cases. But such exceptional cases become common in
proportion as children have more frequent opportunity to depart from
their natural state and to acquire the vices of their seniors. Those
brought up among men of the world absolutely require earlier teaching
in these matters than those educated apart from such surroundings.
Hence this private education is to be preferred, even if it do no more
than allow childhood leisure to grow to perfection.

Negative or Temporizing Education.

Exactly contrary to the cases just described are those whom a happy
temperament exalts above their years. As there are some men who never
outgrow childhood, so there are others who never pass through it, but
are men almost from their birth. The difficulty is that these
exceptional cases are rare and not easily distinguished; besides, all
mothers capable of understanding that a child can be a prodigy, have no
doubt that their own are such. They go even farther than this: they
take for extraordinary indications the sprightliness, the bright
childish pranks and sayings, the shrewd simplicity of ordinary cases,
characteristic of that time of life, and showing plainly that a child
is only a child. Is it surprising that, allowed to speak so much and
so freely, unrestrained by any consideration of propriety, a child
should occasionally make happy replies? If he did not, it would be
even more surprising; just as if an astrologer, among a hundred false
predictions, should never hit upon a single true one. "They lie so
often," said Henry IV., "that they end by telling the truth." To be a
wit, one need only utter a great many foolish speeches. Heaven help
men of fashion, whose reputation rests upon just this foundation!

The most brilliant thoughts may enter a child's head, or rather, the
most brilliant sayings may fall from his lips, just as the most
valuable diamonds may fall into his hands, without his having any right
either to the thoughts or to the diamonds. At his age, he has no real
property of any kind. A child's utterances are not the same to him as
to us; he does not attach to them the same ideas. If he has any ideas
at all on the subject, they have neither order nor coherence in his
mind; in all his thoughts nothing is certain or stable. If you watch
your supposed prodigy attentively, you will sometimes find him a
well-spring of energy, clear-sighted, penetrating the very marrow of
things. Much oftener the same mind appears