reseen, an invisible providence through which the child obtains
experience, from which he may draw his own conclusions. The present
practice is to impress one's own discoveries, opinions, and principles
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 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 people, 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 inheritance of the preceding members
of the race; and this inheritance is modified by adaptation to the
environment. But the child shows also individual variations from the
type of the species, and if his own character is not to disappear during
the process of adaptation, all self-determined development of energy
must be aided in every way and only indirectly influenced by the
teacher, who should understand 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.

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 instincts, and have passed over
into flesh and blood. To change habits, he continues, means to attack
life in its very essence, for life 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 impulses supposed to have been
rooted out by discipline in the child, break forth again, wh