refmed and a more con- 
 sistent mental life. It is impossible to attain 
 this result under the torture of the crude 
 methods in our present home and school train- 
 ing. We need new homes, new schools, new 
 marriages, new social relations, for those new 
 souls who are to feel, love, and suffer, in ways 
 infinitely numerous that we now can not 
 even name. Thus they will come to un- 
 derstand life; they will have aspirations and 
 hopes; they will believe; they will pray. The 
 conceptions of religion, love, and art, all these 
 must be revolutionised so radically, that one 
 now can only surmise what new forms will be 
 created in future generations. This trans- 
 formation can be helped by the training of the 
 present, by casting aside the withered foliage 
 which now covers the budding possibilities of 
 life. 
 
 The house must once more become a home 
 for the souls of children, not for their bodies 
 alone. For such homes to be formed, that in 
 their turn will mould children, the children 
 must be given back to the home. Instead of the 
 
The Education of the Child 59 
 
 study preparation at home for the school tak- 
 ing up, as it now does, the best part of a child's 
 life, the school must get the smaller part, the 
 home the larger part. The home will have the 
 responsibility of so using the free time as well 
 on ordinary days as on holidays, that the child- 
 ren will really become a part of the home both 
 in their work and in their pleasures. The 
 children will be taken from the school, the 
 street, the factory, and restored to the home. 
 The mother will be given back from work 
 outside, or from social life to the children. 
 Thus natural training in the spirit of Rous- 
 seau and Spencer will be realised; a training 
 for life, by life at home. 
 
 Such was the training of Old Scandanavia; 
 the direct share of the child in the work of the 
 adult, in real labours and dangers, gave to the 
 life of our Scandanavian forefathers (with 
 whom the boy began to be a man at twelve 
 years of age), unity, character, and strength. 
 Things specially made for children, the anxi- 
 ous watching over all their undertakings, sup- 
 port given to all their steps, courses of work 
 and pleasure specially prepared for children, 
 — these are the fundamental defects of our 
 present day education. An eighteen-year- 
 old girl said to me a short time ago, that she 
 
6o The Century of the Child 
 
 and other girls of the same age were so tired 
 of the system of vigilance, protection, amuse- 
 ment, and pampering at school and at home, 
 that they were determined to bring up their 
 own children in hunger, corporal discipline, 
 and drudgery. 
 
 One can understand this unfortunate re- 
 action against an artificial environment; the 
 environment in which children and young peo- 
 ple of the present grow up; an existence that 
 evokes a passionate desire for the realities of 
 life, for individual action at one's own risk and 
 responsibility, instead of being, as is now the 
 case, at home and in the school, the object of 
 another's care. 
 
 What is required, above all, for the children 
 of the present day, is to be assigned again real 
 home occupations, tasks they must do consci- 
 entiously, habits of work arranged for week 
 days and holidays without oversight, in every 
 case where the child can help himself. In- 
 stead of the modern school child having a 
 mother and servants about him to get him 
 ready for school and to help him to remember 
 things, he should have time every day be- 
 fore school to arrange his room and brush his 
 clothes, and there should be no effort to make 
 bim remember what is connected with the 
 
The Education of the Child 6i 
 
 school. The home and the school should com- 
 bine together systematically to let the child 
 suffer for the results of his own negligence. 
 
 Just the reverse of this system rules to-day. 
 Mothers learn their children's lessons, invent 
 plays for them, read their story books to them, 
 arrange their rooms after them, pick up what 
 they have let fall, put in order the things they 
 have left in confusion, and in this and in other 
 ways, by protective pampering and attention, 
 their desire for work, their endurance, the gifts 
 of invention and imagination, qualities proper 
 to the child, become weak and passive. The 
 home now is only a preparation for school. In 
 it, young people growing up, are accustomed 
 to receive services, without performing any on 
 their part. They are trained to be always re- 
 ceptive instead of giving something in return. 
 Then people are surprised at a youthful gen- 
 eration, selfish and unrestrained, pressing 
 forward shamelessly on all occasions before 
 their elders, crudely unresponsive in respect of 
 those attentions, which in earlier generations 
 were a beautiful custom among the young. 
 
 To restore this custom, all the means usu- 
 ally adopted now to protect the child from 
 physical and psychical dangers and incon- 
 veniences, will have to be removed. Throw 
 
62 The Century of the Child 
 
 the thermometer out of the window and begin 
 with a sensible course of toughening; teach the 
 child to know and to bear natural pain. 
 Corporal punishment must be done away with 
 not because it is painful but because it is pro- 
 foundly immoral and hopelessly unsuitable. 
 Repress the egoistic demands of the child when 
 he interferes with the work or rest of others; 
 never let him either by caresses or by nagging 
 usurp the rights of grown people; take care 
 that the servants do not work against what 
 the parents are trying to insist on in this and 
 in other matters. 
 
