method the child would be punished every time he exhibited fear of the dark.  By using the second method he would never be allowed to go into a dark room, a light being left burning in his bedroom, etc., until the tendency to fear the dark had passed.  In the third method the emotion of fear would be replaced by that of joy or satisfaction by making the bedtime the occasion for telling a favorite story or for being allowed to have the best-loved toy, or for being played with or cuddled.  The situation of darkness might be met in still another way.  If the child were old enough, the emotion of courage might replace that of fear by having him make believe he was a soldier or a policeman.

The method of punishment is the usual one, the one most teachers and parents use first.  It relies for its effectiveness on the general law of the nervous system that pain tends to weaken the connections with whose activity it is associated.  The method is weak in that pain is not a strong enough weapon to break the fundamental connections; it is not known how much of it is necessary to break even weaker ones; it is negative in its results—­breaking one connection but replacing it by nothing else.  The second method of inhibition is that of disuse.  It is possible to inhibit by this means, because lack of use of connections in the nervous system results in atrophy.  As a method it is valuable because it does not arouse resistance or anger.  It is weak in that as neither the delayedness nor the transitoriness of instincts is known, when to begin to keep the situation from the child, and how long to keep it away in order to provide for the dying out of the connections, are not known.  The method is negative and very unsure of results.  The method of substitution depends for its use upon the presence in the individual of opposing tendencies and of different levels of development in the same tendency.  Because of this fact a certain response to a situation may be inhibited by forming the habit of meeting the situation in another way or of replacing a lower phase of a tendency by a higher one.  This method is difficult to handle because of the need of knowledge of the original tendencies of children in general which it implies as well as the knowledge of the capacities and development of the individual child with whom the work is being done.  The amount of time and individual attention necessary adds another difficulty.  However, it is by far the best method of the three, for it is sure, is economical, using the energy that is provided by nature, is educative, and is positive.  To replace what is poor or harmful by something better is one of the greatest problems of human life—­and this is the outcome of the method of substitution.  All three methods have their place in a system of education, and certain of them are more in place at certain times than at others, but at all times if the method of substitution can be used it should be.