To this it is objected that, if every quarter of a town and every few square miles of country had its “State nursery,” parents would often be able to see to their children, as well as to take them home and thus have an opportunity of using their influence. But apart from the circumstance that the relationship would then in most cases resemble that of the French _petite bourgeoisie_ visiting their children _en nourrice_—that is to say, that affection would be shown in a desire to amuse and deck out the child, to caress and play with it—the most important point is forgotten. This is that time, more time, and still more time, is one condition of education, and quiet the other. Souls are not to be tended like maladies, in fixed hours of treatment. There is no sphere—as parents are still too apt to forget—in which the psychological moment is more important than in education. The action which a mother has seen in the morning, should often be first mentioned by the child’s bedside at night; the confidence which at the right moment might have burst from the child’s lips, will never be given if the father has not availed himself of that moment; the words which pained the mother this week, must perhaps wait till next before a natural opportunity of effectively combating them occurs. The caress for which a little head feverishly longs this evening, will perhaps to-morrow leave it indifferent. The word of affection which might have been all-powerful at one moment, is powerless a couple of hours later. And above all, direct advice or correction is worthless in comparison with the unpremeditated words that parents let fall in the course of the day, with the result that the child simply sees the full human life of its parents. Only living together on week-days and holidays deepens the immediate influence of parents; only this makes it possible for the parents to distinguish in the child the accidental from the essential, the newly-acquired from the intrinsic in its changing moods. And finally, when we think we have found that children receive too much warmth at home, and that they ought rather to be hardened against life—have we then not observed such “hardened” ones? Have we not seen how they are beautified when they are admitted to a corner in a home; have we not discovered that, though in intelligence they may be far in advance of their time, their feelings are still on a level with those of the savage? So far from homes being too warm, they are seldom sufficiently warmed by the only love that lasts for life, that of knowledge and comprehension. Never yet was a human being too much loved, but only too little, or not in the right way. The whole spirit of the age is now opposed to the fatherly and motherly feelings of older times, which were related to the blind affection of animal parents. The affection that is left must be intensified, not weakened.