 We must begin in doing for the child in 
 certain ways a thousand times more and in 
 others a hundred thousand times less. A be- 
 ginning must be made in the tenderest age 
 to establish the child's feeling for nature. Let 
 him live year in and year out in the same coun- 
 try home; this is one of the most significant 
 and profound factors in training. It can be 
 held to even where it is now neglected. The 
 same thing holds good of making a choice 
 library, commencing with the first years of 
 life; so that the child will have, at different 
 periods of his life, suitable books for each age ; 
 not as is now often the case, get quite spoilt 
 by the constant change of summer excursions, 
 
The Education of the Child 63 
 
 by worthless children's books, and costly 
 toys. They should never have any but the 
 simplest books; the so-called classical ones. 
 They should be amply provided with means of 
 preparing their own playthings. The worst 
 feature of our system are the playthings 
 which imitate the luxury of grown people. 
 By such objects the covetous impulse of the 
 child for acquisition is increased, his own ca- 
 pacity for discovery and imagination limited, 
 or rather, it would be limited if children with 
 the sound instinct of preservation, did not 
 happily smash the perfect playthings, which 
 give them no creative opportunity, and them- 
 selves make new playthings from fir cones, 
 acorns, thorns, and fragments of potter}^ and 
 all other sorts of rubbish which can be trans- 
 formed into objects of great price by the power 
 of the imagination. 
 
 To play with children in the right way is 
 also a great art. It should never be done if 
 children do not themselves know what they are 
 going to do ; it should always be a special treat 
 for them as well as their elders. But the 
 adults must always on such occasions, leave 
 behind every kind of educational idea and go 
 completely into the child's world of thought 
 and imagination. No attempt should be 
 
64 The Century of the Child 
 
 made to teach them at these tunes anything 
 else but the old satisfactory games. The ex- 
 periences derived from these games about the 
 nature of the children, who are stimulated in 
 one direction or another by the game, must be 
 kept for later use. 
 
 Games in this way increase confidence be- 
 tween children and adults. They learn to 
 know their elders better. But to allow child- 
 ren to turn all the rooms into places to play 
 in, and to demand constantly that their elders 
 shall interest themselves in them, is one of the 
 most dangerous species of pampering common 
 to the present day. The children become ac- 
 customed to selfishness and mental depend- 
 ence. Besides this constant educational effort 
 brings with it the dulling of the child's per- 
 sonality. If children were free in their own 
 world, the nursery, but out of it had to sub- 
 mit to the strict limits imposed by the habits, 
 wills, work, and repose of parents, their re- 
 quirements and their wishes, they would de- 
 velop into a stronger and more considerate 
 race than the youth of the present day. It 
 is not so much talking about being considerate, 
 but the necessity of considering others, of 
 really helping oneself and others, that has an 
 educational value. In earlier days, children 
 
The Education of the Child 6$ 
 
 were quiet as mice in the presence of elder per- 
 sons. Instead of, as they do now, breaking 
 into a guest's conversation, they learned to 
 listen. If the conversation of adults is varied, 
 this can be called one of the best educational 
 methods for children. The ordinary life of 
 children, under the old system, was lived in 
 the nursery where they received their most im- 
 portant training from an old faithful servant 
 and from one another. From their parents 
 they received corporal punishment, sometimes 
 a caress. In comparison with this system, the 
 present way of parents and children living 
 together would be absolute progress, if par- 
 ents could but abstain from explaining, ad- 
 vising, improving, influencing every thought 
 and every expression. But all spiritual, men- 
 tal, and bodily protective rules make the child 
 now indirectly selfish, because everything 
 centres about him and therefore he is kept in 
 a constant state of irritation. The six-year- 
 old can disturb the conversation of the adult, 
 but the twelve-3^ear-old is sent to bed about 
 eight o'clock, even when he, with wide open- 
 eyes, longs for a conversation that might be 
 to him an inspiring stimulus for life. 
 
