A sagacious parent or tutor may strengthen the body and
sharpen the instruments by which the child is to gather knowledge;
but the honey must be the reward of the individual's own industry.
It is almost as absurd to attempt to make a youth wise by the
experience of another, as to expect the body to grow strong by the
exercise which is only talked of, or seen.
Many of those children whose conduct has been most narrowly
watched, become the weakest men, because their instructors only
instill certain notions into their minds, that have no other
foundation than their authority; and if they are loved or
respected, the mind is cramped in its exertions and wavering in its
advances. The business of education in this case, is only to
conduct the shooting tendrils to a proper pole; yet after laying
precept upon precept, without allowing a child to acquire judgment
itself, parents expect them to act in the same manner by this
borrowed fallacious light, as if they had illuminated it
themselves; and be, when they enter life, what their parents are at
the close. They do not consider that the tree, and even the human
body, does not strengthen its fibres till it has reached its full
growth.
There appears to be something analogous in the mind. The senses
and the imagination give a form to the character, during childhood
and youth; and the understanding as life advances, gives firmness
to the first fair purposes of sensibility--till virtue, arising
rather from the clear conviction of reason than the impulse of the
heart, morality is made to rest on a rock against which the storms
of passion vainly beat.
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