They do not expect their children to read or to write without being taught; they do not expect a dog to fetch and carry, or a horse to draw and to understand commands and signals, without being _trained_.

In all these cases they perceive the necessity of training and instruction, and understand that the initiative is with _them_.

If a horse, endowed by nature with average good qualities, does not work well, the fault is attributed at once to the man who undertook to train him.

But what mother, when her child, grown large and strong, becomes the trial and sorrow of her life by his ungovernable disobedience and insubordination, takes the blame to herself in reflecting that he was placed in her hands when all the powers and faculties of his soul were in embryo, tender, pliant, and unresisting, to be formed and fashioned at her will?
_The Spirit of filial Obedience not Instinctive_.
Children, as has already been remarked, do not require to be taught and trained to eat and drink, to resent injuries, to cling to their possessions, or to run to their mother in danger or pain.

They have natural instincts which provide for all these things.