least harm?

A child's worth increases with his years. To his personal value
must be added the cost of the care bestowed upon him. For himself
there is not only loss of life, but the consciousness of death.
We must therefore think most of his future in our efforts for his
preservation. He must be protected against the ills of youth before
he reaches them: for if the value of life increases until the child
reaches an age when he can be useful, what madness to spare some
suffering in infancy only to multiply his pain when he reaches the
age of reason. Is that what our master teaches us!

Man is born to suffer; pain is the means of his preservation.
His childhood is happy, knowing only pain of body. These bodily
sufferings are much less cruel, much less painful, than other forms
of suffering, and they rarely lead to self-destruction. It is not
the twinges of gout which make a man kill himself, it is mental
suffering that leads to despair. We pity the sufferings of childhood;
we should pity ourselves; our worst sorrows are of our own making.

The new-born infant cries, his early days are spent in crying. He
is alternately petted and shaken by way of soothing him; sometimes
he is threatened, sometimes beaten, to keep him quiet. We do what
he wants or we make him do what we want, we submit to his whims or
subject him to our own. There is no middle course; he must rule or
obey. Thus his earliest ideas are those of the tyrant or the slave.
He commands before he can speak, he obeys before he can act, and
sometimes he is punished for faults before he is aware of them, or
rather before they are committed. Thus early are the seeds of evil
passions sown in his young heart. At a later day these are attributed