The child does not deserve censure or punishment in such cases; what he requires is instruction.

It is the bringing in of light to illuminate the path that is before him which he has yet to tread, and not the infliction of pain, to impress upon him the evil of the missteps he made, in consequence of the obscurity, in the path behind him.
Indeed, in such cases as this, it is the influence of pleasure rather than pain that the parent will find the most efficient means of aiding him; that is, in these cases, the more pleasant and agreeable the modes by which he can impart the needed knowledge to the child--in other words, the more attractive he can make the paths by which he can lead his little charge onward in its progress towards maturity--the more successful he will be.
_Ignorance of Material Properties and Laws._ In the example already given, the mental immaturity consisted in imperfect acquaintance with the qualities and the action of the mind, and the principles of sound reasoning; but a far larger portion of the mistakes and failures into which children fall, and for which they incur undeserved censure, are due to their ignorance of the laws of external nature, and of the properties and qualities of material objects.
A boy, for example, seven or eight years old, receives from his father a present of a knife, with a special injunction to be careful of it.

He is, accordingly, very careful of it in respect to such dangers as he understands, but in attempting to bore a hole with it in a piece of wood, out of which he is trying to make a windmill, he breaks the small blade.
The accident, in such a case, is not to be attributed to any censurable carelessness, but to want of instruction in respect to the strength of such a material as steel, and the nature and effects of the degree of tempering given to knife-blades.

The boy had seen his father bore holes with a gimlet, and the knife-blade was larger--in one direction at least, that is, in breadth--than the gimlet, and it was very natural for him to suppose that it was stronger.

What a boy needs in such a case, therefore, is not a scolding, or punishment, but simply information.
A girl of about the same age--a farmer's daughter, we will suppose--under the influence of a dutiful desire to aid her mother in preparing the table for breakfast, attempts to carry across the room a pitcher of milk which is too full, and she spills a portion of it upon the floor.
_The Intention good_.
[Illustration: THE INTENTION GOOD.] The mother, forgetting the good intention which prompted the act, and thinking only of the inconvenience which it occasions her, administers at once a sharp rebuke.