in a child by means of bribery, to
promise him a reward in case he obeys you, is manifestly an absurdity.
You are destroying the very traits in his character you are presumably
endeavoring to build up. You are educating a human being who knows
good from evil, and who should be taught deliberately to choose the
right for the right's sake, who should do his duty because he knows
it to be his duty, not for any extraneous reward connected with it.
A spiritual reward will follow, nevertheless, in the feeling of
happiness engendered, and the child may early be led to find his
satisfaction in this, and in the approval of those he loves.

There are, of course, certain simple rewards which can be used with
safety, and which the child easily sees to be the natural results of
good conduct. If his treatment of the household pussy has been kind
and gentle, he may well be trusted with a pet of his own; if he puts
his toys away carefully when asked to do so, father will notice the
neat room when he comes home; if he learns his lessons well and
quickly, he will have the more time to work in the garden; and the
suggestion of these natural consequences is legitimate and of good
effect.

It is always safer, no doubt, to appeal to a love of pleasure in
children than to a fear of pain, yet bribes and extraneous rewards
inevitably breed selfishness and corruption, and lead the child
to expect conditions in life which will never be realized. Though
retribution of one kind or another follows quickly on the heels of
wrong-doing, yet virtue is commonly its own reward, and it is as well
that the child should learn this at the beginning of life. Froebel
says: "Does a simple, natural child, when acting rightly, think of
any other reward which he might receive for his action than this
consciousness, though that reward be only praise?...

"How we degrade and lower the human nature which we should raise, how
we weaken those whom we should strengthen, when we hold up to them an
inducement to act virtuously!"

Emulation is often harnessed into service to further intellectual
progress and the formation of right habits of conduct, and this
inevitably breeds serious evils.

It is well to set before the child an ideal on which he may form
himself as far as possible; but when this ideal sits across the aisle,
plays in a neighboring back yard, or, worse still, is another child
in the same family, he is hated and despised. His virtues become
obnoxious,