Then, when you have found the principles true—­and not one minute before!—­put them rigidly into practice.  I say, not one minute before you are convinced, because it is better to hold the truth lightly in the memory as a mere interesting theory you have never had time to test, than to swallow it, half assimilated.  Truth is a real and living power, once it is applied to life; and to half-use it in doubt, and fear, is to invite indigestion and consequent disgust.  Take of these teachings that which you are sure is sound and right, and use it faithfully, and unremittingly.  Be careful that no plea of expediency, no hurry of the moment, makes you false.  If you are thus faithful in small things, one after the other, in a series fitted to your own peculiar constitution, the others will prove themselves to you; for they are coherent truths, and not one lives to itself alone, but joins hands with all the rest.  Being truths, they fit all human minds—­yours and mine, and those of our children, no matter how diverse we may be.

OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN

Isn’t it ridiculously true that, as soon as we get enlightened ourselves, we burn to enlighten the rest of the world?  We do not seem to remember our own feelings during the years of darkness, and the contentment of those who remain as we were surpasses our power of comprehension.  It is really comforting to my own sense of impatience and balked zeal to find how many of my pupils are dreadfully concerned about other people’s children.  This one’s heart burns over the little boy next door who is shamefully mismanaged and who already begins to show the ill effects of his treatment.  That one has a sister-in-law who refuses to listen to a word spoken in season.

Between my smiles—­those comfortable smiles with which we recognize our own shortcomings—­I, too, am really concerned about the sister-in-law’s children.  It is true that their mother ought to be taught better, and that, if she isn’t, those innocent lambs are going to suffer for it.  Off at this distance, without the ties of kindred to draw me too close for clear judgment, I see, though, that we have to walk very cautiously here, for fear of doing more harm than good.  Better that those benighted women never heard the name of child-study, than to hear it only to greet it with rebellion and hatred.  Yet to force any of our principles upon her attention when she is in a hostile mood—­or to force them, indeed, in any mood—­is to invite just this attitude.

Most of us, by the time that we are sufficiently grown up to undertake the study of child life, have outgrown the habit of plainly telling our friends to their faces just what we think of their faults; yet this is a safe and pleasant pastime beside that other of trying to tell them how to bring up their children.  You stand it from me, because you have invited it, and perhaps still more because you never see me, and the personal element enters only slightly and pleasantly into our relationship.  I sometimes think that students pour out their hearts to me, much as we used to talk to our girl friends in the dark.  I’m very sure I should never dare to say to their faces what I write so freely on the backs of their papers!