A Full Life: The Works of Charlotte Mason

Mechanical and Reasonable Obedience.––It is a little difficult to draw the line between mechanical and reasonable obedience. ‘I teach my children obedience by the time they are one year old,’ the writer heard a very successful mother remark; and, indeed, that is the age at which to begin to give children the ease and comfort of the habit of obeying lawful authority. We know Mr. Huxley’s story of the retired private who was carrying home his Sunday’s dinner from the bakehouse. A sergeant passed by who recognised the man’s soldierly gait and was bent on a practical joke. ‘Attention!’ he cried, and the man stood at attention while his mutton and potatoes rolled in the gutter. Now, this kind of obedience is a mere question of nerves and muscles, a habit of the brain tissue with which the moral consciousness has nothing to do. It is a little the fashion to undervalue any but reasonable obedience, as if we were creatures altogether of mind and spirit, or creatures whose bodies answer as readily to the ruling of the spirit as does the ship to the helm. But, alas for our weakness! this description fits us only in proportion as our bodies have been trained to the of unthinking mechanical obedience. We know the child who is fully willing to do the right thing so far as mind is concerned, but with whom bodily vis inertiae is strong enough to resist a very torrent of good intentions and good resolutions; and if we wish children to be able, when they grow up, to keep under their bodies and bring them into subjection we must do this for them in their earlier years.