Then they will not depart from them; and
their moral life will be spontaneous and a source of enjoyment.
The feelings, appetites and instincts of children should be thus specially
trained. According to Dr. Gall, there are two classes of feelings,--the
selfish, yet necessary for the preservation of the individual; and the
unselfish, or those which are directed to objects apart from self, yet
liable to abuse and misdirection. Both of these demand a home-training. The
parent should give to each its true direction, restrain and harmonize them
in their relations and respective spheres of activity, and bring them
under law, and place before each its legitimate object and end. Then, and
then only, do they become laws of self-preservation. The natural appetites
are subject to abuse, and when unrestrained, defeat the very ends of their
existence. Thus the appetite for food may be over-indulged through mistaken
parental kindness, until habits of sensualism are established, and the
child becomes a glutton, and finds the grave of infamy.
How many children have been thus destroyed in soul and body by parental
indulgence and neglect of their natural feelings and appetites. The feeling
of cruelty, revenge, malice, falsehood, tale-bearing, dishonesty, vanity,
&c., have, in the same way and by the same indulgence, been engendered in
the children of Christian parents. The same, too, may be said of the
unselfish feelings.
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