Let us draw from this principle some practical applications.
From the very fact that the child is the future, he must be linked to the past by piety. We owe it to him to clothe tradition in the forms most practical and most fit to create a deep impression: whence the exceptional place that should be given in education to the ancients, to the cult of remembrance of the past, and by extension, to the history of the domestic rooftree. Above all do we fulfil a duty toward our children when we give the place of honor to the grandparents. Nothing speaks to a child with so much force, or so well develops his modesty, as to see his father and mother, on all occasions, preserve toward an old grandfather, often infirm, an attitude of respect. It is a perpetual object lesson that is irresistible. That it may have its full force, it is necessary for a tacit understanding to obtain among all the grown-up members of the family. To the child's eyes they must all be in league, held to mutual respect and understanding, under penalty of compromising their educational authority. And in their number must be counted the servants. Servants are big people, and the same sentiment of respect is injured in the child's disregard of them as in his disregard of his father or grandfather. The moment he addresses an impolite or arrogant word to a person older than himself, he strays from the path that a child ought never to quit; and if only occasionally the parents neglect to point this out, they will soon perceive by his conduct toward themselves, that the enemy has found entrance to his heart.
We mistake if we think that a child is naturally alien to respect, basing this opinion on the very numerous examples of irreverence which he offers us. Respect is for the child a fundamental need. His moral being feeds on it. The child aspires confusedly to revere and admire something. But when advantage is not taken of this aspiration, it gets corrupted or lost. By our lack of cohesion and mutual deference, we, the grown-ups, discredit daily in the child's eyes our own cause and that of everything worthy of respect. We inoculate in him a bad spirit whose effects then turn against us.
This pitiful truth nowhere appears with more force than in the relations between masters and servants, as we have made them. Our social errors, our want of simplicity and kindness, all fall back upon the heads of our children. There are certainly few people of the middle classes who understand that it is better to part with many thousands of dollars than to lead their children to lose respect for servants, who represent in our households the humble. Yet nothing is truer. Maintain as strictly as you will conventions and distances,--that demarkation of social frontiers which permits each one to remain in his place and to observe the law of differences. That is a good thing, I am persuaded, but on condition of never forgetting that those who serve us are men and women like ourselves. You require of your domestics certain formulas of speech and certain attitudes, outward evidence of the respect they owe you. Do you also teach your children and use yourselves manners toward your servants which show them that you respect their dignity as individuals, as you desire them to respect yours? Here we have continually in our homes an excellent ground for experiment in the practice of that mutual respect which is one of the essential conditions of social sanity. I fear we profit by it too little. We do not fail to exact respect, but we fail to give it. So it is most frequently the case that we get only hypocrisy and this supplementary result, all unexpected,--the cultivation of pride in our children. These two factors combined heap up great difficulties for that future which we ought to be safeguarding. I am right then in saying that the day when by your own practices you have brought about the lessening of respect in your children, you have suffered a sensible loss.