 Certainly some simple habits so far as con- 
 duct and order, nourisliment and sleep, air and 
 
66 The Century of the Child 
 
 water, clothing and bodily movement, are con- 
 cerned, can be made the foundations for the 
 child's conceptions of morality. He cannot be 
 made to learn soon enough that bodily health 
 and beauty must be regarded as high ethical 
 characteristics, and that what is injurious to 
 health and beauty must be regarded as a hate- 
 ful act. In this sphere, children must be kept 
 entirely independent of custom by allowing 
 the exception to every rule to have its valid 
 place. The present anxious solicitude that 
 children should eat when the clock strikes, that 
 they get certain food at fixed meals, that they 
 be clothed according to the degree of tempera- 
 ture, that they go to bed when the clock 
 strikes, that they be protected from every drop 
 of unboiled water and every extra piece of 
 candy, this makes them nervous, irritable 
 slaves of habit. A reasonable toughening 
 process against the inequalities, discomforts, 
 and chances of life, constitutes one of the most 
 important bases of joy of living and of 
 strength of temper. In this case too, the be- 
 haviour of the person who gives the training, 
 is the best means of teaching children to smile 
 at small contretemps^ things which would 
 throw a cloud over the sun, if one got into the 
 habit of treating them as if they were of grea^. 
 
The Education of the Child 67 
 
 importance. If the child sees the parent do- 
 ing readily an unpleasant duty, which he hon- 
 estly recognises as unpleasant; if he sees a 
 parent endure trouble or an unexpected diffi- 
 culty easily, he will be in honour bound to do 
 the like. Just as children without many words 
 learn to practice good deeds when they see 
 good deeds practised about them; learn to en- 
 joy the beauty of nature and art when they 
 see that adults enjoy them, so by living more 
 beautifully, more nobly, more moderately, we 
 speak best to children. They are just as 
 receptive to impressions of this kind as they 
 are careless of those made by force. 
 
 Since this is my alpha and omega in the art 
 of education, I repeat now what I said at the 
 beginning of this book and half way through 
 it. Try to leave the child in peace; interfere 
 directly as seldom as possible; keep away all 
 crude and impure impressions; but give all 
 your care and energy to see that personality, 
 life itself, reality in its simplicity and in its 
 nakedness, shall all be means of training the 
 child. 
 
 Make demands on the powers of children 
 and on their capacity for self-control, propor- 
 tionate to the special stage of their develop- 
 ment, neither greater nor lesser demands than 
 
68 The Century of the Child 
 
 on adults. But respect the joys of the child, 
 his tastes, work, and time, just as you would 
 those of an adult. Education will thus be- 
 come an infinitely simple and infinitely harder 
 art, than the education of the present day, with 
 its artificialised existence, its double entry 
 morality, one morality for the child, and one 
 for the adult, often strict for the child and lax 
 for the adult and vice versa. By treating the 
 child every moment as one does an adult 
 human being we free education from that 
 brutal arbitrariness, from those over-indul- 
 gent protective rules, which have transformed 
 him. Whether parents act as if children existed 
 for their benefit alone, or whether the parents 
 give up their whole lives to their children, the 
 result is alike deplorable. As a rule both 
 classes know equally little of the feelings and 
 needs of their children. The one class are 
 happy when the children are like themselves, 
 and their highest ambition is to produce in their 
 children a successful copj'- of their own 
 thoughts, opinions, and ideals. Really it 
 ought to pain them very much to see them- 
 selves so exactly copied. What life expected 
 from them and required from them was just 
 the opposite — a richer combination, a better 
 creation, a new type, not a reproduction of 
 
The Education of the Child 69 
 
 that which is already exhausted. The other 
 class strive to model their childen not 
 according to themselves but according to their 
 ideal of goodness. They show their love by 
 their willingness to extinguish their own per- 
 sonalities for their children's sake. This they 
 do by letting the children feel that everything 
 which concerns them stands in the foreground. 
 This should be so, but only indirectly. 
 
 The concerns of the whole scheme of life, 
 the ordering of the home, its habits, intercourse, 
 purposes, care for the needs of children, and 
 their sound development, must stand in the, 
 foreground. But at present, in most cases, 
 children of tender years, as well as those who 
 are older, are sacrificed to the chaotic con- 
 dition of the home. They learn self-will with- 
 out possessing real freedom; they live under a 
 discipline which is spasmodic in its application. 
 
