a young peasant in a room; the former will have upset and smashed
everything before the latter has stirred from his place. Why is
that, unless that the one hastens to misuse a moment's licence,
while the other, always sure of freedom, does not use it rashly.
And yet the village children, often flattered or constrained, are
still very far from the state in which I would have them kept.

Let us lay it down as an incontrovertible rule that the first
impulses of nature are always right; there is no original sin in
the human heart, the how and why of the entrance of every vice can
be traced. The only natural passion is self-love or selfishness
taken in a wider sense. This selfishness is good in itself and in
relation to ourselves; and as the child has no necessary relations
to other people he is naturally indifferent to them; his self-love
only becomes good or bad by the use made of it and the relations
established by its means. Until the time is ripe for the appearance
of reason, that guide of selfishness, the main thing is that the
child shall do nothing because you are watching him or listening
to him; in a word, nothing because of other people, but only what
nature asks of him; then he will never do wrong.

I do not mean to say that he will never do any mischief, never hurt
himself, never break a costly ornament if you leave it within his
reach. He might do much damage without doing wrong, since wrong-doing
depends on the harmful intention which will never be his. If once
he meant to do harm, his whole education would be ruined; he would
be almost hopelessly bad.

Greed considers some things wrong which are not wrong in the eyes
of reason. When you leave free scope to a child's heedlessness, you