The main duty of those who care for the young is to secure their wholesome, their entire growth, for health is just the development of the whole nature in its due sequences and proportions: first the blade--then the ear--then, and not till then, the full corn in the ear; and thus, as Dr. Temple wisely says, "not to forget wisdom in teaching knowledge." If the blade be forced, and usurp the capital it inherits; if it be robbed by you its guardian of its birthright, or squandered like a spendthrift, then there is not any ear, much less any corn; if the blade be blasted or dwarfed in our haste and greed for the full shock and its price, we spoil all three. It is not easy to keep this always before one's mind, that the young "idea" is in a young body, and that healthy growth and harmless passing of the time are more to be cared for than what is vainly called accomplishment. We are preparing him to run his race, and accomplish _that_ which is one of his chief ends; but we are too apt to start him off at his full speed, and he either bolts or breaks down--the worst thing for him generally being to win. In this way a child or boy should be regarded much more as a mean than as an end, and his cultivation should have reference to this; his mind, as old Montaigne said, should be forged, as well as--indeed, I would say, rather than--furnished, fed rather than filled,--two not always coincident conditions. Now exercise--the joy of interest, of origination, of activity, of excitement--the play of the faculties,--this is the true life of a boy, not the accumulation of mere words. Words--the coin of thought--unless as the means of buying something else, are just as useless as other coin when it is hoarded; and it is as silly, and in the true sense as much the part and lot of a _miser_, to amass words for their own sakes, as to keep all your guineas in a stocking and never spend them, but be satisfied with every now and then looking greedily at them and making them chink. Therefore it is that I dislike--as indeed who doesn't?--the cramming system. The great thing with knowledge and the young is to secure that it shall be their own--that it be not merely external to their inner and real self, but shall go _in succum et sanguinem_; and therefore it is, that the self-teaching that a baby and a child give themselves remains with them forever--it is of their essence, whereas what is given them _ab extra_, especially if it be received mechanically, without relish, and without any energizing of the entire nature, remains pitifully useless and _wersh_. Try, therefore, always to get the resident teacher _inside the skin_, and who is forever giving his lessons, to help you and be on your side.
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