 '\\Tien one daughter after another leaves 
 home in order to make herself independent they 
 are often driven to do it by want of freedom, 
 or by the lack of character in family life. In 
 both directions the girl sees herself forced to 
 become something different, to hold different 
 opinions, to think different thoughts, to act 
 contrarv" to the dictates of her own being. A 
 mother happy in the friendship of her own 
 
70 The Century of the Child 
 
 daughter, said not long ago that she desired 
 to erect an asylum for tormented daughters. 
 Such an asylum would be as necessary as a 
 protection against pampering parents as 
 against those who are overbearing. Both 
 alike, torture their children though in different 
 ways, by not understanding the child's right 
 to have his own point of view, his own ideal of 
 happiness, his own proper tastes and occupa- 
 tion. They do not see that children exist as 
 little for their parent's sake as parents do for 
 their children's sake. Family life would have 
 an intelligent character if each one lived fully 
 and entirely his own life and allowed the others 
 to do the same. None should tyrannise over, 
 nor should suffer tyranny from, the other. 
 Parents who give their home this character can 
 justly demand that children shall accommodate 
 themselves to the habits of the household as 
 long as they live in it. Children on their part 
 can ask that their own life of thought and feel- 
 ing shall be left in peace at home, or that they 
 be treated with the same consideration that 
 would be given to a stranger. When the par- 
 ents do not meet these conditions they them- 
 selves are the greater sufferers. It is very 
 easy to keep one's son from expressing his raw 
 views, very easy to tear a daughter away from 
 
The Education of the Child 71 
 
 her book and to bring her to a tea-party 
 by giving her unnecessary occupations; very 
 easy by a scornful word to repress some pow- 
 erful emotion. A thousand similar things oc- 
 cur every day in good families through the 
 whole world. But whenever we hear of young 
 people speaking of their intellectual homeless- 
 ness and sadness, we begin to understand why 
 father and mother remain behind in homes 
 from which the daughters have hastened to 
 depart; why children take their cares, joys, 
 and thoughts to strangers ; why, in a word, the 
 old and the young generation are as mutually 
 dependent as the roots and flowers of plants, 
 so often separate with mutual repulsion. 
 
 This is as true of highly cultivated fathers 
 and mothers as of simple bourgeois or peasant 
 parents. Perhaps, indeed, it may be truer of 
 the first class ; the latter torment their children 
 in a naive way, while the former are infinitely 
 wise and methodical in their stupidity. Rarely 
 is a mother of the upper class one of those 
 artists of home life who through the blitheness, 
 the goodness, and joyousness of her character, 
 makes the rhythm of everyday life a dance, and 
 holidays into festivals. Such artists are often 
 simple women who have passed no examina- 
 tions, founded no clubs, and written no books. 
 
72 The Century of the Child 
 
 The highly cultivated mothers and the socially 
 useful mothers on the other hand are not sel- 
 dom those who call forth criticism from their 
 sons. It seems almost an invariable rule that 
 mothers should make mistakes when they wish 
 to act for the welfare of their sons. " How 
 infinitely valuable," say their children, " would 
 I have found a mother who could have kept 
 quiet, who would have been patient with me, 
 who would have given me rest, keeping the 
 outer world at a distance from me, with 
 kindly soothing hands. Oh, would that I had 
 had a mother on whose breast I could have 
 laid my head, to be quiet and dream." 
 
 A distinguished woman writer is surprised 
 that all of her well-thought-out plans for her 
 children fail — those children in whom she saw 
 the material for her passion for governing, the 
 clay that she desired to mould. 
 
 The writer just cited says very justly that 
 maternal unselfishness alone can perform the 
 task of protecting a young being with wisdom 
 and kindliness, by allowing him to grow ac- 
 cording to his own laws. The unselfish 
 mother, she says, will joyfully give the best of 
 her life energy, powers of soul and spirit to 
 a growing being and then open all doors to 
 him, leaving him in the broad world to follow 
 
The Education of the Child 73 
 
 his own paths, and ask for nothing, neither 
 thanks, nor praise, nor remembrance. But 
 to most mothers may be appHed the bit- 
 ter exclamation of a son in the book just men- 
 tioned, " even a mother must know how she 
 tortures another; if she has not this capacity by 
 nature, why in the world should I recognise 
 her as my mother at all." 
 
 Certain mothers spend the whole day in 
 keeping their children's nervous system in a 
 state of irritation. They make work hard and 
 play joyless, whenever they take a part in it. 
 At the present time, too, the school gets control 
 of the child, the home loses all the means by 
 which formerly it moulded the child's soul life 
 and ennobled family life. The school, not 
 father and mother, teaches children to play, 
 the school gives them manual training, the 
 school teaches them to sing, to look at pictures, 
 to read aloud, to wander about out of doors; 
 schools, clubs, sport and other pleasures ac- 
 custom youth in the cities more and more to 
 outside life, and a daily recreation that kills 
 the true feeling for holiday. Young people, 
 often, have no other impression of home than 
 that it is a place where they meet society which 
 bores them. 
 
 Parents surrender their children to schools 
 
74 The Century of the Child 
 
 in those years in which they should influence 
 their minds. When the school gives them 
 back they do not know how to make a fresh 
 start with the children, for they themselves 
 have ceased to be young. 
 
