escape from this cruelty; this is all that they gain from the ills
they are forced to endure: they die without regretting, having
known nothing of life but its sorrows.

Men, be kind to your fellow-men; this is your first duty, kind to
every age and station, kind to all that is not foreign to humanity.
What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness? Love childhood,
indulge its sports, its pleasures, its delightful instincts. Who
has not sometimes regretted that age when laughter was ever on the
lips, and when the heart was ever at peace? Why rob these innocents
of the joys which pass so quickly, of that precious gift which they
cannot abuse? Why fill with bitterness the fleeting days of early
childhood, days which will no more return for them than for you?
Fathers, can you tell when death will call your children to him?
Do not lay up sorrow for yourselves by robbing them of the short
span which nature has allotted to them. As soon as they are aware
of the joy of life, let them rejoice in it, go that whenever God
calls them they may not die without having tasted the joy of life.

How people will cry out against me! I hear from afar the shouts of
that false wisdom which is ever dragging us onwards, counting the
present as nothing, and pursuing without a pause a future which
flies as we pursue, that false wisdom which removes us from our
place and never brings us to any other.

Now is the time, you say, to correct his evil tendencies; we must
increase suffering in childhood, when it is less keenly felt, to
lessen it in manhood. But how do you know that you can carry out
all these fine schemes; how do you know that all this fine teaching
with which you overwhelm the feeble mind of the child will not do