simple problem, or a kind act,--to awake them, as it were, from their
unconscious sleep, and start them for eternity.

We may venture to assert, that no philosopher, however ingenious,
could communicate to a child the abstract idea of Right, had the
latter nothing beyond or above the understanding. He might, indeed, be
taught, like the inferior animals,--a dog, for instance,--that, if he
took certain forbidden things, he would be punished, and thus do
right through fear. Still he would desire the forbidden thing,
though belonging to another; nor could he conceive why he should not
appropriate to himself, and thus allay his appetite, what was held by
another, could he do so undetected; nor attain to any higher notion of
right than that of the strongest. But the child has something higher
than the mere power of apprehending consequences. The simplest
exposition, whether of right or wrong, even by an ignorant nurse, is
instantly responded to by something _within him_, which, thus
awakened, becomes to him a living voice ever after; and the good and
the true must thenceforth answer its call, even though succeeding
years would fain overlay them with the suffocating crowds of evil and
falsehood.

We do not say that these eternal Ideas of Beauty, Truth, and Goodness
will, strictly speaking, always act. Though indestructible, they may
be banished for a time by the perverted Will, and mockeries of the
brain, like the fume-born phantoms from the witches' caldron in
Macbeth, take their places, and assume their functions. We have
examples of this in every age, and perhaps in none more startling than
in the present. But we mean only that they cannot be _forgotten_:
nay, they are but, too often recalled with unwelcome distinctness.
Could we read the annals which must needs be scored on every