moral beings or social relations; so avoid, as far as may be, the
use of words which express these ideas, lest the child at an early
age should attach wrong ideas to them, ideas which you cannot or
will not destroy when he is older. The first mistaken idea he gets
into his head is the germ of error and vice; it is the first step
that needs watching. Act in such a way that while he only notices
external objects his ideas are confined to sensations; let him only
see the physical world around him. If not, you may be sure that
either he will pay no heed to you at all, or he will form fantastic
ideas of the moral world of which you prate, ideas which you will
never efface as long as he lives.

"Reason with children" was Locke's chief maxim; it is in the height
of fashion at present, and I hardly think it is justified by its
results; those children who have been constantly reasoned with
strike me as exceedingly silly. Of all man's faculties, reason,
which is, so to speak, compounded of all the rest, is the last
and choicest growth, and it is this you would use for the child's
early training. To make a man reasonable is the coping stone of a
good education, and yet you profess to train a child through his
reason! You begin at the wrong end, you make the end the means.
If children understood reason they would not need education, but
by talking to them from their earliest age in a language they do
not understand you accustom them to be satisfied with words, to
question all that is said to them, to think themselves as wise as
their teachers; you train them to be argumentative and rebellious;
and whatever you think you gain from motives of reason, you really
gain from greediness, fear, or vanity with which you are obliged
to reinforce your reasoning.