Combats of any kind between teacher and pupil are to be deplored. A good teacher is always strong enough in his mental superiority, his authority, and his influence as an executive to avoid it. Such a contest shows that the pupil has become self-conscious in a bad sense. He sets his personality over against that of the teacher. If the teacher is so weak as to meet him on his own ground, the pupil has a good chance for a bad victory--bad for himself, the teacher, and the school. It should be a constant aim of the teacher to supplant introspection, whether pertaining to feelings or to wilfulness, with motor activity. The pupil should always be doing something that will promote not only his own best good, but that of the school also. Authority should rarely so assert itself as to incite or to permit a personal contest with the pupil. It should be a strong but almost unseen presupposition of all school affairs. Here as elsewhere idleness is the mother of mischief. Lively action is sure to banish morbid introspection. 164. Thoughtlessness in the narrower sense, which manifests itself in forgetfulness, in negligence, in want of steadiness, and in so-called youthful escapades, is a defect in native capacity, and does not admit of a radical cure, imperceptible as it may become with age, by reason of repeated warnings and diminishing susceptibility to external impressions. All the more imperative is it in such cases to support by training, in order that the evil consequences of this character weakness may be prevented, or at least reduced to a minimum. For as soon as a thoughtlessly impulsive boy comes to take pleasure in his conduct, he will set himself against order and industry, and will strive to discover the means which promise to secure for him a life without restrictions. This danger must be forestalled by training. At the beginning, and before an evil will has had time to develop, training must take the place of will. It must bring home to the pupil that of which he had lost sight. To his fluctuating and roving impulses it must lend its own external firmness and uniformity, which cannot be created at once, if at all, within the pupil.