For the first year or so he sees that they are just as much
pupils of their Maker as the young of any other animals. Well, their
Maker trains them to _pure selfishness_. Why? In order that they may be
sure to take care of themselves. So you see, when a child comes to be,
we will say a year and a day old, and makes his first choice between
right and wrong, he is at a disadvantage; for he has that _vis a tergo_,
as we doctors call it, that force from behind, of a whole year's life of
selfishness, for which he is no more to blame than a calf is to blame
for having lived in the same way, purely to gratify his natural
appetites. Then we see that baby grow up to a child, and, if he is fat
and stout and red and lively, we expect to find him troublesome and
noisy, and, perhaps, sometimes disobedient more or less; that's the way
each new generation breaks its eggshell; but if he is very weak and
thin, and is one of the kind that may be expected to die early, he will
very likely sit in the house all day and read good books about other
little sharp-faced children just like himself; who died early, having
always been perfectly indifferent to all the out-door amusements of the
wicked little red-cheeked children. Some of the little folks we watch
grow up to be young women, and occasionally one of them gets nervous,
what we call hysterical, and then that girl will begin to play all sorts
of pranks,--to lie and cheat, perhaps, in the most unaccountable way, so
that she might seem to a minister a good example of total depravity.
Pages:
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313