CHAPTER III

THE GOOD AND EVIL NATURE OF A CHILD 46

1.--_Well-Being of Body_: “Children of wrath”--“Little angel” theory--Good and evil tendencies--Education, handmaid of Religion--Religion becoming more magnanimous--New-born children start fair--Children, more of persons in their homes--Appetites--Senses--Undue nervous tension--Overpowering personality--Parasitic habits.

2.--_Well-Being of Mind_: Mind, not a chartered libertine--Has good and evil tendencies--Intellectual evil--Intellect enthroned in every child--A child’s vivifying imagination--Explanations unnecessary--Children sense the meaning of a passage--_Incuria_--Going over same ground--Dangers of specialisation--Of the _questionnaire_--Capacity _v._ aptness--Imagination, good and evil--Reason deified by the unlearned--Fallacious reasoning--A liberal education necessary--The beauty sense.

3.--_Intellectual Appetite_: The desires--Wrong use of--Love of knowledge sufficient stimulus.

4.--_Misdirected Affections_: The feelings--Love and justice--Moral education--Children must not be fed morally--They want food whose issue is conduct--Moral lessons worse than useless--Every child endowed with love--And justice--Rights and duties--Fine art of self-adjustment--To think fairly requires knowledge--Our thoughts are not our own--Truth, justice in word--Opinions show integrity of thought--Sound principles--All children intellectually hungry--Starve on the three R’s.

5.--_The Well-Being of the Soul_: Education and the Soul of a child--Ignorance of the child--Approaches towards God--How knowledge grows--Narration--Great thoughts of great thinkers illuminate children--Education drowned by talk--Formative influence of knowledge--Self-expression--Education, a going forth of the mind--The “unconscious mind”--Mind always conscious--But thinks in ways of which we are unconscious--Dangers of introspection--“Complexes”--Necessity for a Philosophy of Education.