The first step in the education of the child is the most important. Every one knows that whatever form the branches of an old tree may have, that they must necessarily have been so formed from the first growth. The animal born blind, lame, defective, or deformed remains so. The training of the child’s body, mind, and soul should, therefore, be a matter of earnest thought from the very first. While it is possible for God to completely transform an inveterately bad man, yet, in the regular course of nature, it scarcely ever happens otherwise than that as a being is formed during the early stages of development, so it matures, and so it remains. Whatever seed is sown in youth, such fruit is reaped in old age. Nor is it wise to delay such training until the child is old enough to be instructed in a school, since tendencies are acquired which are difficult to overcome. It is impossible to make a tree straight that has grown crooked, or to produce an orchard from a forest everywhere surrounded with briers and thorns. This makes it necessary for parents to know something about the management of children, that they may be able to lay the foundations upon which the teachers are to build when the child enters school at the age of six years. Great care must be exercised with reference to the methods adopted with children so young. The instruction need not be apportioned to the same degree that it is apportioned in schools, since at this early age all children are not endowed with equal ability, some beginning to speak in the first year, some in the second, and some not until the third year. _Physical Training_ The first care of the mother must be for the health of her child, since bodily vigor so largely conditions normal mental development. “A certain author,” says Comenius, “advises that parents ought ‘to pray for a sound mind in a sound body,’ but they ought to labor as well as pray.” Since the early care of the child devolves largely on the mother, Comenius counsels women with reference to the hygiene of childhood. Prenatal conditions are no less important than postnatal; and prospective mothers should observe temperance in diet, avoid violent movements, control the emotions, and indulge in no excessive sleep or indolence. For good and sufficient reasons the mother should nurse her own child. “How grievous, how hurtful, how reprehensible,” he exclaims, “is the conduct of some mothers, especially among the upper classes, who, feeling it irksome to nourish their own offspring, delegate the duty to other women.” This cruel alienation of mothers from their children, he maintains, is the greatest obstacle to the early training of the child. Such conduct is clearly opposed to nature: the wolf and bear, the lion and panther, nourish their offspring with their own milk; and shall the mothers of the human race be less affectionate than the wild beasts? Moreover, it contributes to the health of the child to be nourished by its natural mother.