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.