ship a fool, or a stone, or
a vegetable.[A] But to teach reverence rightly is to attach it to the
right persons and things; first, by setting over your youth masters
whom they cannot but love and respect; next, by gathering for them,
out of past history, whatever has been most worthy in human deeds and
human passion; and leading them continually to dwell upon such
instances, making this the principal element of emotional excitement
to them; and, lastly, by letting them justly feel, as far as may be,
the smallness of their own powers and knowledge, as compared with the
attainments of others.

[A] By steady preaching against it, one may quench reverence,
and bring insolence to its height; but the instinct cannot be
wholly uprooted.

97. Compassion, on the other hand, is to be taught chiefly by making
it a point of honor, collaterally with courage, and in the same rank
(as indeed the complement and evidence of courage), so that, in the
code of unwritten school law, it shall be held as shameful to have
done a cruel thing as a cowardly one. All infliction of pain on weaker
creatures is to be stigmatized as unmanly crime; and every possible
opportunity taken to exercise the youths in offices of some practical
help, and to acquaint them with the realities of the distress which,
in the joyfulness of entering into life, it is so difficult, for those
who have not seen home suffering, to conceive.

98. Reverence, then, and compassion, we are to teach primarily, and
with these, as the bond and guardian of them, truth of spirit and
word, of thought and sight. Truth, earnest and passionate, sought for
like a treasure, and kept like a crown.

This teaching of truth as a habit will be the chief work the master
has to do; and it will enter into all parts of education. First, you
must accustom the children to close accuracy of statement; this both
as a principle of honor, and as an accomplishment of language, making
them try always who shall speak truest, both as regards the fact he
has to relate or express (not concealing or exaggerating), and as
regards the precision of the words he expresses it in, thus making
truth (which, indeed, it is) the test of perfect language, and giving
the intensity of a moral purpose to the study and art of words: then
carrying this accuracy into all habits of thought and observation
also, so as always to _think_ of things as they truly are, and to see
them as they truly are, as far as in u