command, or bring home a basket in his mouth from market, the fault, if
there be any fault, is in his master, in not having taken the proper time
and pains to train him, or in not knowing how to do it. He has an instinct
leading him to attach himself to a human master, and to follow his master
wherever he goes. But he has no instinct leading him to fetch and carry, or
to draw carts for any body. If he shows no affection for man, it is his own
fault--that is, the fault of his nature. But if he does not fetch and carry
well, or go out of the room when he is ordered out, or draw steadily in a
cart, it is his teacher's fault. He has not been properly trained.

_Who is Responsible?_

So with the child. If he does not seem to know how to take his food, or
shows no disposition to run to his mother when he is hurt or when he is
frightened, we have reason to suspect something wrong, or, at least,
something abnormal, in his mental or physical constitution. But if he does
not obey his mother's commands--no matter how insubordinate or unmanageable
he may be--the fault does not, certainly, indicate any thing at all wrong
in _him_. The fault is in his training. In witnessing his disobedience,
our reflection should be, not "What a bad boy!" but "What an unfaithful or
incompetent mother!"

I have dwelt the longer on this point because it is fundamental As long as
a mother imagines, as so many mothers seem to do, that obedience on the
part of the child is, or ought to be, a matter of course, she will never
properly undertake the work of training him. But when she thoroughly
understands and feels that her children are not to be expected to submit
their will to hers, _except so far as she forms in them the habit of doing
this by special training_, the battle is half won.