This is evidently not a moral question. We do not seek for means to correct these depraved tendencies of the man who is but just born. No, it is not a moral question. It is, however, a question of life. The child seeks to live and we want to hinder him. In that sense it does become a moral question, as regards ourselves, since we have begun to examine those errors on our part which do harm, and infringe the rights of others. Moreover, our own egotism is concealed beneath our errors of treatment; what we really resent in the child is that he gives us trouble; we struggle against him in order to protect our own comfort, our own liberty. How often at the bottom of our hearts we have felt that we have been unjust, but have stifled this impression. The little rebel does not accuse us or bear us malice. On the contrary; just as he persists in his "naughtinesses" which are forms of life, so does he persist in loving us, in forgiving us everything, in forgetting our offenses, in longing to be with us, to embrace us, to sit upon our knees, to fall asleep on our bosom. This, too, is a form of life. And we, if we are tired or satiated, repulse him, masking this excess of selfishness under a hypocritical pretense of concern for the child himself: "Don't be so silly!" Insult and calumny are always on our lips in the eternal refrain: "Naughty, naughty." And yet the figure of the child might stand for that of perfect goodness, which "thinketh no evil, delighteth not in iniquity, beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things." As to us--no, we cannot always say as much of ourselves. If the struggle between the adult and the child could be brought to an end in "peace," and the adult, accepting the conditions of infant life, would seek to help the child, the former would be able to advance towards one of the most sublime enjoyments which Nature can bestow: that of following the natural development of the child, and seeing the man evolved. If the opening rosebud has become a commonplace of poetry, how much greater is the poetry of the infant soul in its manifestations? Now this ineffable gift which was placed beside us, in order that the miracle might accompany us and comfort us, we trample under foot in our wrath, blaspheming as if demented. * * * * *