It is remarkable that, ever since the time of Séguin, progress in educational methods with young children has come from study of idiots and the feeble-minded, who are, in certain respects, still mentally infants. I believe the reason for the necessity of this detour was that the stupidities of mental patients were not regarded as blameworthy, or as curable by chastisement; no one thought that Dr. Arnold’s recipe of flogging would cure their “laziness”. Consequently they were treated scientifically, not angrily; if they failed to understand, no irate pedagogue stormed at them and told them they ought to be ashamed of themselves. If people could have brought themselves to take a scientific instead of a moralizing attitude towards children, they could have discovered what is now known about the way to educate them without first having to study the mentally deficient. The conception of “moral responsibility” is “responsible” for much evil. Imagine two children, one of whom has the good fortune to be in a nursery-school, while the other is left to unalleviated slum-life. Is the second child “morally responsible” if he grows up less admirable than the first? Are his parents “morally responsible” for the ignorance and carelessness which makes them unable to educate him? Are the rich “morally responsible” for the selfishness and stupidity which have been drilled into them at expensive schools, and which make them prefer their own foolish luxuries to the creation of a happy community? All are victims of circumstances; all have had characters warped in infancy and intelligence stunted at school. No good purpose is served by choosing to regard them as “morally responsible”, and holding them up to reprobation because they have been less fortunate than they might have been.