The Baby

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Jan 12, 1911

ALL educators agree that the crown and flower of all education is the training of character. It is also the most elusive of all educational processes. We can easily hire a man to drill mathematics or modern languages into a boy’s head; but where shall we hire the inscrutable forces that shape a strong character? Usually in an entire college faculty there are only two or three men who have that divine gift. To them the boys look back with veneration and gratitude, because they called the man in them into life. A rich man might well give half his fortune to buy such an influence for his son’s life.

But almost every baby does just that for his parents. He gives them a post-graduate course in character. He matures and ennobles them in a way that would seem miraculous if it were not so universal. He turns a vain, selfish, idle girl into a patient, self-forgetful woman. He tethers the vagrant instincts of a young fellow, and makes a man of him, serious, loving, and strong. To the great mass of men and women the baby is a very important means of winning them to a higher life. He is a force capable of bursting the seed-capsule of their selfish life, and of giving them a chance to strike root, and grow up into the larger reaches of humanity.

For the older children of a family the baby is the best assistant educator that the parents could engage for any money. He develops the nobler, protective emotions in them by appealing to the dormant parental instincts. He puts them into the position of teachers, and by teaching they learn. In general he helps to turn selfish young savages into members of a family community, willing to render help as well as to receive it.—Ladies’ Home Journal.