 But getting old is no necessity; it is only a 
 bad habit. It is very interesting to observe a 
 face that is getting old. What time makes 
 out of a face shows better than anything else 
 what the man has made out of time. Most 
 men in the early period of middle age are 
 neither intellectually fat nor lean, they are 
 hardened or dried up. Naturally young peo- 
 ple look upon them with unsympathetic eyes, 
 for they feel that there is such a thing as 
 eternal youth, which a soul can win as a prize 
 for its whole work of inner development. But 
 they look in vain for this second eternal youth 
 in their elders, filled with worldly nothing- 
 nesses and things of temporary importance. 
 
 With a sigh they exclude the " old people " 
 from their future plans and they go out in 
 the world in order to choose their spiritual 
 parents. 
 
 This is tragic but just, for if there is a field 
 on which man must sow a hundred-fold in 
 order to harvest tenfold it is the souls of 
 children. 
 
The Education of the Child 75 
 
 When I began at five years of age to make 
 a rag doll, that by its weight and size really 
 gave the illusion of reality and bestowed much 
 joy on its young mother, I began to think 
 about the education of my future children. 
 Then as now my educational ideal was that the 
 children should be happy, that they should not 
 fear. Fear is the misfortune of childhood, and 
 the sufferings of the child come from the half- 
 realised opposition between his unlimited pos- 
 sibilities of happiness and the way in which 
 these possibilities are actually handled. It 
 may be said that life, at every stage, is cruel 
 in its treatment of our possibilities of happi- 
 ness. But the difference between the suffer- 
 ings of the adult from existence, and the 
 sufferings of the child caused by adults, is 
 tremendous. The child is unwilling to resign 
 himself to the sufferings imposed upon him by 
 adults and the more impatient the child is 
 against unnecessary suffering, the better; for 
 so much the more certainly will he some day 
 be driven to find means to transform for him- 
 self and for others the hard necessities of life. 
 
 A poet, Rydberg, in our country who had 
 the deepest intuition into child's nature, and 
 therefore had the deepest reverence for it, 
 wrote as follows : " Where we behold children 
 
76 The Century of the Child 
 
 we suspect there are princes, but as to the 
 kings, where are they? " Not only life's tragic 
 elements diminish and dam up its vital 
 energies. Equally destructive is a parent's 
 want of reverence for the sources of life which 
 meet them in a new being. Fathers and moth- 
 ers must bow their heads in the dust before the 
 exalted nature of the child. Until they see 
 that the word " child " is only another expres- 
 sion for the conception of majesty; until they 
 feel that it is the future which in the form of a 
 child sleeps in their arms, and history which 
 plays at their feet, they will not understand 
 that they have as little power or right to pre- 
 scribe laws for this new being as they possess 
 the power or might to lay down paths for the 
 stars. 
 
 The mother should feel the same reverence 
 for the unknown worlds in the wide-open eyes 
 of her child, that she has for the worlds which 
 like white blossoms are sprinkled over the blue 
 orb of heaven ; the father should see in his child 
 the king's son whom he must serve humbly 
 with his own best powers, and then the child 
 will come to his own ; not to the right of asking 
 others to become the plaything of his caprices 
 but to the right of living his full strong per- 
 sonal child's life along with a father and a 
 
The Education of the Child 77 
 
 mother who themselves live a personal life, a 
 life from whose sources and powers the child 
 can take the elements he needs for his own in- 
 dividual growth. Parents should never ex- 
 pect their own highest ideals to become the 
 ideals of their child. The free-thinking sons of 
 pious parents and the Christian children of 
 freethinkers have become almost proverbial. 
 
 But parents can live nobly and in entire ac- 
 cordance to their own ideals which is the same 
 thing as making children idealists. This can 
 often lead to a quite different system of 
 thought from that pursued by the parent. 
 
 As to ideals, the elders should here as else- 
 where, offer with timidity their advice and 
 their experience. Yes they should try to let 
 the young people search for it as if they were 
 seeking fruit hidden under the shadow of 
 leaves. If their counsel is rejected, they must 
 show neither surprise nor lack of self-control. 
 
