Child.  Why is it wrong to do what is forbidden?

Master.  You will be punished for disobedience.

Child.  I will do it when no one is looking.

Master.  We shall watch you.

Child.  I will hide.

Master.  We shall ask you what you were doing.

Child.  I shall tell a lie.

Master.  You must not tell lies.

Child.  Why must not I tell lies?

Master.  Because it is wrong, etc.

That is the inevitable circle.  Go beyond it, and the child will not understand you.  What sort of use is there in such teaching?  I should greatly like to know what you would substitute for this dialogue.  It would have puzzled Locke himself.  It is no part of a child’s business to know right and wrong, to perceive the reason for a man’s duties.

Nature would have them children before they are men.  If we try to invert this order we shall produce a forced fruit immature and flavourless, fruit which will be rotten before it is ripe; we shall have young doctors and old children.  Childhood has its own ways of seeing, thinking, and feeling; nothing is more foolish than to try and substitute our ways; and I should no more expect judgment in a ten-year-old child than I should expect him to be five feet high.  Indeed, what use would reason be to him at that age?  It is the curb of strength, and the child does not need the curb.

When you try to persuade your scholars of the duty of obedience, you add to this so-called persuasion compulsion and threats, or still worse, flattery and bribes.  Attracted by selfishness or constrained by force, they pretend to be convinced by reason.  They see as soon as you do that obedience is to their advantage and disobedience to their disadvantage.  But as you only demand disagreeable things of them, and as it is always disagreeable to do another’s will, they hide themselves so that they may do as they please, persuaded that they are doing no wrong so long as they are not found out, but ready, if found out, to own themselves in the wrong for fear of worse evils.  The reason for duty is beyond their age, and there is not a man in the world who could make them really aware of it; but the fear of punishment, the hope of forgiveness, importunity, the difficulty of answering, wrings from them as many confessions as you want; and you think you have convinced them when you have only wearied or frightened them.

What does it all come to?  In the first place, by imposing on them a duty which they fail to recognise, you make them disinclined to submit to your tyranny, and you turn away their love; you teach them deceit, falsehood, and lying as a way to gain rewards or escape punishment; then by accustoming them to conceal a secret motive under the cloak of an apparent one, you yourself put into their hands the means of deceiving you, of depriving you of a knowledge of their real character, of answering you and others with empty words whenever they have the chance.  Laws, you say, though binding on conscience, exercise the same constraint over grown-up men.  That is so, but what are these men but children spoilt by education?  This is just what you should avoid.  Use force with children and reasoning with men; this is the natural order; the wise man needs no laws.