holly
contemptible theories have maintained, it might happen that if fathers
were relieved of care for their children and children of all paternal
suasion, human virtue would lose its two chief stays.

[Sidenote: Possibility of substitutes.]

On the other hand, an opposite danger is present in this sort of
speculation. Things now associated with the family may not depend upon
it, but might flourish equally well in a different soil. The family
being the earliest and closest society into which men enter, it assumes
the primary functions which all society can exercise. Possibly if any
other institution had been first in the field it might have had a
comparable moral influence. One of the great lessons, for example, which
society has to teach its members is that society exists. The child, like
the animal, is a colossal egoist, not from a want of sensibility, but
through his deep transcendental isolation. The mind is naturally its own
world and its solipsism needs to be broken down by social influence. The
child must learn to sympathise intelligently, to be considerate, rather
than instinctively to love and hate: his imagination must become
cognitive and dramatically just, instead of remaining, as it naturally
is, sensitively, selfishly fanciful.

To break down transcendental conceit is a function usually confided to
the family, and yet the family is not well fitted to perform it. To
mothers and nurses their darlings are always exceptional; even fathers
and brothers teach a child that he is very different from other
creatures and of infinitely greater consequence, since he lies closer to
their hearts and may expect from them all sorts of favouring services.
The whole household, in proportion as it spreads about the child a
brooding and indulgent atmosphere, nurses wilfulness and illusion. For
this reason the noblest and happiest children are those brought up, as
in Greece or England, under simple general conventions by persons
trained and hired for the purpose. The best training in character is
found in very large families or in schools, where boys educate one
another. Priceless in this regard is athletic exercise; for here the
test of ability is visible, the comparison not odious, the need of
co-operation clear, and the consciousness of power genuine and therefore
ennobling. Socratic dialectic is not a better means of learning to know
oneself. Such self-knowledge is objective and free from
self-consciousness; it sees the