 The quer}^ of a humourist, why he should do 
 anything for posterity since posterity had 
 done nothing for him, set me to thinking in my 
 early youth in the most serious way. I felt 
 that posterity had done much for its forefath- 
 ers. It had given them an infinite horizon for 
 the future beyond the bounds of their daily 
 effort. We must in the child see the new fate 
 
7^ The Century of the Child 
 
 of the human race ; we must carefully treat the 
 fine threads in the child's soul because these 
 are the threads that one day will form the 
 woof of world events. We must realise that 
 every pebble by which one breaks into the 
 glassy depths of the child's soul will extend its 
 influence through centuries and centuries in 
 ever widening circles. Through our fathers, 
 Vvithout our will and without choice, we are 
 given a destiny which controls the deepest 
 foundation of our own being. Through our 
 posterity, which we ourselves create, we can 
 in a certain measure, as free beings, determine 
 the future destiny of the human race. 
 
 By a realisation of all this in an entirely new 
 v/ay, by seeing the whole process in the light 
 of the religion of development, the twentieth 
 century will be the century of the child. This 
 will come about in two ways. Adults will 
 first come to an understanding of the child's 
 character and then the simplicity of the child's 
 character will be kept by adults. So the old 
 social order will be able to renew itself. 
 
 Psychological pedagogy has an exalted an- 
 cestry. I will not go back to those artists in 
 education called Socrates and Jesus, but I 
 commence with the modern world. In the 
 hours of its sunrise, in which we, who look 
 
The Education of the Child 79 
 
 back, think we see a futile Renaissance, then 
 as now the spring flowers came up amid 
 the decaying foliage. At this period there 
 came a demand for the remodelling of educa- 
 tion through the great figure of modern 
 times, Montaigne, that skeptic who had so 
 deep a reverence for realities. In his 
 Essays, in his Letters to the Countess of 
 Gurson, are found all of the elements for the 
 education of the future. About the great 
 German and Swiss specialists in pedagogy and 
 psychology, Comenius, Basedow, Pestalozzi, 
 Salzmann, Froebel, Herbart, I do not need 
 to speak. I will only mention that the great- 
 est men of Germany, Lessing, Herder, 
 Goethe, Kant and others, took the side of 
 natural training. In regard to England it is 
 well known that John Locke in his Thoughts 
 on Education, was a worthy predecessor of 
 Herbert Spencer, whose book on education in 
 its intellectual, moral, and physical relations, 
 was the most noteworthy book on education 
 in the last century. 
 
 It has been noted that Spencer in educa- 
 tional theory is indebted to Rousseau; and 
 that in many cases, he has only said what the 
 great German authorities, whom he certainly 
 did not know, said before him. But this does 
 
8o The Century of the Child 
 
 not diminish Spencer's merit in the least. Ab- 
 solutely new thoughts are very rare. Truths 
 which were once new must be constantly re- 
 newed by being pronounced again from the 
 depth of the ardent personal conviction of a 
 new human being. 
 
 That rational thoughts on the subject 
 of pedagogy as on other subjects, are con- 
 stantly expressed and re-expressed, shows 
 among other things that reasonable, or prac- 
 tically untried education has certain principles 
 which are as axiomatic as those of mathema- 
 tics. Every reasonable thinking man must as 
 certainly discover anew these pedagogical 
 principles, as he must discover anew the rela- 
 tion between the angles of a triangle. Spen- 
 cer's book it is true has not laid again the 
 foundation of education. It can rather be 
 called the crown of the edifice founded by 
 Montaigne, Locke, Rousseau, and the great 
 German specialists in pedagogy. What is an 
 absolutely novel factor in our times is the 
 . study of the psychology of the child, and the 
 system of education that has developed from 
 it. 
 ^ f In England, through the scientist Darwin, 
 ;/ this new study of the psychology of the child 
 ' was inaugurated. In Germany, Preyer con- 
 
The Education of the Child 8i 
 
 tributed to its extension. He has done so 
 partly by a comprehensive study of child- 
 ren's language, partly by collecting recollec- 
 tions of childhood on the part of the adult. 
 Finally he experimented directly on the child, 
 investigating his physical and psychical fa- 
 tigue and endurance, acuteness of sensation, 
 power, speed, and exactness in carrying out 
 physical and mental tasks. He has studied 
 his capacity of attention in emotions and in 
 ideas at different periods of life. He has 
 studied the speech of children, association of 
 ideas in children, etc. During the study of 
 the psychology of the child, scholars began to 
 substitute for this term the expression " gene- 
 tic psychology." For it was found that the 
 bio-genetic principle was valid for the develop- 
 ment both of the psychic and the physical life. 
 This principle means that the history of the 
 species is repeated in the history of the indi- 
 vidual; a truth substantiated in other spheres; 
 in philology for example. The psychology of 
 the child is of the same significance for gen- 
 eral psychology as embryology is for anatomy. 
 On the other hand, the description of savage 
 peoples, of peoples in a natural condition, 
 such as we find in Spencer's Descriptive So- 
 ciology or Weitz's Anthropology is extremely 
 
 6 
 
S2 The Century of the Child 
 
 instructive for a right conception of the psy- 
 chology of the child. 
 
