Our inquiry has led us to recognise, in the case of cruelty and of lying alike, that children are by no means morally perfect, but have tendencies which, if not counteracted or held in check by others, will develop into the vices of cruelty and lying. On the other hand it has shown us that there are other and counteracting impulses, germs of human sympathy and of respect for the binding custom of truthfulness. So far from saying that child-nature is utterly bad or beautifully perfect, we should say that it is a disorderly jumble of impulses, each pushing itself upwards in lively contest with the others, some towards what is bad, others towards what is good. It is on this motley group of tendencies that the hand of the moral cultivator has to work, selecting, arranging, organising into a beautiful whole. CHAPTER X. REBEL AND SUBJECT. Children are early confronted with our laws, and it is worth while asking how they behave in relation to these. Many persons seem to think that children generally are disobedient, lawless creatures; others, that some are obedient, others disobedient. Perhaps neither of these views is quite exact enough. (_a_) _The Struggle with Law: First Tussle with Authority._ Let us begin our study by looking a little more closely at what we call the disobedient attitude of children. That it exists nobody, surely, can well doubt. The very liveliness of young limbs and young wits brings their possessors into conflict with our sedate customs. The person who tries to wield authority over these small people is constantly introducing unpleasant checkings of vigorous impulse. A child has large requirements in the matter of movements and experiments with things, which are apt to clash with what the mother considers orderliness; when he is out of doors he exhibits a duck-like fondness for dirty water, whereas civilisation, represented by his tidy nurse, wills it that man should, at least when not in the arctic regions, be clean; he shows a perverse passion for fun and tricks when the mother thinks it the right time for serious talk, and so forth. In these ways there comes the tussle with human law. Yet surely, if we consider the matter impartially, we shall see that these collisions in the early years are perfectly normal and right. In the interests of the race, at any rate, we ought perhaps to regard him as the better child, as the child of finer promise, who will not subject himself to human law without a considerable show of resistance. The first and most impressive form of resistance to the laws of grown-ups is the use of physical force, which has already been touched on. There is something pathetically comic in the spectacle of these mites resorting to the arbitrement of force, trying their small hand at pushing, striking, and the like; and as we have seen the effort is wont soon to exhaust itself in childish despair.