PROPERTY IN CHARACTER. T HE prosecution for cruelty commenced this day
week at Chester in a case resembling, if the facts reported can be established, that of Mrs. Montagu In Ireland, may or may not turn out to be justified. The conflict between the evidence of the witnesses on each side makes it a question of truthful- ness; nor does there seem to be any doubt at all that the child whose treatment by its mother was in question, was atleast well and carefully fed. The injuries it had sustained might, according to some of the medical evidence, have been accounted for by falls in the attempt to run, and this will be the real issue for the jury when the case comes on for trial. But this, at least, is clear,—that if the statements of the prosecution can be sustained, the motive of the mother was, as it was in Mrs. Montagu's case, to break early the child's will, and to make him, so far as possible, an obedient echo of her own will. And this probably is at the root of a great deal of the cruelty which is inflicted under the name of parental "discipline." Discipline, properly speaking, should, of course, aim at making children obey, and obey cheerfully, in relation to matters on which their parents or teachers really know better what is good for them than they themselves do ; in other words, it should aim wholly at the good of the child, and at the healthy development of its own character. But as a matter of fact, parents very often aim at something quite different. They feel towards the child as if it absolutely belonged to them, and as if their credit were concerned in making it evident to the world that it belongs to them, and answers to their word of command as instantaneously as a dog performs its little tricks when the word of command is given. Many parents regard their pride as deeply con- cerned in extorting from their children an exact corre. spondence to their signals, not merely when that is for the
children's benefit, but whether it be for their children's benefit or not, simply because it is gratifying to their own sense of property in the child to see it echo their minutest wishes. Just as a man takes the greatest pride in, making his horse obey the slightest signal of the rein or whip, a father and mother will often take the utmost pride in making their children obey the most arbitrary orders, only because they give them, and because they look at the commandment, "Children, obey your parents," as one given for the glori- fication of the parents, and not for the advantage of the children. Even schoolmasters and governesses sometimes fall into the same state of mind, and do not consider them- selves good disciplinarians unless they can obtain instant obedience to orders given exclusively to test the subordina- tion of their pupils, and not even devised for their good apart from discipline. Now, up to a certain point, of course, mere discipline is as essential in schools and families as it is essential in an army. It is impossible for parents and teachers to be always explaining why this or that rule is made, and if a child will never obey until it understands why it is asked to obey, it will grow up without any of that pliancy to the control of superiors which is absolutely essential to the organisation even of a household, and much more to that of a school or a State. Discipline implies ready obedience to orders of which the reason is not understood ; but it should always rest on the belief that these orders will be given for sufficient reasons, and not for the mere satisfaction of those who give them in seeing them' implicitly obeyed. The first lesson a superior,—either in a family or a school or an army or a State,—has to learn, is that there is no such thing as property in the character of a human being ; that when the individuality of a character has to be suppressed,—and of coarse the organisation of society requires that it must often be sup- pressed,—it is suppressed either for its own good or for the good of others to whom consideration is due, and that beyond the limits of these obligations, individuality, far from being a hindrance and annoyance to be got rid of as completely as possible, is a distinct gain to the universe. The wish of some parents to wield as much power over the wills and characters of their children, as they do over the motions of the horses they ride or drive, is not only a foolish but an evil wish. To get excellent instruments on which they can per- form as they would perform on a piano, always eliciting exactly the particular vibration that they desire and expect, is clearly not the true object of family life. On the con. trary, character, far from being an instrument to be per- formed upon by others, should always be a new source of life and originality, which no one should be able to govern despotically from outside, and which, even from inside, is in a great degree a mystery and a marvel to him who has most power over it. The mere notion of making character a kind of repeater, which responds by a given number of strokes to the parent's touch, is a radically absurd one. What a parent ought to wish for is, indeed, instant obedience to orders given for the child's good, and an eager readiness in the child to trust its parent; but beyond this, as much that is distinct and individual, and that has a separate significance of its own, as the child's nature can provide. If there be an utterly mean and poverty-stricken type of parental ambition, it is to have Children who shall be remarkable for nothing else than exactly corresponding to their parents' orders,—who shall be echoes of their wishes, products of their suggestion. Mr. Babbage's calculating machine was an offspring almost more interesting than such a child as that.
It is one of the most curious indications of the tendency of the is for property to become an overruling passion, that it should prove a temptation, and sometimes a very power- ful temptation, to parents to make their children mere creatures for the gratification of their own caprices. The secret of the temptation is, we suppose, a kind of petty ambition. Ambition rar a higher kind loves to see its will regnant in the world at
ge. An ambitious orator delights in the power to thrill a great assembly vvitla his own resolves and convictions. An ambitious statesman loves to see Kingdoms enforcing his wishes, and armies moving whenever he touches a spring ; and so, we hnagine, it is a sort of domestic ambition which delights to see children turned into mere executive agents for their father's or mother's volition, and multiplying, so to speak, the efficiency of that father's or mother's influence in the world. But that, surely, is a very perverted sort of parental ambition. If character means anything great at all, it means something much more than a mere sounding-board for the character of others. The highest domestic ambition should aim at eliciting from the children of a family all the more perfect qualities and characteristics which the Creator has implanted in their nature,--and this is an aim which cannot possibly be consistent with that other aim of turning them into mere obedient subordinates of a parental will. Such an ambition as that is even poorer than the ambition of a man of science who desires to find in the universe nothing new, nothing but a vast increase of the forces with the use and manipulation of which he is already familiar. For in the world of character we are in a field altogether higher than any with which the man of science deals; and what a parent may fairly look for in a child, is something infinitely fresher, and more wonderful and fuller of inexplicable beauty, than anything of which the man of science attempts to measure the meaning. To desire to exercise the privileges of ownership over the character of another, is desiring to make it some- thing infinitely less, infinitely poorer, than it was intended tci be ; because that means putting the very springs of one character in another character external to itself, which does not feel its inmost impulses, and cannot elicit from it, there- fore, its highest powers. A character in the keeping of another character is not a character at all ; or, rather, it is a distorted character, a character twisted and diverted from its, true pur- pose and significance. The passion for ownership is one which has no doubt a very legitimate place in human nature;. but there is no passion which is more easily or more often exaggerated into an engrossing and debasing influence. Even in regard to hi age it is often excessive, and in regard to living creatures it frequently becomes a tyranny of the most hideous kind. But when it is allowed to intrude on the higher region of human character, when a man allows him- self to think that he has a sort of ownership in his wife's spiritual nature, or when the parent allows himself to treat the child as if he had a right to make him exactly what he wishes him to be, this passion for ownership results in some of the most shocking of the moral perversions of which human nature admits.
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