Suppose, for example, in the case above described, the mother, on leaving the children, simply gives them the command that they are not to leave the yard, but makes no promises, and then, on returning from the village with the bonbons in her bag, simply asks Susan, when she comes in, whether the children have obeyed her injunction not to leave the yard.  If Susan says yes, she nods to them, with a look of satisfaction and pleasure, and adds:  “I thought they would obey me.  I am very glad.  Now I can trust them again.”

Then, by-and-by, towards the close of the day, perhaps, and when the children suppose that the affair is forgotten, she takes an opportunity to call them to her, saying that she has something to tell them.

“You remember when I went to the village to-day, I left you in the yard and said that you must not go out of the gate, and you obeyed.  Perhaps you would have liked to go out into the road and play there, but you would not go because I had forbidden it.  I am very glad that you obeyed.  I thought of you when I was in the village, and I thought you would obey me.  I felt quite safe about you.  If you had been disobedient children, I should have felt uneasy and anxious.  But I felt safe.  When I had finished my shopping, I thought I would buy you some bonbons, and here they are.  You can go and sit down together on the carpet and divide them.  Mary can choose one, and then Jane; then Mary, and then Jane again; and so on until they are all chosen.”

Difference in the Character of the Effects.

It may, perhaps, be said by the reader that this is substantially the same as giving a direct reward for the obedience.  I admit that it is in some sense substantially the same thing, but it is not the same in form.  And this is one of those cases where the effect is modified very greatly by the form.  Where children are directly promised a reward if they do so and so, they naturally regard the transaction as of the nature of a contract or a bargain, such that when they have fulfilled the conditions on their part the reward is their due, as, indeed, it really is; and they come and demand it as such.  The tendency, then, is, to divest their minds of all sense of obligation in respect to doing right, and to make them feel that it is in some sense optional with them whether to do right and earn the reward, or not to do right and lose it.

In the case, however, last described, which seems at first view to differ only in form from the preceding one, the commendation and the bonbons would be so connected with the act of obedience as to associate very agreeable ideas with it in the children’s minds, and thus to make doing right appear attractive to them on future occasions, while, at the same time, they would not in any degree deprive the act itself of its spontaneous character, as resulting from a sense of duty on their part, or produce the impression on their minds that their remaining within the gate was of the nature of a service rendered to their mother for hire, and afterwards duly paid for.