threatening disobedience, we are most conscious of the need of
controlling them and of the influences by which they are
controlled. In such cases, our control becomes most direct, and
at this point we are most likely to make the mistakes just spoken
of. We are even likely to take the influence of superior force
for control, forgetting that while we may lead a horse to water
we cannot make him drink; and that while we can shut a man up in
a penitentiary we cannot make him penitent. In all such cases of
immediate action upon others, we need to discriminate between
physical results and moral results. A person may be in such a
condition that forcible feeding or enforced confinement is
necessary for his own good. A child may have to be snatched with
roughness away from a fire so that he shall not be burnt. But no
improvement of disposition, no educative effect, need follow. A
harsh and commanding tone may be effectual in keeping a child
away from the fire, and the same desirable physical effect will
follow as if he had been snatched away. But there may be no more
obedience of a moral sort in one case than in the other. A man
can be prevented from breaking into other persons' houses by
shutting him up, but shutting him up may not alter his
disposition to commit burglary. When we confuse a physical with
an educative result, we always lose the chance of enlisting the
person's own participating disposition in getting the result
desired, and thereby of developing within him an intrinsic and
persisting direction in the right way.

In general, the occasion for the more conscious acts of control
should be limited to acts which are so instinctive or impulsive
that the one performing them has no means of foreseeing their
outcome. If a person cannot foresee the consequences of his act,