nature respecting the human
being, at every step of his progress from the cradle to maturity, and
from maturity to the grave, I hardly know how they could contrive to
accomplish such a purpose more effectually than it is at present
accomplished. But it is proper that I should here explain a little.

All our family arrangements tend to repress amusement. Everything is
contrived to facilitate business--especially the business or employments
of adults. The child is hardly regarded as a human being,--certainly not
as a _perfect_ being. He is considered as a mere fragment; or to change
the figure, as a plant too young to be of any real service to mankind,
because too young to bear any of its appropriate fruits. Whereas, in my
opinion, both infancy and childhood, at every stage, should bring forth
their appropriate fruits. In other words, the child of the most tender
years should be regarded as a whole, and not as the mere fragment of a
being; as a perfect member of a family--occupying a full and complete,
only a more limited sphere than older members: and all the rules and
regulations and arrangements of the family should have a reference to
this point. So long as a child is reckoned to be a mere cipher in
creation, or at most, as of no more practical importance, till the
arrival of his twenty-first birth day, or some other equally arbitrary
period, than our domestic animals--that is, of just sufficient
consequence to be fed, and caressed, and fondled, and made a pet of--so
long will our arrangements be made with reference to the comfort and
happiness of adults. There may indeed be here and there a child's chair,
or a child's carriage, or newspaper, or book; but there will seldom be,
except by stealth, any free juvenile conversation at the table or the
fireside. Here the child must sit as a blank or cypher, to ruminate on
the past, or to receive half formed and passive impressions from the
present.

The arrangements of the infant school, also, seem designed for the same
purpose--to repress as much as possible the infantile desire for
amusement. Not that this was their original, nor that it now is their
legitimate intention. Their legitimate object is, or should be, not to
develope the intellect by over-working the tender brain, but to promote
cheerfulness and health and love and happiness, by well contrived
amusements, conducted as much as possible in the open air; and by
unremitting efforts to elicit and direct the affecti