decay; we shall have young
savants and old children. Childhood has its own methods of seeing,
thinking, and feeling. Nothing shows less sense than to try to
substitute our own methods for these. I would rather require a child
ten years old to be five feet tall than to be judicious. Indeed, what
use would he have at that age for the power to reason? It is a check
upon physical strength, and the child needs none.

In attempting to persuade your pupils to obedience you add to this
alleged persuasion force and threats, or worse still, flattery and
promises. Bought over in this way by interest, or constrained by
force, they pretend to be convinced by reason. They see plainly that
as soon as you discover obedience or disobedience in their conduct, the
former is an advantage and the latter a disadvantage to them. But you
ask of them only what is distasteful to them; it is always irksome to
carry out the wishes of another, so by stealth they carry out their
own. They are sure that if their disobedience is not known they are
doing well; but they are ready, for fear of greater evils, to
acknowledge, if found out, that they are doing wrong. As the reason
for the duty required is beyond their capacity, no one can make them
really understand it. But the fear of punishment, the hope of
forgiveness, your importunity, their difficulty in answering you,
extort from them the confession required of them. You think you have
convinced them, when you have only wearied them out or intimidated them.

What results from this? First of all that, by imposing upon them a
duty they do not feel as such, you set them against your tyranny, and
dissuade them from loving you; you teach them to be dissemblers,
deceitful, willfully untrue, for the sake of extorting rewards or of
escaping punishments. Finally, by habituating them to cover a secret
motive by an apparent motive, you give them the means of constantly
misleading you, of concealing their true character from you, and of
satisfying yourself and others with empty words when their occasion
demands. You may say that the law, although binding on the conscience,
uses constraint in dealing with grown men. I grant it; but what are
these men but children spoiled by their education? This is precisely
what ought to be prevented. With children use force, with men reason;
such is the natural order of things. The wise man requires no laws.

Well-Regulated Liberty.

Treat your pupil as