I do not pretend for a moment that education is as yet a perfect science; I know it is not. I do not pretend that it can give us a great deal of light; but such light as it can give we ought to be all the more anxious to obtain on account of the prevailing darkness. The time will doubtless come when the science of education will be acknowledged to be, in some sense, the greatest of all the sciences; when, among the benefactors of the race, the great statesmen, the great inventors, and even the great reformers will not be ranked as high as the great educators. FOOTNOTE: [1] It is an open question whether light corporal punishment should not occasionally be permitted in the case of very young children who have not yet arrived at the age of reason. In this case, at all events, there is no danger that the permission will be abused. No one would think of seriously hurting a very young child. III In order that a parent shall properly influence a child's character, it is necessary for him to know what that character is, and what the nature is of each fault with which he is dealing. I feel almost like asking pardon for saying anything so self-evident. It seems like saying that a physician who is called to a sick-bed, before beginning to prescribe, should know the nature of the disease for which he is prescribing, should not prescribe for one disease when he is dealing with another. I do not know enough about physicians to say whether such mistakes ever happen among them; but that such egregious mistakes do occur among parents all the time, I am sure. There are many parents who never stop to ask before they punish--that is, before they prescribe their moral remedies--what the nature of the disease is with which their child is afflicted. They never take the trouble to make a diagnosis of the case in order to treat it correctly. There is perhaps not one parent in a thousand who has a clear idea of the character of his child, or to whom it even so much as occurs that he ought to have a clear conception of that character, a map of it, a chart of it, laid out, as it were, in his mind. The trouble is that attention is not usually called to this important matter, and I purpose to make it the special subject of this address. 1. OBSTINACY I am prepared at the outset for the objection that the case against parents has been overstated. There are parents who freely acknowledge, "My child is obstinate; I know it has an obstinate character." Others say, "My child, alas! is untruthful." Others again declare, "My child is indolent." But these symptoms are far too indeterminate to base upon them a correct reformatory treatment. Such symptoms may be due to a variety of causes, and not until we have discovered the underlying cause in any given case can we be sure that we are following the right method.