commonplace, dull, and as
if enveloped in a dense fog. Sometimes he outruns you, and sometimes
he stands still. At one moment you feel like saying, "He is a genius,"
and at another, "He is a fool." You are mistaken in either case: he is
a child; he is an eaglet that one moment beats the air with its wings,
and the next moment falls back into the nest.

In spite of appearances, then, treat him as his age demands, and beware
lest you exhaust his powers by attempting to use them too freely. If
this young brain grows warm, if you see it beginning to seethe, leave
it free to ferment, but do not excite it, lest it melt altogether into
air. When the first flow of spirits has evaporated, repress and keep
within bounds the rest, until, as time goes on, the whole is
transformed into life-giving warmth and real power. Otherwise you will
lose both time and pains; you will destroy your own handiwork, and
after having thoughtlessly intoxicated yourself with all these
inflammable vapors, you will have nothing left but the dregs.

Nothing has been more generally or certainly observed than that dull
children make commonplace men. In childhood it is very difficult to
distinguish real dullness from that misleading apparent dullness which
indicates a strong character. At first it seems strange that the two
extremes should meet in indications so much alike; and yet such is the
case. For at an age when man has no real ideas at all, the difference
between one who has genius and one who has not is, that the latter
entertains only mistaken ideas, and the former, encountering only such,
admits none at all. The two are therefore alike in this, that the
dullard is capable of nothing, and the other finds nothing to suit him.
The only means of distinguishing them is chance, which may bring to the
genius some ideas he can comprehend, while the dull mind is always the
same.

During his childhood the younger Cato was at home considered an idiot.
No one said anything of him beyond that he was silent and headstrong.
It was only in the antechamber of Sulla that his uncle learned to know
him. If he had never crossed its threshold, he might have been thought
a fool until he was grown. If there had been no such person as Caesar,
this very Cato, who read the secret of Caesar's fatal genius, and from
afar foresaw his ambitious designs, would always have been treated as a
visionary.[9] Those who judge of children so hastily are very liable
to b