hem, as a chrysalis
slowly elaborates the butterfly within the cocoon. To impede their
activity would be to do violence to their lives. But what is the usual
method with young children? We all interrupt them without compunction
or consideration, in the manner of masters to slaves who have no human
rights. To show "consideration" to young children as to adults would
even seem ridiculous to many persons. And yet with what severity do we
enjoin children "not to interrupt" us! If the little one is doing
something, eating by himself, for instance, some adult comes and feeds
him; if he is trying to fasten an overall, some adult hastens to dress
him; every one substitutes an alien action to his, brutally, without
the smallest consideration. And yet we ourselves are very sensitive as
to our rights in our own work; it offends us if any one attempts to
supplant us; in the Bible the sentence, "And his place shall another
take" is among the threats to the lost.

What should we do if we were to become the slaves of a people
incapable of understanding our feelings, a gigantic people, very much
stronger than ourselves? When we were quietly eating our soup,
enjoying it at our leisure (and we know that enjoyment depends upon
being at liberty), suppose a giant appeared and snatching the spoon
from our hand, made us swallow it in such haste that we were almost
choked. Our protest: "For mercy's sake, slowly," would be accompanied
by an oppression of the heart; our digestion would suffer. If again,
thinking of something pleasant, we should be slowly putting on an
overcoat with all the sense of well-being and liberty we enjoy in our
own houses, and some giant should suddenly throw it upon us, and
having dressed us, should in the twinkling of an eye, carry us out to
some distance from the door, we should feel our dignity so wounded,
that all the expected pleasure of the walk would be lost. Our
nutrition does not depend solely on the soup we have swallowed, nor
our well-being upon the physical exercise of walking, but also upon
the liberty with which we do these things. We should feel offended and
rebellious, not at all out of hatred of these giants, but merely from
our recognition of the innate tendency to free functions in all that
pertains to life. It is something within us which man does not
recognize, which God alone knows, a something which manifests itself
imperceptibly to us to the end that we may complete it. It is this
love of freed