preventing others from enjoying what they have not had. There is
often much of this in the attitude of the old toward the young.

There is in human beings, as in plants and animals, a certain natural
impulse of growth, and this is just as true of mental as of physical
development. Physical development is helped by air and nourishment
and exercise, and may be hindered by the sort of treatment which made
Chinese women's feet small. In just the same way mental development
may be helped or hindered by outside influences. The outside
influences that help are those that merely provide encouragement or
mental food or opportunities for exercising mental faculties. The
influences that hinder are those that interfere with growth by
applying any kind of force, whether discipline or authority or fear or
the tyranny of public opinion or the necessity of engaging in some
totally incongenial occupation. Worst of all influences are those
that thwart or twist a man's fundamental impulse, which is what shows
itself as conscience in the moral sphere; such influences are likely
to do a man an inward danger from which he will never recover.

Those who realize the harm that can be done to others by any use of
force against them, and the worthlessness of the goods that can be
acquired by force, will be very full of respect for the liberty of
others; they will not try to bind them or fetter them; they will be
slow to judge and swift to sympathize; they will treat every human
being with a kind of tenderness, because the principle of good in him
is at once fragile and infinitely precious. They will not condemn
those who are unlike themselves; they will know and feel that
individuality brings differences and uniformity means death. They
will wish each human being to be as much a living thing and as little
a mechanical product as it is possible to be; they will cherish in