Their keen young sense detects the false note in the character and
draws its own conclusions, which are generally very just."

The very best theoretical statement of a wise disciplinary method that
I know is Herbert Spencer's. "Let the history of your domestic rule
typify, in little, the history of our political rule; at the outset,
autocratic control, where control is really needful; by and by an
incipient constitutionalism, in which the liberty of the subject gains
some express recognition; successive extensions of this liberty of the
subject; gradually ending in parental abdication."

We must not expect children to be too good; not any better than we
ourselves, for example; no, nor even as good. Beware of hothouse
virtue. "Already most people recognize the detrimental results of
intellectual precocity; but there remains to be recognized the truth
that there is a moral precocity which is also detrimental. Our higher
moral faculties, like our higher intellectual ones, are comparatively
complex. By consequence, they are both comparatively late in their
evolution. And with the one as with the other, a very early activity
produced by stimulation will be at the expense of the future
character."

In these matters the child has a right to expect examples. He lives in
the senses; he can only learn through object lessons, can only
pass from the concrete example of goodness to a vision of abstract
perfection.

"O'er wayward childhood wouldst thou hold firm rule.
And sun thee in the light of happy faces?
Love, Hope and Patience, these must be thy graces,