from the very beginning, as if they had undergone the subduing influence of a lifetime.  We are quite sure that children begin with loving others quite as intensely as they love themselves,—­forgetting themselves in their love of others,—­if they only have as fair a chance of being benevolent and self-sacrificing as of being selfish.  Sympathy is as much a natural instinct as self-love, and no more or less innocent, in a moral point of view.  Either principle alone makes an ugly and depraved form of natural character.  Balanced, they give the element of happiness, and the conditions of spiritual goodness and truth,—­making children fit temples for the Holy Ghost to dwell in.

A Kindergarten, then, is children in society,—­a commonwealth or republic of children,—­whose laws are all part and parcel of the Higher Law alone.  It may be contrasted, in every particular, with the old-fashioned school, which is an absolute monarchy, where the children are subjected to a lower expediency, having for its prime end quietness, or such order as has “reigned in Warsaw” since 1831.

But let us not be misunderstood.  We are not of those who think that children, in any condition whatever, will inevitably develop into beauty and goodness.  Human nature tends to revolve in a vicious circle, around the individuality; and children must have over them, in the person of a wise and careful teacher, a power which shall deal with them as God deals with the mature, presenting the claims of sympathy and truth whenever they presumptuously or unconsciously fall into selfishness.  We have the best conditions of moral culture in a company large enough for the exacting disposition of the solitary child to be balanced by the claims made by others on the common stock of enjoyment,—­there being a reasonable oversight of older persons, wide-awake to anticipate, prevent, and adjust the rival pretensions which must always arise where there are finite beings with infinite desires, while Reason, whose proper object is God, is yet undeveloped.

Let the teacher always take for granted that the law of love is quick within, whatever are appearances, and the better self will generally respond.  In proportion as the child is young and unsophisticated, will be the certainty of the response to a teacher of simple faith: 

  “There are who ask not if thine eye
  Be on them,—­who, in love and truth,
  Where no misgiving is, rely
  Upon the genial sense of youth.

“And blest are they who in the main This faith even now do entertain, Live in the spirit of this creed, Yet find another strength, according to their need.”

Such are the natural Kindergartners, who prevent disorder by employing and entertaining children, so that they are kept in an accommodating and loving mood by never being thrown on self-defence,—­and when selfishness is aroused, who check it by an appeal to sympathy, or Conscience, which is the presentiment of reason, a fore-feeling of moral order, for whose culture material order is indispensable.