not a rule or a prescription.
Beyond a certain point the child _shall_ not pull the cat's tail, _or_
steal the sugar, _or_ spoil the furniture, _or_ tell lies. But I'm
afraid you can't fix this certain soul's humor. And so it must. If at
a sudden point you fly into a temper and thoroughly beat the boy for
hardly touching the cat--well, that's life. All you've got to say to
him is: "There, that'll serve you for all the times you _have_ pulled
her tail and hurt her." And he will feel outraged, and so will you.
But what does it matter? Children have an infinite understanding of
the soul's passionate variabilities, and forgive even a real
injustice, if it was _spontaneous_ and not intentional. They know we
aren't perfect. What they don't forgive us is if we pretend we are: or
if we _bully_.

CHAPTER V

THE FIVE SENSES

Science is wretched in its treatment of the human body as a sort of
complex mechanism made up of numerous little machines working
automatically in a rather unsatisfactory relation to one another. The
body is the total machine; the various organs are the included
machines; and the whole thing, given a start at birth, or at
conception, trundles on by itself. The only god in the machine, the
human will or intelligence, is absolutely at the mercy of the machine.

Such is the orthodox view. Soul, when it is allowed an existence at
all, sits somewhat vaguely within the machine, never defined. If
anything goes wrong with the machine, why, the soul is forgotten
instantly. We summon the arch-mechanic of our day, the medicine-man.
And a marvelous earnest fraud he is, doing his best. He is really
wonderful as a mechanic of the human system. But the life within us
fails more and more, while we marvelously tinker at the engines.
Doctors are not to blame.

It is obvious that, even considering the human body as a very delicate
and complex machine, you cannot keep such a machine running for one
day without most exact central control. Still more is it impossible to
consider the automatic evolution of such a machine. When did any
machine, even a single spinning-wheel, automatically evolve itself?
There was a god in the machine before the machine existed.

So there we are with the human body. There must have been, and must be
a central god in the machine of each animate corpus. The little soul
of the beetle makes the beetle toddle. The little soul of the _homo
sapiens_ sets him on his two feet. Don't ask me to