It is only too probable that this system (adopted only after the failure of other ways of reform) will be greatly disapproved as one of bribery.  It may, however, be curiously inquired whether all kinds of reward might not equally be burlesqued by that word, and whether any government, spiritual or civil, has ever even professed to deny rewards.  Moreover, those who would not give a child a penny for being good will not hesitate to fine him a penny for being naughty, and rewards and punishments must stand or fall together.  The more logical objection will be that goodness is ideally the normal condition, and that it should have, therefore, no explicit extraordinary result, whereas naughtiness, being abnormal, should have a visible and unusual sequel.  To this the rewarding mother may reply that it is not reasonable to take “goodness” in a little child of strong passions as the normal condition.  The natural thing for him is to give full sway to impulses that are so violent as to overbear his powers.

But, after all, the controversy returns to the point of practice.  What is the thought, or threat, or promise that will stimulate the weak will of the child, in the moment of rage and anger, to make a sufficient resistance?  If the will were naturally as well developed as the passions, the stand would be soon made and soon successful; but as it is there must needs be a bracing by the suggestion of joy or fear.  Let, then, the stimulus be of a mild and strong kind at once, and mingled with the thought of distant pleasure.  To meet the suffering of rage and frenzy by the suffering of fear is assuredly to make of the little unquiet mind a battle-place of feelings too hurtfully tragic.  The penny is mild and strong at once, with its still distant but certain joys of purchase; the promise and hope break the mood of misery, and the will takes heart to resist and conquer.

It is only in the lesser naughtiness that he is master of himself.  The lesser the evil fit the more deliberate.  So that his mother, knowing herself to be not greatly feared, once tried to mimic the father’s voice with a menacing, “What’s that noise?” The child was persistently crying and roaring on an upper floor, in contumacy against his French nurse, when the baritone and threatening question was sent pealing up the stairs.  The child was heard to pause and listen and then to say to his nurse, “Ce n’est pas Monsieur; c’est Madame,” and then, without further loss of time, to resume the interrupted clamours.

Obviously, with a little creature of six years, there are two things mainly to be done—­to keep the delicate brain from the evil of the present excitement, especially the excitement of painful feeling, and to break the habit of passion.  Now that we know how certainly the special cells of the brain which are locally affected by pain and anger become hypertrophied by so much use, and all too ready for use in the future at the slightest stimulus, we can no longer slight