Графични страници
PDF файл
ePub

family estate unencumbered and in good condition to his successor; and thus the parental motive tells in favour of the course of conduct which is for the good of the community. There is a similar motive in making provision for a family, and this leads to the diffusion of the habit of diminishing personal expenditure and providing for future production which is essential for the material prosperity of the community.

The public are awakening more and more to the importance of securing as far as possible that the coming generation shall be healthy and well nourished, not only for the supply of soldiers in time of war, but for the sake of providing efficient and effective labour in time of peace. There are Ministers of Education and of Health, whose business it is to see that these aims shall be steadily kept in view, and to devise the means by which they may be best accomplished. Sanitary science and child-study are being constantly pursued, and the results as formulated in maxims are being brought to bear on the rising generation by different departments of State. But these maxims have to be formulated with reference to the average child in ordinary circumstances; the parent has to deal, not with the child in the abstract, but with the child as a succession of concrete problems which require to be differently solved in each case. It is on this account that home

training has much to be said for it, as compared with even the best-managed institutions; the elements of personal relationship and personal influence are not to be lightly discarded. The work of the State for the next generation can be done in the ordinary home by the average parent in a fashion on which the best-equipped institutions do not improve, as they are so far removed from the actualities of life.

There are differences of temperament in parents which are likely to lead to one exaggeration or another in the training of a child. There are sentimentalists and there are martinets. Sentimentalists try to make the child happy from day to day, and save it from all that is disagreeable; but this will afford a poor preparation for a strenuous life, and is apt to encourage the child in self-indulgence. And though Solomon was an enthusiast for discipline, and feared that the sparing of the rod would be a spoiling of the child, there is need that parents should be wise in their exercise of discipline, as there is a danger lest they should provoke their children to wrath, and so they should be discouraged. No maxim can be laid down as to the proportion in which indulgences should be admitted or strictness enforced: there is a danger in alternating between the one and the other, and thus giving an giving an appearance of arbitrariness, which is fatal to respect and the exercise of authority.

In such uncertainty and ignorance it may be a satisfaction to the parent not to trust to his own feeling or his own sense of right, but to look on himself as a trustee whose business it is to carry out the purpose of God as he has insight to discern it. Neither accumulated experience nor sentiment is to be trusted by itself, but it is a great thing to endeavour to lay aside self-will and self-assertion, and to try to do what is right and what is best for the child. There is much foolish sentiment about children, and many ignorant attempts at discipline, and the results of both are hurtful. We can have no security against error, but we may at least make sure that we are trying to look at the difficulties from the right point of view.

The effort to carry out the purpose of God -to render children happy, without teaching them to be self-indulgent and self-centred, to lead children to consent to that which is good, and thus to grow more and more self-disciplined -is to bring up children in such a fashion that they may do good service to God and to the community, whatever their calling may be.

This religious view of parental care not only habituates to conduct which accords with the interest of the community, but it may react on personal life by giving a rationale to the practice of self-discipline. Asceticism

often seems to be rather arbitrary, and does not seem to be justified when pursued for its own sake; it is sometimes apt to associate itself with a supercilious self-righteousness, which ostentatiously dispenses with the pleasures that appeal to men of other temperaments. But care for the training of children gives a positive aim which may be kept in view as a personal object, and which gives a reason for self-denial and self-discipline. This covers all the externals of life, and calls for self-denial in order that children may have a good start in life, and not drift with circumstances; but it is also an incentive towards living up to a high personal standard in every way. It was an ancient maxim that the innocence of childhood should be respected, and the endeavour to live up to the child's standard, and to earn the child's respect and approval, requires a constant watchfulness over speech and conduct. In so far as it is anticipatory, and the man endeavours to do nothing that he would be ashamed of in time to come, if it reached the ears of his children, there is an extraordinary safeguard against all irregularity of life. Religion is a personal thing; but it is not merely personal, and it may exercise a most wholesome influence in the circle of family life.

It is not everyone who enters the family circle, or who has intimate relations with the future of society through his children. There are many who take the unrelated life of the individual as their ideal and desire to be freed from the claims of others. It appears, too, that the family circle is not typical of social relations, but is an exceptional institution; that motives of natural affection come into play which are not operative, as a matter of fact, in the village group or in larger circles of society. The paradox has indeed been maintained that private vices are public benefits, and that it is by extravagant expenditure and indulgence in selfish luxury that the rich confer the greatest benefit upon the poor. The fallacy,' says Leslie Stephen, which lies at the bottom of this argument is sufficiently transparent, though it puzzled many able men at the time, and frequently reappears in the present day in slightly altered forms. The doctrine that consumption instead of saving is beneficial to labour has a permanent popularity.'1 The elements of time must be taken into account in order to render any comparison possible; that which brings about a great demand for labour in the immediate present

[ocr errors]

1 Leslie Stephen, English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, ii. 35.

« ПредишнаНапред »