 It is in this kind of psychological investiga- 
 tion that the greatest progress has been made 
 in this century. In the great publication, 
 Zeitschrift fur psychologies etc., there began 
 in 1894 a special department for the psycho- 
 logy of children and the psychology of educa- 
 tion. In 1898, there were as many as one 
 hundred and six essays devoted to this sub- 
 ject, and they are constantly increasing. 
 
 In the chief civilised countries this investi- 
 gation has many distinguished pioneers, such 
 as Prof. Wundt, Prof. T. H. Ribot, and 
 others. In Germany this subject has its most 
 important organ in the journal mentioned 
 above. It numbers among its collaborators 
 some of the most distinguished German phy- 
 siologists and psychologists. As related to 
 the same subject must be mentioned Wundt 's 
 Philosophisclien Studien, and partly the Vier- 
 teljahrschrift fur WissenscJiaftlichie Philoso- 
 phie. In France, there was founded in 1894, 
 the Annee Psychologique, edited by Binet and 
 Beaunis, and also the Bibliotheque de Pedago- 
 gie et de Psychologies, edited by Binet. In 
 England there are the journals. Mind and 
 Brain. 
 
The Education of the Child 83 
 
 ^ Special laboratories for experimental psy- 
 chology with psychological apparatus and 
 methods of research are found in many places. 
 In Germany the first to be founded was that 
 of Wundt in the year 1878 at Leipzig. 
 France has a laboratory for experimental 
 psychology at Paris, in the Sorbonne, whose 
 director is Binet; Italy, one in Rome. In 
 America experimental psychology is zeal- 
 ously pursued. As early as 1894, there were 
 in that country twenty-seven laboratories for 
 experimental psychology and four journals. 
 There should also be mentioned the societies 
 for child psychology. Recently one has been 
 founded in Germany; others before this time 
 have been at work in England and America. 
 
 A whole series of investigations carried out 
 in Kraepelin's laboratory in Heidelberg are 
 of the greatest value for determining wliat 
 the brain can do in the way of work and 
 impressions. 
 
 An English specialist has maintained that 
 the future, thanks to the modern school sys- 
 tem, wdU be able to get along without ori- 
 ginally creative men, because the receptive 
 activities of modern man will absorb the co- 
 operative powders of the brain to the disadvant- 
 age of the productive powers. And even if 
 

 84 The Century of the Child 
 
 this were not a universally valid statement but 
 
 ronly expressed a physiological certainty, peo- 
 ple will some day perhaps cease filing down 
 man's brain by that sandpapering process 
 called a school curriculum. 
 
 A champion of the transformation of peda- 
 gogy into a psycho-physiological science is to 
 be found in Sweden in the person of Prof. 
 Hjalmar Oehrwal who has discussed in his 
 essays native and foreign discoveries in the 
 field of psychology. One of his conclusions 
 is that the so-called technical exercises, gym- 
 nastics, manual training, sloyd, and the like, 
 are not, as they are erroneously called, a relax- 
 ation from mental overstrain by change in 
 work, but simply a new form of brain fatigue. 
 All work, he finds, done under conditions of 
 fatigue is uneconomic whether one regards the 
 quantity produced or its value as an exercise. 
 Rest should be nothing more than rest, — free- 
 dom to do only what one wants to, or to do 
 nothing at all. As to fear, he proves, follow- 
 ing Binet's investigation in this subject, how 
 corporal discipline, threats, and ridicule lead 
 to cowardice; how all of these methods are to 
 be rejected because they are depressing and 
 tend to a diminution of energy. He shows, 
 moreover, how fear can be overcome progres- 
 
The Education of the Child 85 
 
 sively, by strengthening the nervous system 
 and in that way strengthening the character. 
 This result comes about partly when all un- 
 necessary terrorising is avoided, partly when 
 children are accustomed to bear calmly and 
 quietly the inevitable unpleasantnesses of 
 danger. 
 
 Prof. Axel Key's investigations on school 
 children have won international recognition. 
 In Sweden they have supplied the most sig- 
 nificant material up to the present time for 
 determining the influence of studies on physi- 
 cal development and the results of intellectual 
 overstrain. 
 
 It is to be hoped that w^hen through em- 
 pirical investigation we begin to get acquainted 
 vrith the real nature of children, the school and 
 the home will be freed from absurd notions 
 about the character and needs of the child, 
 those absurd notions which now cause painful 
 cases of physical and psychical maltreatment, 
 still called by conscientious and thinking hu- 
 man beings in schools and in homes, education. 
 
