![]() ![]() He seeks them because he needs them and because it feels good to have them it is more like consciousness than benevolence. ![]() At first his affection for his nurse and his governess is mere habit. For in his present state of weakness he is aware of people only through the help and attention he receives from them. The child's first sentiment is to love himself, and the second, which derives from the first, is to love those around him. For if the value of life increases until the child reaches an age when he can be useful, is it not crazy to spare some suffering in infancy only to multiply his pain when he reaches the age of reason? ![]() It is therefore above all of the future that we must think in watching over his conservation it is against the ills of childhood that he must be armed even before he gets there. To his personal value must be added the cost of the care bestowed upon him to the loss of his life is joined in him the sentiment of death. Childhood has ways of seeing, thinking, and feeling peculiar to itself nothing can be more foolish than to substitute our ways for them.Ī child's worth increases with his years. If we deliberately pervert this order, we shall get premature fruits which are neither ripe nor well-flavored, and which soon decay. Nature wants children to be children before they are men. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |