to tell an untruth.  We take no notice of these cases, considering it a matter of course that he should tell the truth.  We reserve our action altogether for the first case when, overcome by a sudden temptation, he tells a lie, and then interpose with reproaches and punishment.  Nineteen times he gives up what belongs to his little brother or sister of his own accord, perhaps after a severe internal struggle.  The twentieth time the result of the struggle goes the wrong way, and he attempts to retain by violence what does not belong to him.  We take no notice of the nineteen cases when the little fellow did right, but come and box his ears in the one case when he does wrong.

Origin of the Error.

The idea on which this mode of treatment is founded—­namely, that it is a matter of course that children should do right, so that when they do right there is nothing to be said, and that doing wrong is the abnormal condition and exceptional action which alone requires the parent to interfere—­is, to a great extent, a mistake.  Indeed, the matter of course is all the other way.  A babe will seize the plaything of another babe without the least compunction long after it is keenly alive to the injustice and wrongfulness of having its own playthings taken by any other child.  So in regard to truth.  The first impulse of all children, when they have just acquired the use of language, is to use it in such a way as to effect their object for the time being, without any sense of the sacred obligation of making the words always correspond truly with the facts.  The principles of doing justice to the rights of others to one’s own damage, and of speaking the truth when falsehood would serve the present purpose better, are principles that are developed or acquired by slow degrees, and at a later period.  I say developed or acquired—­for different classes of metaphysicians and theologians entertain different theories in respect to the way by which the ideas of right and of duty enter into the human mind.  But all will agree in this, that whatever may be the origin of the moral sense in man, it does not appear as a practical element of control for the conduct till some time after the animal appetites and passions have begun to exercise their power.  Whether we regard this sense as arising from a development within of a latent principle of the soul, or as an essential element of the inherited and native constitution of man, though remaining for a time embryonic and inert, or as a habit acquired under the influence of instruction and example, all will admit that the period of its appearance as a perceptible motive of action is so delayed, and the time required for its attaining sufficient strength to exercise any real and effectual control over the conduct extends over so many of the earlier years of life, that no very material help in governing the appetites and passions and impulses can be reasonably expected from it at a very early period.  Indeed, conscience, so far as its existence is manifested at all in childhood, seems to show itself chiefly in the form of the simple fear of detection in what there is reason to suppose will lead, if discovered, to reproaches or punishment.