other sort of demonstration. The reverse of this statement is by no means
true; but it would lead us out of our present path to discuss the matter.

Assuming, however, that intuition is possible, it is evident that it
should exist in children in an extremely pure, if not in its most potent
state; and to deny it opportunity of development might fairly be called a
barbarity. It will hardly be disputed that children are an important
element in society. Without them we should lose the memory of our youth,
and all opportunity for the exercise of unselfish and disinterested
affection. Life would become arid and mechanical to a degree now scarcely
conceivable; chastity and all the human virtues would cease to exist;
marriage would be an aimless and absurd transaction; and the brotherhood
of man, even in the nominal sense that it now exists, would speedily be
abjured. Political economy and sociology neglect to make children an
element in their arguments and deductions, and no small part of their
error is attributable to that circumstance. But although children still
are born, and all the world acknowledges their paramount moral and social
value, the general tendency of what we are forced to call education at the
present day is to shorten as much as possible the period of childhood. In
America and Germany especially--but more in America than in Germany--
children are urged and stimulated to "grow up" almost before they have
been short-coated. That conceptions of order and discipline should be
early instilled into them is proper enough; but no other order and
discipline seems to be contemplated by educators than the forcing them to
stand and be stuffed full of indigestible and incongruous knowledge, than
which proceeding nothing more disorderly could be devised. It looks as if
we felt the innocence and naturalness of our children to be a rebuke to
us, and wished to do away with it in short order. There is something in
the New Testament about offending the little ones, and the preferred
alternative thereto; and really we are outraging not only the objective