him too strongly; if his confidence in himself
was a little too over-weening. Let him go on a little farther in life,
and if he really does go on improving in wisdom and goodness, this
over-confidence will find its proper level. He will perceive not only
how much he is doing, or can do, but how much there is which he does not
do, and cannot. To a thoughtful mind added years can scarcely fail to
teach, humility. And in this the highest wisdom of manhood may be
resembling more and more the state of what would be perfect childhood,
that is, not simply teachableness, but tractableness with respect to
what was good and true, and to that only.

But the danger of the intermediate state between childhood and manhood
is too often this, that whilst in the one point of teachableness, the
change runs on too fast, in the other three, of wisdom, of
unselfishness, and of thoughtfulness, it proceeds much too slowly: that
the faults of childhood thus remain in the character, whilst
that quality by means of which these faults are meant to be
corrected,--namely, teachableness,--is at the same time diminishing.
Now, teachableness as an instinct, if I may call it so, diminishes
naturally with the consciousness of growing strength. By strength, I
mean strength of body, no less than strength of mind, so closely are our
body and mind connected with, each other. The helplessness of childhood,
which presses upon it every moment, the sense of inability to avoid or
resist danger, which makes the child run continually to his nurse or to
his mother for protection, cannot but diminish, by the mere growth of
the bodily powers. The boy feels himself to be less helpless than the
child, and in that very proportion he is apt to become less teachable.
As this feeling of decreased helplessness changes into a sense of
positive vigour and power, and as this vigour and power confer an
importance on their possessor, which is the case especially at schools,
so self-confidence must in one point at least, arise in the place of
conscious weakness; and as this point is felt to be more important, so
will the self-confidence be likely to extend itself more and more over
the whole character.

And yet, I am bound to say, that, in general, the teachableness of youth
is, after all, much greater than we might at first sight fancy. Along
with much self-confidence in many things, it is rare, I think, to find
in a young man a deliberate pride that rejects advice and instruct