1.
When others are not doing what we would like them to or are threatening
disobedience, we are most conscious of the need of controlling them and
of the influences by which they are controlled. In such cases, our
control becomes most direct, and at this point we are most likely to
make the mistakes just spoken of. We are even likely to take the
influence of superior force for control, forgetting that while we may
lead a horse to water we cannot make him drink; and that while we can
shut a man up in a penitentiary we cannot make him penitent. In all
such cases of immediate action upon others, we need to discriminate
between physical results and moral results. A person may be in such a
condition that forcible feeding or enforced confinement is necessary for
his own good. A child may have to be snatched with roughness away from
a fire so that he shall not be burnt. But no improvement of
disposition, no educative effect, need follow. A harsh and commanding
tone may be effectual in keeping a child away from the fire, and the
same desirable physical effect will follow as if he had been snatched
away. But there may be no more obedience of a moral sort in one case
than in the other. A man can be prevented from breaking into other
persons' houses by shutting him up, but shutting him up may not alter
his disposition to commit burglary. When we confuse a physical with an
educative result, we always lose the chance of enlisting the person's
own participating disposition in getting the result desired, and thereby
of developing within him an intrinsic and persisting direction in the
right way.
In general, the occasion for the more conscious acts of control should
be limited to acts which are so instinctive or impulsive that the one
performing them has no means of foreseeing their outcome. If a person
cannot foresee the consequences of his act, and is not capable of
understanding what he is told about its outcome by those with more
experience, it is impossible for him to guide his act intelligently. In
such a state, every act is alike to him. Whatever moves him does move
him, and that is all there is to it. In some cases, it is well to
permit him to experiment, and to discover the consequences for himself
in order that he may act intelligently next time under similar
circumstances. But some courses of action are too discommoding and
obnoxious to others to allow of this course being pursued. Direct
disapproval is now resorted to. Shaming, ridicule, disfavor, rebuke,
and punishment are used. Or contrary tendencies in the child are
appealed to to divert him from his troublesome line of behavior. His
sensitiveness to approbation, his hope of winning favor by an agreeable
act, are made use of to induce action in another direction.
