This is nature’s law; why contradict it?  Do you not see that in your efforts to improve upon her handiwork you are destroying it; her cares are wasted?  To do from without what she does within is according to you to increase the danger twofold.  On the contrary, it is the way to avert it; experience shows that children delicately nurtured are more likely to die.  Provided we do not overdo it, there is less risk in using their strength than in sparing it.  Accustom them therefore to the hardships they will have to face; train them to endure extremes of temperature, climate, and condition, hunger, thirst, and weariness.  Dip them in the waters of Styx.  Before bodily habits become fixed you may teach what habits you will without any risk, but once habits are established any change is fraught with peril.  A child will bear changes which a man cannot bear, the muscles of the one are soft and flexible, they take whatever direction you give them without any effort; the muscles of the grown man are harder and they only change their accustomed mode of action when subjected to violence.  So we can make a child strong without risking his life or health, and even if there were some risk, it should not be taken into consideration.  Since human life is full of dangers, can we do better than face them at a time when they can do the least harm?

A child’s worth increases with his years.  To his personal value must be added the cost of the care bestowed upon him.  For himself there is not only loss of life, but the consciousness of death.  We must therefore think most of his future in our efforts for his preservation.  He must be protected against the ills of youth before he reaches them:  for if the value of life increases until the child reaches an age when he can be useful, what madness to spare some suffering in infancy only to multiply his pain when he reaches the age of reason.  Is that what our master teaches us!

Man is born to suffer; pain is the means of his preservation.  His childhood is happy, knowing only pain of body.  These bodily sufferings are much less cruel, much less painful, than other forms of suffering, and they rarely lead to self-destruction.  It is not the twinges of gout which make a man kill himself, it is mental suffering that leads to despair.  We pity the sufferings of childhood; we should pity ourselves; our worst sorrows are of our own making.

The new-born infant cries, his early days are spent in crying.  He is alternately petted and shaken by way of soothing him; sometimes he is threatened, sometimes beaten, to keep him quiet.  We do what he wants or we make him do what we want, we submit to his whims or subject him to our own.  There is no middle course; he must rule or obey.  Thus his earliest ideas are those of the tyrant or the slave.  He commands before he can speak, he obeys before he can act, and sometimes he is punished for faults before he is aware of them, or rather before they are committed.  Thus early are the seeds of evil passions sown in his young heart.  At a later day these are attributed to nature, and when we have taken pains to make him bad we lament his badness.