seeing him practise and develop the virtue they aim at.  For example, it is desired above all that he should always speak the truth.  Then they must ostentatiously attach to him the reputation of truthfulness and show their pride in his possessing it.  If he falls from grace they must remember that he is still a child, and that if that reputation is lightly taken from him and he is accused of a permanent tendency towards untruthfulness, he is left hopeless and resigned to evil.  Let any mother make the experiment of presenting to her child in this way a reputation for some particular virtue.  For example, if an older child shows too great a tendency to tease and interfere with the younger children, let the mother seize the first opportunity which presents itself to applaud some action in which he has shown consideration for the others.  Let her comment more than once in the next few days on how careful and gentle the older child is becoming in his behaviour to the little ones, and in a little the suggestion will begin to act until the transformation is complete.  If, on the other hand, the mother adopts the opposite course and rebukes the child for habitual unkindness, she will be apt to find unkindness persisted in.  The criminal records of the nation show too often the truth of the saying that “Once a thief always a thief.”  Deprived of his good repute, man loses his chief protection against evil and his incentive to good.

The inability of a child—­and especially of a nervous and sensitive child—­to form conceptions of his own individuality except from ideas derived from the suggestions of others, gives us the key to our management of him and to our control of his conduct.  He has, as a rule, a marvellously quick perception of our own estimate of him, and unconsciously is influenced by it in his conception of his own personality, and in all his actions.  Parents must believe in his inherent virtue in spite of all lapses.  If they despair it cannot be hid from the child.  He knows it intuitively and despairs also.  It is then that they call him incorrigible.  If it happens that one parent becomes estranged from the child, despairs of all improvement, and sees in all his conduct the natural result of an inborn disposition to evil, while the other parent holds to the opinion that the child’s nature is good, and to the belief that all will come right, then often enough the child’s conduct shows the effect of these opposite influences.  In contact with the first he steadily deteriorates, affording proof after proof that judgment against him has been rightly pronounced.  In contact with the other, though his character and conduct are bound to suffer from such an unhappy experience, he yet shows the best side of his nature and keeps alive the conviction that he is not all bad.

The force of suggestion is still powerful to control conduct and determine character in later childhood.  The impetus given by the parents in this way is only gradually replaced by the driving power of his own self-respect—­a self-respect based upon self-analysis in the light of the greater experience he has acquired.