It is of course difficult to say how far a child’s interruptions and what look like turnings of the conversation when receiving rebuke are the result of deliberate plotting. We know it is hard to hold the young thoughts long on any subject, and the homily makes a heavy demand in this respect, and its theme is apt to seem dull to a child’s lively brain. The thoughts will be sure to wander then, and the rude interruptions and digressions may after all be but the natural play of the young mind. I fear, however, that design often has a hand here. The first digression to which the weak disciplinarian succumbed may have been the result of a spontaneous flow of childish ideas: but its success enables the observant child to try it on a second time with artful aim. In cases in which no attempt is made to ignore the accusation, the small wits are busy discovering palliatives and exculpations. Here we have the many ruses, often crude enough, by which the little culprit tries to shake off moral responsibility, to deny the authorship of the action found fault with. The blame is put on anybody or anything. When he breaks something, say a cup, and is scolded, he saves himself by saying it was because the cup was not made strong enough, or because the maid put it too near the edge of the table. There are clear indications of fatalistic thought in these childish disclaimers. Things were so conditioned that he could not help doing what he did. This fatalism betrays itself in the childish subterfuges already referred to, by which the ego tries to screen itself shabbily by throwing responsibility on to the bodily agents. This device is sometimes hit upon very early. A wee child of two when told not to cry gasped out: "Elsie cry—_not_ Elsie cry—tears cry—naughty tears!" This, it must be allowed, is more plausible than C.’s lame attempt to put off responsibility for some naughty action on his hands. For our tears are in a sense apart from us, and in the first years are wholly beyond control. The fatalistic form of exculpation meets us later on under the familiar form, ‘God made me like that’. A boy of three was blamed for leaving his crusts, and his conduct contrasted with that of his model papa. Whereupon he observed with a touch of metaphysical precocity: “Yes, but, papa, you see God had made you and me different”. These denials of authorship occur when a charge is brought home and no clear justification of the action is forthcoming. In many cases the shrewd intelligence of the child—which is never so acute as in this art of moral self-defence—discovers justificatory reasons. In such a case the attitude is a very different one. It is no longer the helpless lifting of hands of the irresponsible one, but the bold steady glance of one who is prepared to defend his action.