But refuse to give him this higher teaching and training; go on, as so many mothers have done, blankly ignoring the whole subject, because it is so difficult to speak to one’s boys,—­as if everything worth having in this life were not difficult!—­leave him to the teaching of dirty gossip, of unclean classical allusions in his school-books, of scraps of newspaper intelligence, possibly of bad companions whom he may pick up at school or business, and be sure of it, as this side of his nature is awakened—­in his search after gratified curiosity or pleasurable sensation, in utter ignorance of what he is doing, through your fault, not through his—­he will use his imagination and his will to strengthen the animal instincts.  What ought to have been kept on a higher plane of being will be used to stimulate functions just coming into existence, and pre-eminently needing to be let alone on their own plane to mature quietly and unconsciously.  Thus dwelt upon and stimulated, these functions become in a measure disordered and a source of miserable temptation and difficulty, even if no actual wrong-doing results.  If you only knew what those struggles are, if you only knew what miserable chains are forged in utter helpless ignorance, you would not let any sense of difficulty or shrinking timidity make you refuse to give your boy the higher teaching which would have saved him.

It is told of the beautiful Countess of Dufferin, by her son and biographer, Lord Dufferin, that when the surgeons were consulting round her bedside which they should save—­the mother or the child—­she exclaimed, “Oh, never mind me; save my baby!” If you knew the facts as I know them, I am quite sure you would exclaim, in the face of any difficulties, any natural shrinking on your part, “Oh, never mind me, let me save my boys!”

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 5:  The Study of Sociology, by Herbert Spencer (International Scientific Series), p. 270, fifth edition, 1876.]

[Footnote 6:  I quote here at some length from a White Cross paper called Per Augusta ad Augusta, in which I summarized and applied Dr. Martineau’s teaching, as I do not think I can do it more clearly or in more condensed form.  By some mistake it came out, not under my name, but under the initials of the writer of True Manliness and several others of the White Cross Series.  I only mention the mistake now to safeguard my own intellectual honesty.]

[Footnote 7:  Hours of Thought, by Dr. Martineau, vol. i., p. 35, third edition.]

CHAPTER V

EARLY BOYHOOD

Having now laid down the general principles which we have to recognize in the moral training of the young, let me endeavor to make some practical suggestions how these principles may be carried out, suggestions which, as a matter of fact, I have found to be helpful to educated mothers in the great and responsible task of training the men of the future generation.