What is beyond doubt is that the slovenly discipline—if indeed discipline it is to be called—which consists in alternations of gushing fondness with almost savage severity, or fits of government and restraint interpolated between long periods of neglect and _laisser faire_, is precisely what develops the rebellious and law-resisting propensities. But discipline can be bad without being a stupid pretence. Everything in the shape of inconsistency, saying one thing at one time, another thing at another, or treating one child in one fashion, another in another, tends to undermine the pillars of authority. Young eyes are quick to note these little contradictions, and they sorely resent them. It is astonishing how careless disciplinarians can show themselves before these astute little critics. It is the commonest thing to tell a child to behave like his elders, forgetting that this, if indeed a rule at all, can only be one of very limited application. Here is a suggestive example of the effect of this sort of teaching sent me by a mother. “At three and a half, when some visitors were present, she was told not to talk at dinner-time. ‘Why me no talk? Papa talks.’ ‘Yes, but papa is grown up, and you are only a little girl; you can’t do just like grown-up people.’ She was silent for some time, but when I told her ten minutes later to sit nicely with her hands in her lap like her cousins, she replied, with a very humorous smile, ‘Me tan’t (can’t) sit like grown-up people, me is only a little girl’.”