pleasures of life, before they can enjoy any of the
privileges of _grown up people_. Preceptors should not accustom their
pupils to what they call indulgence, but should give them the utmost
degree of present pleasure which is consistent with their future
advantage. Would it not be folly and cruelty to give present pleasure
at the expense of a much larger portion of future pain? When children
acquire experience and reason, they rejudge the conduct of those who
have educated them; and their confidence and their gratitude will be
in exact proportion to the wisdom and justice with which they have
been governed.

It was necessary to explain at large these ideas of rewards and
punishments, that we might clearly see our way in the progress of
education. After having determined, that our object is to obtain for
our pupils the greatest possible portion of felicity; after having
observed, that no happiness can be enjoyed in society without the
social virtues, without the _useful_ and the _agreeable_ qualities;
our view naturally turns to the means of forming these virtues, of
ensuring these essential qualities. On our sympathy with our fellow
creatures depend many of our social virtues; from our ambition to
excel our competitors, arise many of our most _useful_ and _agreeable_
actions. We have considered these principles of action as they depend
on each other, and as they are afterwards separated. Sympathy and
sensibility, uninformed by reason, cannot be proper guides to action.
We have endeavoured to show how sympathy may be improved into virtue.
Children should not see the deformed expression of the malevolent
passions in the countenance of those who live with them: before the
habits are formed, before sympathy has any rule to guide itself, it is
necessarily determined by example. Benevolence and affectionate
kindness from parents to children, first inspire the pleasing emotions
of love and gratitude. Sympathy is not able to contend with passion or
appetite: we should therefore avoid placing children in painful
competition with one another. We love those from whom we receive
pleasure. To make children fond of each other, we must make them the
cause of pleasure to each other; we must place them in situations
where no passion or appetite crosses their natural sympathy. We have
spoken of the difference between transient, convivial sympathy, and
that higher species of sympathy which, connected with esteem,
constitutes friendship