Separation as a punishment, as a just
consequence of children's quarrelling, and as the best means of
preventing their disputes, he always found useful. But, except in
extreme cases, he had rarely recourse to it, and such seldom
occurred. . . . The greatest change, which twenty years further
experience made in his practice and opinions in education, was to
lessen rather than to increase regulations and restrictions. He saw
that, where there is liberty of action, one thing balances another;
that nice calculations lead to false results in practice, because we
cannot command all the necesssary circumstances of the data. . . .
'For many years of his life he had, I think, been under one
important mistake, in his expectations relative to the conduct of
his fellow-creatures, and of the effects of cultivating the human
understanding. He had believed that, if rational creatures could be
made clearly to see and understand that virtue will render them
happy, and vice will render them miserable, either in this world or
in the next, they would afterwards, in consequence of this
conviction, follow virtue, and avoid vice.
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