our tendency to underestimate the child's intelligence it generally
fails. If a little girl has a sore throat, and the doctor comes to see
her, she knows quite well that she is the prospective patient. It is
useless for the mother to begin proceedings by trying to convince her
that this is not so--that mother has a sore throat too. Such a plan
only arouses apprehension, because the child scents danger in the
artifice.

Closely connected with the reasoning powers of the child is the
difficult question of the growth of his appreciation of right and
wrong, or, to put it in another way, the growth of obedience or
disobedience. Sooner or later the child must learn to obey; on that
there can be no two opinions. Nevertheless, I think there can be no
doubt that far more harm is done by an over-emphasis of authority than
by its neglect. If the nurse or mother is of strong character, and the
authority is exercised persistently and remorselessly, so that the
whole life of the child is dominated, much as the recruit's existence
in the barrack yard is dominated by the drill sergeant, his
independence of nature is crushed. He is certain to become a
colourless and uninteresting child; he runs a grave risk of growing
sly, broken-spirited, and a currier of favour. If a child is
ruthlessly punished for disobedience from his earliest years, there
is, it need hardly be said, a grave risk that he will learn to lie to
save his skin. I have seen a few such cases of what I may call the
remorseless exercise of authority, and the result has not been
pleasing. Fortunately, perhaps, not many women have the heart to adopt
this attitude to the waywardness of little children--a waywardness to
which their whole nature compels them by their pressing need to
cultivate tactile sensations, to experiment, and to explore.
Therefore, much more commonly, the authority is exercised