not for a moment fear
that in so doing you are putting obstacles in the way of their
happiness. It will be quite the contrary. The more costly toys a child
has, the more feasts and curious entertainments, the less is he amused.

In this there is a sure sign. Let us be temperate in our methods of
entertaining youth, and especially let us not thoughtlessly create for
them artificial needs. Food, dress, nursery, amusements--let all these
be as natural and simple as possible. With the idea of making life
pleasant for their children, some parents bring them up in habits of
gormandizing and idleness, accustom them to sensations not meant for
their age, multiply their parties and entertainments. Sorry gifts these!
In place of a free man, you are making a slave. Gorged with luxury, he
tires of it in time; and yet when for one reason or another his
pleasures fail him, he will be miserable, and you with him: and what is
worse, perhaps in some capital encounter of life, you will be ready--you
and he together--to sacrifice manly dignity, truth, and duty, from sheer
sloth.

Let us bring up our children simply, I had almost said rudely. Let us
entice them to exercise that gives them endurance--even to privations.
Let them belong to those who are better trained to fatigue and the earth
for a bed than to the comforts of the table and couches of luxury. So we
shall make men of them, independent and staunch, who may be counted on,
who will not sell themselves for pottage, and who will have withal the
faculty of being happy.

A too easy life brings with it a sort of lassitude in vital energy. One
becomes blase, disillusioned, an old young man, past being diverted. How
many young people are in this state! Upon them have been deposited, like
a sort of mold, the traces of our decrepitude, our skepticism, our
vices, and the bad habits they have contracted in our company. What
reflections upon ourselves these youths weary of life force us to make!
What announcements are graven on their brows!

These shadows say to us by contrast that happiness lies in a life true,
active, spontaneous, ungalled by the yoke of the passions, of unnatural
needs, of unhealthy stimulus; keeping intact the physical faculty of
enjoying the light of day and the air we breathe, and in the heart, the
capacity to thrill with the love of all that is generous, simple and
fine.

* * * * *

The artificial life engenders artificial thought, an