Then, as to my children, “Have I not been wrong in supposing that they must _be_ good because they have never _done_ wrong? They have been so kept from the suggestion of evil that they could hardly help going right. But could they resist temptation if it came? They have never been braced by a struggle with it, nor marked the ill fruits of evil. They take it on trust from me that evil brings sorrow; but it usually comes in disguise and declares itself harmless, and how should they recognise it if it came?” So, question after question suggests itself, all destructive of his satisfaction. “Can it be,” he says at last, “that I have brought up these children so as to be fit for no world but that which I have carefully constructed for them? I used to delight in their goodness; but since I have suspected it to be mainly instinctive—an innocence that is the outcome of ignorance—my satisfaction in it is half gone.” At length, he is harassed with the idea that he may have given up his life to a mistake, that what he has done has cramped his own mental and moral expansion, and that the excellence of his blameless family is only fair-weather goodness after all. He casts about to think why it is that they have “neither savour nor salt,” and concludes “What they want is _personality_—and how should they have got it, living in a household where I have taken care to be all in all?” Then his thoughts run upon _evil_, which he has been at such pains to shut out, closing against it every cranny and chink. “God,” he may say, “has let evil into His world—was I right in keeping it forcibly out of mine? May not the resisting and assuaging of evil give occasion for good to grow up, and feel its own strength? Are there not many kinds of goodness, brought out in this way, which we could no more have without evil than we could have light in a picture without shade? If there is no room for my children to go wrong, what moral significance,” he asks, “is there in saying that they go right?” So he is disheartened with his project, and gives it up. He abandons his isolated way of life, and gives his children freedom. He encourages them to act and judge for themselves. Henceforth they can choose their own books, their own friends their own pursuits, and go forth into life, outside their charmed circle. Of course this involves the giving up of his absolute power; this is inherent in the nature of things. A man cannot be an autocrat and have free people about him. If he would have intercourse with free intelligences, in order to get the advantages to his own cultivation and expansion of character which spring from such intercourse; this must be purchased by abdicating some of his powers, or putting them in abeyance. So the parent forbears using his power, in order that his children may learn to be free, and that he may hold communion with free, loving hearts, and engage in discussion with unfettered minds.