When the child tries to seize something without speaking, he thinks he can reach the object, for he does not rightly judge its distance; when he cries and stretches out his hands he no longer misjudges the distance, he bids the object approach, or orders you to bring it to him.  In the first case bring it to him slowly; in the second do not even seem to hear his cries.  The more he cries the less you should heed him.  He must learn in good time not to give commands to men, for he is not their master, nor to things, for they cannot hear him.  Thus when the child wants something you mean to give him, it is better to carry him to it rather than to bring the thing to him.  From this he will draw a conclusion suited to his age, and there is no other way of suggesting it to him.

The Abbe Saint-Pierre calls men big children; one might also call children little men.  These statements are true, but they require explanation.  But when Hobbes calls the wicked a strong child, his statement is contradicted by facts.  All wickedness comes from weakness.  The child is only naughty because he is weak; make him strong and he will be good; if we could do everything we should never do wrong.  Of all the attributes of the Almighty, goodness is that which it would be hardest to dissociate from our conception of Him.  All nations who have acknowledged a good and an evil power, have always regarded the evil as inferior to the good; otherwise their opinion would have been absurd.  Compare this with the creed of the Savoyard clergyman later on in this book.

Reason alone teaches us to know good and evil.  Therefore conscience, which makes us love the one and hate the other, though it is independent of reason, cannot develop without it.  Before the age of reason we do good or ill without knowing it, and there is no morality in our actions, although there is sometimes in our feeling with regard to other people’s actions in relation to ourselves.  A child wants to overturn everything he sees.  He breaks and smashes everything he can reach; he seizes a bird as he seizes a stone, and strangles it without knowing what he is about.

Why so?  In the first place philosophy will account for this by inbred sin, man’s pride, love of power, selfishness, spite; perhaps it will say in addition to this that the child’s consciousness of his own weakness makes him eager to use his strength, to convince himself of it.  But watch that broken down old man reduced in the downward course of life to the weakness of a child; not only is he quiet and peaceful, he would have all about him quiet and peaceful too; the least change disturbs and troubles him, he would like to see universal calm.  How is it possible that similar feebleness and similar passions should produce such different effects in age and in infancy, if the original cause were not different?  And where can we find this difference in cause except in the bodily condition of the two.  The active principle, common to both, is growing in one case