If there really be any child on whom education is incapable of producing a good effect, it is one of the foregoing description; and it must be allowed that the number is greater than we imagine. Parents bring themselves with difficulty to believe that their children have a bad heart: when they shut their _own eyes_ upon them, no other person will have the courage to convince them of it; and thus the evil is hourly augmenting. The principal remedy is, to place children, from their earliest infancy, in such a situation where their tempers may be discovered without disguise. Always know the very bottom of their heart, before you correct them. They are naturally simple and open; but as soon as you plague them, or give them an example of disguise, they will no longer return to their original simplicity. It is true, that a good and tender-hearted disposition comes from God alone; _we_ can only endeavour to excite it by generous examples, by maxims of honour and disinterestedness, and by a contempt of those people who set too high a value on themselves. We must endeavour to make children betimes sensible of the most natural modes of conduct, and of the pleasure arising from a cordial, and reciprocal friendship. Nothing so much conduces to this end, as an intercourse with people who have nothing about them harsh, severe, low, or selfish: children might better associate with those who have other faults, than with those who possess the foregoing ones. We should praise them for every thing they do on the score of friendship, provided it be not misplaced or too violent. Parents must likewise appear to them to be animated with the sincerest friendship towards them; for children oftentimes learn of their parents to have no affection for any one object. In short I would check, before friends, all superfluous compliments, all artificial demonstrations of esteem, and all feigned caresses: for by these things you teach them a great deal of deceit towards those whom they ought to regard.