I have ere now seen some fathers, whose excessive love for
their children has turned into hatred. My meaning I will endeavour to
make clearer by illustration. While they are in too great a hurry to
make their sons take the lead in everything, they lay too much work upon
them, so that they faint under their tasks, and, being overburdened, are
disinclined for learning. For just as plants grow with moderate rain,
but are done for by too much rain, so the mind enlarges by a proper
amount of work, but by too much is unhinged. We must therefore give our
boys remission from continuous labour, bearing in mind that all our life
is divided into labour and rest; thus we find not only wakefulness but
sleep, not only war but peace, not only foul weather but fine also, not
only working days but also festivals. And, to speak concisely, rest is
the sauce of labour. And we can see this not only in the case of
animate, but even inanimate things, for we make bows and lyres slack
that we may be able to stretch them. And generally the body is preserved
by repletion and evacuation, and the soul by rest and work. We ought
also to censure some fathers who, after entrusting their sons to tutors
and preceptors, neither see nor hear how the teaching is done. This is a
great mistake. For they ought after a few days to test the progress of
their sons, and not to base their hopes on the behaviour of a hireling;
and the preceptors will take all the more pains with the boys, if they
have from time to time to give an account of their progress. Hence the
propriety of that remark of the groom, that nothing fats the horse so
much as the king's eye.[24] And especial attention, in my opinion, must
be paid to cultivating and exercising the memory of boys, for memory is,
as it were, the storehouse of learning; and that was why they fabled
Mnemosyne to be the mother of the Muses, hinting and insinuating that
nothing so generates and contributes to the growth of learning as
memory. And therefore the memory must be cultivated, whether boys have a
good one by nature, or a bad one. For we shall so add to natural good
parts, and make up somewhat for natural deficiencies, so that the
deficient will be better than others, and the clever will outstrip
themselves. For good is that remark of Hesiod, "If to a little you keep
adding a little, and do so frequently, it will soon be a lot."[25] And
let not fathers forget, that thus cultivating the memory is not only
good for e