"
It seems to me that there are few questions of practical moment in
every-day living on which a foregone and erroneous conclusion has been
adopted so generally and so undoubtingly. How it first came about it is
hard to see. Or, rather, it is easy to see, when one reflects; and the
very clearness of the surface explanation of it only makes its injustice
more odious. It came about because the parent was strong and the child
weak. Helplessness in the hands of power,--that is the whole story.
Suppose for an instant (and, absurd as the supposition is practically, it
is not logically absurd), that the child at six were strong enough to whip
his father; let him have the intellect of an infant, the mistakes and the
faults of an infant,--which the father would feel himself bound and _would
be_ bound to correct,--but the body of a man; and then see in how
different fashion the father would set himself to work to insure good
behavior. I never see the heavy, impatient hand of a grown man or woman
laid with its brute force, even for the smallest purpose, on a little
child, without longing for a sudden miracle to give the baby an equal
strength to resist.
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