Instincts and Capacities.

It may, perhaps, be maintained that there is no real difference between instincts and capacities, and it certainly is possible that they may pass into each other by insensible gradations.  Still, practically, and in reference to our treatment of any intelligent nature which is in course of gradual development under our influence, the difference is wide.  The dog has an instinct impelling him to attach himself to and follow his master; but he has no instinct leading him to draw his master’s cart.  He requires no teaching for the one.  It comes, of course, from the connate impulses of his nature.  For the other he requires a skillful and careful training.  If we find a dog who evinces no disposition to seek the society of man, but roams off into woods and solitudes alone, he is useless, and we attribute the fault to his own wolfish nature.  But if he will not fetch and carry at command, or bring home a basket in his mouth from market, the fault, if there be any fault, is in his master, in not having taken the proper time and pains to train him, or in not knowing how to do it.  He has an instinct leading him to attach himself to a human master, and to follow his master wherever he goes.  But he has no instinct leading him to fetch and carry, or to draw carts for any body.  If he shows no affection for man, it is his own fault—­that is, the fault of his nature.  But if he does not fetch and carry well, or go out of the room when he is ordered out, or draw steadily in a cart, it is his teacher’s fault.  He has not been properly trained.

Who is Responsible?

So with the child.  If he does not seem to know how to take his food, or shows no disposition to run to his mother when he is hurt or when he is frightened, we have reason to suspect something wrong, or, at least, something abnormal, in his mental or physical constitution.  But if he does not obey his mother’s commands—­no matter how insubordinate or unmanageable he may be—­the fault does not, certainly, indicate any thing at all wrong in him.  The fault is in his training.  In witnessing his disobedience, our reflection should be, not “What a bad boy!” but “What an unfaithful or incompetent mother!”

I have dwelt the longer on this point because it is fundamental As long as a mother imagines, as so many mothers seem to do, that obedience on the part of the child is, or ought to be, a matter of course, she will never properly undertake the work of training him.  But when she thoroughly understands and feels that her children are not to be expected to submit their will to hers, except so far as she forms in them the habit of doing this by special training, the battle is half won.

Actual Instincts of Children.

The natural instinct which impels her children to come at once to her for refuge and protection in all their troubles and fears, is a great source of happiness to every mother.  This instinct shows itself in a thousand ways.  “A mother, one morning”—­I quote the anecdote from a newspaper[B] which came to hand while I was writing this chapter—­“gave her two little ones books and toys to amuse them, while she went to attend to some work in an upper room.  Half an hour passed quietly, and then a timid voice at the foot of the stairs called out: