"Not the cry," says a Chinese author, "but the rising of a wild duck,
impels the flock to follow him in upward flight."
Long ago, in a far-off country, a child was born; and when his parents
looked on him they loved him, and they resolved in their simple hearts
to make of him a strong, brave, warlike man. But the God of that
country was a hungry and an insatiable God, and he cried out for human
sacrifice; so, when his arms had been thrice heated till they glowed
red with the flame of the fire, the mother cradled her child in them,
and his life exhaled as a vapor.
A child was born in another country, and the tender eyes of his mother
saw that his limbs were misshapen and his life-blood a sickly current.
Yet her heart yearned over him, and she would have tended and trained
him and loved him better than all the rest of her strong, well-favored
brood; but when the elders of her people knew that the child was a
weakling, they decreed that he should die, and she bent her head to
the law, which was stronger than her love.
In a third land a child was to be born, and the proud father made
ready gifts, and purchased silken robes, and prepared a feast for his
friends; but, alas! when the longed-for soul entered the world it was
housed in a woman-child's body, and straightway the joy was changed
into mourning. Bitter reproaches were heaped upon the mother, for were
there not enough women already on the earth? and the fiat went forth
that the babe should straightway be delivered from the trials of
existence. So, while its hold on life was yet uncertain, the husband's
mother placed wet cloths upon its lips, and soon the faint breath
stopped, and the white soul went fluttering heavenward again.
In still another of God's fair lands a child entered the world, and he
grew toward manhood vigorous and lusty; but he heeded not his parents'
commands, and when his disobedience had been long continued, the
fathers of the tribe decreed that he should be stoned to death, for so
it was written in the sacred books. And as the youth was the absolute
property of his parents, and as by common consent they had full
liberty to deal with him as seemed good to them, they consented unto
his death, that his soul might be saved alive, and the evening sun
shone crimson on his dead body as it lay upon the sands of the desert.
* * * * *
At a later day and in a Christian country two children were born, one
hundred years apart, and the world had now so far progressed that
absolute power over the life of the offspring was denied the parents.
The one was ruled with iron rods; he was made to obey with a rigidity
of compliance and a severity of treatment in case of failure which
made obedience a slavish duty, and he was taught besides that he was a
child of Satan and an heir of hell. He found no joy in his youth, and
his miserable soul groveled in fear of the despot who dominated him,
and of the blazing eternity which he was told would be the punishment
for his sins. His will was broken; he was made weak where he might
have been strong; and he did evil because he had learned no power of
self-restraint: yet his people loved him, and they had done all these
things because they wished to purge him wholly from all uncleanness.
The parents of the other child were warned of the lamentable results
of this gloomy training, and they said one to another: "Our darling
shall be free as air; his duties shall be made to seem like pleasures,
or, better still, he shall have no duty but his pleasure. He shall
do only what he wills, that his will may grow strong, and he can but
choose the right, for he knows no evil. We will hold up before him no
bugbear of future punishment, for doubtless there is no such thing;
and if there be, it will not be meted out to such a child. He will
love and obey his parents because they have devoted themselves to his
happiness, and because they have never imposed distasteful obligations
upon him, and when he grows to manhood he will be a model of wisdom
and of goodness."
But, lo! the child of this training was as great a failure as the
child of austerity and gloom. He was capricious, lawless, willful,
disobedient, passionate; he thought of no one's pleasure save his own;
he cared for his parents only in so far as they could be of use to
him; and like a wild beast of the jungle he preyed upon the life
around him, and cared not whom he destroyed if his appetites were
satisfied.
"In every field of opinion and action, men are found swinging from
one extreme to the other of life's manifold arcs of vibration." This
perpetual movement may be the essential condition of existence, for
death is cessation of motion; or it may be a never-ending effort of
the mind to reach an ideal which discloses itself so seldom as to make
its permanent abiding-place a matter of uncertainty. Doubtless there
is somewhere a middle to the arc, and in the lapse of ages the needle
may at last find the "pole-point of central truth" and be at rest; but
as yet, in every department of labor and thought, it is vibrating, and
after tarrying a while at one extreme it swings unsatisfied back to
the other.
Nowhere are these extremes more noticeable than in the government of
children. Centuries ago, in the patriarchal period, the father of the
family seems also to have exercised the functions of a criminal judge;
but the uniting of the two sets of duties in one person does not
appear to have inspired the children with insurmountable awe, for
laws are found both in Numbers and Deuteronomy fixing the penalty of
disobedience, and of the striking of a parent by a child.
Still later, the Roman father possessed arbitrary powers of life and
death over his children; but it is probable that natural affection and
a more advanced civilization commonly made the law a dead letter.
Though the world in time grew to feel that life belonged to the being
who held it, not to those who gave it birth, still discipline has for
ages been directed more to the body than to the mind, with an idea
apparently that the pains of the flesh will save the soul. Pious
parents until within recent dates have regarded the flogging of
children as absolutely a religious obligation, and many a tender
mother has steeled her heart and strengthened her arm to give the
blows which she regarded as essential to the spiritual well-being of
her child.
The birch rod and the Bible were the Parents' Complete Guide to
domestic management in Puritan days, and no one can deny that this
treatment, though rather a heroic one, seems to have produced fine,
strong, self-denying men and women.
Governor Bradford, in 1648, speaks feelingly of the godliness of a
Puritan woman whose office it was to "sit in a convenient place in
the congregation, with a little birchen rod in her hand, and keep
the children in great awe;" and, from the frequency with which
chastisement is mentioned in early Puritan records, it seems pretty
clear that the sober little lads and lasses of the day did not suffer
from over-indulgence.
When this wholesale whipping began to fall into disuse, many
philosophers prophesied the ruin of the race, but these gloomy
predictions have scarcely found their fulfillment as yet.
There has been, however, a colossal change in discipline, from the
days when disobedience was punishable with death to the agreeable
moral suasion of the nineteenth century, as exemplified in the "fin de
siècle" nonsense rhyme:--
"There once was a hopeful young horse
Who was brought up on love, without force:
He had his own way, and they sugared his hay;
So he never was naughty, of course."
The results of this delightful method of treatment seem rather
problematic, and the modern child is universally acknowledged to be no
improvement upon his predecessors in point of respect and filial piety
at least.
A superintendent's report, written thirty years ago for one of the New
England States, regrets that, even then, home government had grown
lax. He wittily says that Young America is _rampant_, parental
influence _couchant_; and no reversal of these positions is as yet
visible in 1892.
To those who note the methods by which many children are managed, it
is a matter of wonderment that the results in character and conduct
are not very much worse than they are. Dr. Channing wisely says, "The
hope of the world lies in the fact that parents cannot make of
their children what they will." Happy accidents of association and
circumstance sometimes nullify the harm the parent has done, and the
tremendous momentum of the race-tendency carries the child over many
an obstacle which his training has set in his path.
It seems crystal-clear at the outset that you cannot govern a child if
you have never learned to govern yourself. Plato said, many centuries
ago: "The best way of training the young is to train yourself at the
same time; not to admonish them, but to be always carrying out your
own principles in practice," and all the wisdom of the ancients is in
the thought. If, then, you are a fit person to be trusted with the
government of a child, what goal do you propose to reach in your
discipline; what is your aim, your ideal?
1. The discipline should be thoroughly in harmony with child-nature in
general, and suited to the age and development of the particular child
in question.
2. It should appeal to the higher motives, and to the higher motives
alone.