e mistaken. They are often more childish than the children
themselves.

Concerning the Memory.

Respect children, and be in no haste to judge their actions, good or
evil. Let the exceptional cases show themselves such for some time
before you adopt special methods of dealing with them. Let nature be
long at work before you attempt to supplant her, lest you thwart her
work. You say you know how precious time is, and do not wish to lose
it. Do you not know that to employ it badly is to waste it still more,
and that a child badly taught is farther from being wise than one not
taught at all? You are troubled at seeing him spend his early years in
doing nothing. What! is it nothing to be happy? Is it nothing to
skip, to play, to run about all day long? Never in all his life will
he be so busy as now. Plato, in that work of his considered so severe,
the "Republic," would have children accustomed to festivals, games,
songs, and pastimes; one would think he was satisfied with having
carefully taught them how to enjoy themselves. And Seneca, speaking of
the Roman youth of old, says, "They were always standing; nothing was
taught them that they had to learn when seated." Were they of less
account when they reached manhood? Have no fear, then, of this
supposed idleness. What would you think of a man who, in order to use
his whole life to the best advantage, would not sleep? You would say,
"The man has no sense; he does not enjoy life, but robs himself of it.
To avoid sleep, he rushes on his death." The two cases are parallel,
for childhood is the slumber of reason.

Apparent quickness in learning is the ruin of children. We do not
consider that this very quickness proves that they are learning
nothing. Their smooth and polished brain reflects like a mirror the
objects presented to it, but nothing abides there, nothing penetrates
it. The child retains the words; the ideas are reflected; they who
hear understand them, but he himself does not understand them at all.

Although memory and reason are two essentially different faculties, the
one is never really developed without the other. Before the age of
reason, the child receives not ideas, but images. There is this
difference between the two, that images are only absolute
representations of objects of sense, and ideas are notions of objects
determined by their relations. An image may exist alone in the mind
that represents it, but every idea supposes othe