I have confined myself to two of the moral traits of childhood. If there were time to go into an examination of others, as childish vanity, something similar would, I think, be found. Children’s vanity, like that of the savage, has been the theme of more than one chapter, and it is undoubtedly vast to the point of absurdity. Yet, side by side with these impulses to deck oneself, to talk boastfully, there exists a delightful childish candour which, if not exactly what we call modesty, is possibly something better. We may then, perhaps, draw the conclusion that child-nature is on its moral side wanting in consistency and unity. It is a field of half-formed growths, some of which tend to choke the others. Certain of these are favourable, others unfavourable to morality. It is for education to see to it that these isolated propensities be organised into a system in which those towards the good become supreme and regulative principles. VIII. UNDER LAW. _The Struggle with Law._ In the last chapter we tried to get at those tendencies of child-nature which though they have a certain moral significance may in a manner be called spontaneous and independent of the institution of moral training. We will now examine the child’s attitude towards the moral government with which he finds himself confronted. Here again we meet with opposite views. Children, say some, are essentially disobedient and law-breaking. A child as such is a rebel, delighting in nothing so much as in evading the rule which he finds imposed on him by others. The view that children are instinctively obedient and law-abiding, has not, I think, been very boldly insisted on. A follower of Rousseau, at least, who sees only clumsy interference with natural development in our attempts to govern children, would say that child-nature must resist the artificial and cramping system which the disciplinarian imposes. It seems, however, to be allowed by some that a certain number of children are docile and disposed to accept authority with its commands. According to these, children are either obedient or disobedient. This is perhaps the view of many mothers and pedagogues. Here, too, it is probable that we try to make nature too simple. Even the latter view, in spite of its apparent wish to be discriminating, does not allow for the many-sidedness of the child, and for the many different ways in which the instincts of child-nature may vary. Now it is worth asking whether, if the child were naturally disposed to look on authority as something wholly hostile, he would get morally trained at all. Physically mastered and morally cowed he might of course become; but this is not the same thing as being morally induced into a habit of accepting law and obeying it.