Violent passions make a striking impression on the child who notices them, because their manifestations are well-defined, and forcibly attract his attention. Anger especially has such stormy indications that its approach is unmistakable. Do not ask, "Is not this a fine opportunity for the pedagogue's moral discourse?" Spare the discourse: say not a word: let the child alone. Amazed at what he sees, he will not fail to question you. It will not be hard to answer him, on account of the very things that strike his senses. He sees an inflamed countenance, flashing eyes, threatening gestures, he hears unusually excited tones of voice; all sure signs that the body is not in its usual condition. Say to him calmly, unaffectedly, without any mystery, "This poor man is sick; he has a high fever." You may take this occasion to give him, in few words, an idea of maladies and of their effects; for these, being natural, are trammels of that necessity to which he has to feel himself subject. From this, the true idea, will he not early feel repugnance at giving way to excessive passion, which he regards as a disease? And do you not think that such an idea, given at the appropriate time, will have as good an effect as the most tiresome sermon on morals? Note also the future consequences of this idea; it will authorize you, if ever necessity arises, to treat a rebellious child as a sick child, to confine him to his room, and even to his bed, to make him undergo a course of medical treatment; to make his growing vices alarming and hateful to himself. He cannot consider as a punishment the severity you are forced to use in curing him. So that if you yourself, in some hasty moment, are perhaps stirred out of the coolness and moderation it should be your study to preserve, do not try to disguise your fault, but say to him frankly, in tender reproach, "My boy, you have hurt me." I do not intend to enter fully into details, but to lay down some general maxims and to illustrate difficult cases. I believe it impossible, in the very heart of social surroundings, to educate a child up to the age of twelve years, without giving him some ideas of the relations of man to man, and of morality in human actions. It will suffice if we put off as long as possible the necessity for these ideas, and when they must be given, limit them to such as are immediately applicable. We must do this only lest he consider himself master of everything, and so injure others without scruple, because unknowingly. There are gentle, quiet characters who, in their early innocence, may be led a long way without danger of this kind. But others, naturally violent, whose wildness is precocious, must be trained into men as early as may be, that you may not be obliged to fetter them outright. The Idea of Property.