One other way in which the wise mother will win the child over to duty is by developing his consciousness of freedom and power. A mother, who was herself a well-known writer for children, has recorded in some notes on her children that when one of her little girls had declined to accede to her wish she used to say to her: ‘Oh, yes, I think when you have remembered how pleasant it is to oblige others you will do it’. ‘I will think about it, mamma,’ the child would reply, laughing, and then go and hide her head behind a sofa-pillow which she called her ‘thinking corner’. In half a minute she would come out and say: “Oh, yes, mamma, I have thought about it and I will do it”. This strikes me as an admirable combination of regulative suggestion with exercise of the young will in moral decision. It gave the child the consciousness of using her own will, and yet maintained the needed measure of guidance and control. As the moral consciousness develops and new problems arise, new openings for such suggestive guidance will offer themselves. How valuable, for example, is the mother’s encouragement of the weakly child, shrinking from a difficult self-repressive action, when she says with inspiring voice: ‘You _can_ do it if you try’. Thus pilot-like she conducts the little navigator out into the open main of duty where he will have to steer himself. I have tried to show that the moral training of children is not beyond human powers. It has its strong supports in child-nature, and these, when there are wisdom and method on the ruler’s side, will secure success. I have not said that the trainer’s task is easy. So far from thinking this, I hold that a mother who bravely faces the problem, neither abandoning the wayward will to its own devices, nor, hardly less weakly, handing over the task of disciplining it to a paid substitute, and who by well-considered and steadfast effort succeeds in approaching the perfection I have hinted at, combining the wise ruler with the tender and companionable parent, is among the few members of our species who are entitled to its reverence. IX. THE CHILD AS ARTIST. One of the most interesting, perhaps also one of the most instructive, phases of child-life is the beginnings of art-activity. This has been recognised by one of the best-known workers in the field of child-psychology, M. Bernard Perez, who has treated the subject in an interesting monograph.[197] This department of our subject will, like that of language, be found to have interesting points of contact with the phenomena of primitive race-culture. ----- Footnote 197: _L’Art et la Poésie chez l’Enfant_, 1888. -----