_No weakening of Authority in this_.

It is very plain that softening thus the hardship for the child of any
act of obedience required of him by giving him a little time implies no
abatement of the authority of the parent, nor does it detract at all from
the implicitness of the obedience on the part of the child. The submission
to authority is as complete in doing a thing in five minutes if the order
was to do it in five minutes, as in doing it at once if the order was to do
it at once. And the mother must take great care, when thus trying to make
obedience more easy by allowing time, that it should be prompt and absolute
when the time has expired.

The idea is, that though the parent is bound fully to maintain his
authority over his children, in all its force, he is also bound to make the
exercise of it as little irksome and painful to them as possible, and to
prevent as much as possible the pressure of it from encroaching upon their
juvenile joys. He must insist inexorably on being obeyed; but he is bound
to do all in his power to make the yoke of obedience light and easily to be
borne.

_Influence on the healthful Development of the Brain_.

Indeed, besides the bearing of these views on the happiness of the
children, it is not at all improbable that the question of health may
be seriously involved in them. For, however certain we may be of the
immateriality of the soul in its essence, it is a perfectly well
established fact that all its operations and functions, as an animating
spirit in the human body, are fulfilled through the workings of material
organs in the brain; that these organs are in childhood in an exceedingly