If you try to deal, as people actually do, with each of these traits separately, you will fail. If you try to influence the sense of shame, you will meet with no response; if you disgrace such a child, you will make it worse; if you whip it, you will harden it. If you attempt to overcome indolence by the promise of rewards, that will be useless. The child forgets promised rewards just as quickly as it forgets threatened punishment. This forgetfulness, this lack of coherency in its ideas, is particularly characteristic. The ideas of such a child are imperfectly connected. The ties between causes and their effects are feeble. The contents of the child's mind are in a state of unstable equilibrium. There is no point of fixity in its mental realm. And the cure for such a condition is to establish fixity in the thoughts, to induce habits of industry and application by steady, unrelaxing discipline, and especially by means of manual training. The immense value of mechanical labor as a means of moral improvement has been appreciated until now only to a very imperfect extent. Mechanical labor wisely directed secures mental fixity because it concentrates the child's attention for days and often for weeks upon a single task. Mechanical labor stimulates moral pride by enabling the pupil to produce articles of value and giving him in this way the sense of achievement. Mechanical labor also overcomes indolence by compelling settled habits of industry, whereby the random impulses of the will are brought under control.