KNOWLEDGE about the Other Side is dangerous to the peace of minds of parents. So are glimpses into children's minds. If you get to know too much about people you get to know how they feel. If you know how they feel you cannot have the belief that you are always right. Such knowledge leads to such things as the Distressing Doubt.
Alice's Distressing Doubt was the heresy that it was perhaps she who was naughty instead of her children. This is a very complex way for a mother to feel. It is hard enough to bring up children with the old belief of the infallibility of parents to bulwark you. The Distressing Doubt not only took this belief from Alice, but it also bred a family of other doubts concerning goodness and badness, which shows that when you once leave the solid ground of tradition there is no end to the trouble that you may be giving yourself, for among all the doubts Alice even had one concerning her new point of view.
Alice was forced to admit that it wouldn't do to have too queasy a delicacy in bringing up children, and that the hard nature of childhood probably adapted itself better to the cheerful hardness of the old régime than it did to the uncertain quicksands of attempted understanding. In those days if a child itself did not know what was right and wrong it had ample opportunity of learning from its elders what they thought was right and wrong, every day and all the time. Their