By ELLEN KEY 
 
 Love and Marriage 
 
 Cr. 8° 
 
 *' One of the profoundest and most important pronouncements of 
 the woman's movement that has yet found expression. . . . Intensely 
 modern in her attitude. Miss Key has found a place for all the 
 conflicting philosophies of the day, has taken what is good from each, 
 has affected the compromise, which is always the road to advance- 
 ment, between individualism and socialism, realism and idealism, 
 morality and the new thought. She is more than a metaphysical 
 philosopher. She is a seer, a prophet. She brings to her aid 
 psychology, history, science, and then something more — inspiration 
 and hope." — Boston Transcript. 
 
 The Woman Movement 
 
 Translated by Mamah Bouton Borthwick, A.M. 
 With an Introduction by Havelock Ellis 
 
 12° 
 
 This is not a history of the woman's movement, but a statement 
 of what Ellen Key considers to be the new phase it is now entering 
 on, a phase in which the claim to exert the rights and functions of 
 men is less important than the claims of woman's rights as the 
 mother and educator of the coming generation. 
 
 Rahel Vamhagen 
 
 A Portrait 
 
 Translated by Arthur E. Chater 
 With an Introduction by Havelock Ellis 
 
 12°. With Portraits 
 
 A biography from original sources of one who has been described 
 as among the first and greatest of modern women. The book is a 
 portrait sketch of Rahel Vamhagen, and her characteristics, as " a 
 prophecy of the woman of the future," are illustrated by copious 
 extracts from her correspondence. 
 
 G. P. Putnam*s Sons 
 
 New York London 
 
By ELLEN KEY 
 
 The Century of the Child 
 
 CONTENTS: The Right of the Child to Choose His 
 Parents, The Unborn Race and Woman's Work, Education, 
 HomelessTjess, Soul Murder in the Schools, The School of 
 the Future, Religious Instruction, Child Labor and the 
 Crimes of Children. This book has gone through more 
 than twenty German Editions and has been published in 
 several European countries. 
 
 ••A powerful book."— 2\r. Y. Times, 
 
 "A profound and analytical discussion by t great Scandinavian 
 teacher, o^ the reasons why modem education does not better 
 educate." — N. Y. Christian Herald, 
 
 The Education of the Child 
 
 Reprinted from the Authorized American Edition of 
 The Century of the Child, With Introductory Note by 
 EDWARD BOK- 
 
 "Nothing finer on the wise education of the child has ever been 
 brought into print. To me this chapter is a perfect classic; it points 
 the way straight for e^ery parent, and it should find a place in every 
 home in America where there is a child." — ^EDWARD BOK, Editor 
 of the Ladies' Home Journal. 
 
 "This book, by one of the most thoughtful students of child life 
 among current writers, is one that will prove invaluable to parents 
 who desire to develop in their children that strength of character, 
 self-control and personality that alone makes for a well-rounded nse* 
 fol and happy \iie,**-— Baltimore Sun. 
 
 G. P. Putnam's Sons 
 
 New York Ionian 
 
The 
 
 Book of the Stars 
 for Young People 
 
 By William Tyler Olcott 
 
 Mr. Olcott, whose Field Book of the Stars has 
 long been an accepted authority and a con- 
 venient handbook, here presents a much needed 
 volume for beginners in the fascinating study 
 of the stars. In an easy conversational style 
 which older children will readily understand, 
 he explains the positions of the various constel- 
 lations and tells the quaint legends and stories 
 which from time immemorial have characterized 
 the stars and their constellations. 
 
 Only what can be observed with the naked eye 
 or with an opera glass has been included. In this 
 Mr. Olcott has followed the general plan of his 
 Field Book. The simplicity and accuracy of its 
 manner will recommend the book not only to 
 young people themselves, but also to parents who 
 have wished a guide to assist them in teaching 
 clearly to their children the elementary facts 
 about the stars and star lore. 
 
 G. P. Putnam's Sons 
 
 New York London 
 
The 
 
 Book of Wild Flowers 
 for Young People 
 
 By f. Schuyler Mathews 
 
 Mr. Mathews is a sympathetic natural- 
 ist himself, and his children's nature books, 
 even though completely accurate, are 
 written so simply that they cannot fail to 
 stimulate a youngster's ever-present curi- 
 osity about the out-of-doors. The color 
 illustrations are not only beautiful but 
 authentic, and admirably calculated to 
 instil a love of flowers in many a child's 
 impressionable mind. 
 
 G. P. Putnam's Sons 
 
 New York London 
 
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