The right selection of reading matter for children is obviously of high
importance. Some of the mythologies, Old Testament stories, fairy
tales, and historical romances, on which earlier generations were
accustomed to feed the childish mind, contain a great deal that is
barbarous, perverse, or cruel; and to this infiltration into children's
minds, generation after generation, of immoral, cruel, or foolish ideas
is probably to be attributed in part the slow ethical progress of the
race. The commonest justification of this thoughtless practice is that
children do not apprehend the evil in the bad mental pictures with
which we foolishly supply them; but what should we think of a mother
who gave her children dirty milk or porridge, on the theory that the
children would not assimilate the dirt? Should we be less careful
about mental and moral food materials? The Junior Classics have been
selected with this principle in mind, without losing sight of the fact
that every developing human being needs to have a vision of the rough
and thorny road over which the human race has been slowly advancing
during thousands of years.
