The baby, new to sky and earth, surrounded by toys and playthings, extracts the keenest pleasure from throwing them about, picking them to bits, thumping them flat, pulling them awry, squeezing them out of shape.

Although this early impulse is not necessarily an evidence of original sin, it does show a twisted instinct which will need correction. That correction comes, partly through parental discipline, partly from a dawning sense in the tiny brain that things are made to be kept and used.

So, somewhere about the age of six or seven, the boy or girl sets greater store by doll or tin soldier, picture book or toy train, even taking means to preserve them from injury, and being worried if they spoil. Thus there emerges in the child consciousness the notion of repair, and an inkling of the part it plays amongst us. Then follows the training of school to drive home the lesson.

We, too, are all at school : tuition flows in upon us continually from all quarters. Some of our teachers we like, some we dislike; but there is a general conspiracy to make us learn. We prefer, I suppose, the indirect method; and, as if to please us (by coating the pill), the parabolic way is that chiefly favoured by the great college of preceptors.

Materials for these parables are continually offering themselves to us. They are bound up with our common tasks. The Banished Duke in As You Like It found ‘tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,’ and so forth.