right" will make no impression on it. But "If you do this, you will get a cake," or "If you don't do this, you will get a whipping," will quickly lead it to change its attitude, and do the disagreeable thing. If external sanctions be used in a prudent way to persuade children to courses of action for which at first they have no natural inclination, they may prove a very valuable educational instrument.
(3) Their value depends on the fact that it is important that children should learn to act rightly, or as a good person would act, even before they can be expected to know why they act rightly. The average man acts rightly all his life without reflecting why he does so. And though moral theory is important, moral practice is still more important. As we saw in an earlier chapter, we form good habits only by repeatedly doing right actions. Hence it is exceedingly important that the child should, as soon as possible, be encouraged to do habitually the right actions. In order to attain this result, there is no reason why the external sanctions should not be wisely and prudently used.
(4) But we must insist that these external sanctions should be employed only as a propaedeutic. They are a second-best, and should be used only as stepping stones over which the child may pass to a higher conception of morality. They may be used as a means to persuade the child to do the good and avoid the evil; but the child should never be led to believe that they supply the ultimate reasons why he should be good and do the right. It is impossible to give any particular reasons for doing right and being good that will be absolutely true, not because
