CHAPTER XII.
COMMENDATION AND ENCOURAGEMENT.
We are very apt to imagine that the disposition to do right is, or ought to be, the natural and normal condition of childhood, and that doing wrong is something unnatural and exceptional with children.

As a consequence, when they do right we think there is nothing to be said.

That is, or ought to be, a matter of course.

It is only when they do wrong that we notice their conduct, and then, of course, with censure and reproaches.

Thus our discipline consists mainly, not in gently leading and encouraging them in the right way, but in deterring them, by fault-finding and punishment, from going wrong.
Now we ought not to forget that in respect to moral conduct as well as to mental attainments children know nothing when they come into the world, but have every thing to learn, either from the instructions or from the example of those around them.