d which in effect is nothing but lazy indulgence.
Life is not to be identified with every superficial act and interest.
Even though it is not always easy to tell whether what appears to be
mere surface fooling is a sign of some nascent as yet untrained power,
we must remember that manifestations are not to be accepted as ends in
themselves. They are signs of possible growth. They are to be turned
into means of development, of carrying power forward, not indulged or
cultivated for their own sake. Excessive attention to surface phenomena
(even in the way of rebuke as well as of encouragement) may lead to
their fixation and thus to arrested development. What impulses are
moving toward, not what they have been, is the important thing for
parent and teacher. The true principle of respect for immaturity cannot
be better put than in the words of Emerson: "Respect the child. Be not
too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude. But I hear the outcry
which replies to this suggestion: Would you verily throw up the reins
of public and private discipline; would you leave the young child to
the mad career of his own passions and whimsies, and call this anarchy
a respect for the child's nature? I answer,--Respect the child, respect
him to the end, but also respect yourself.... The two points in a boy's
training are, to keep his naturel and train off all but that; to keep
his naturel, but stop off his uproar, fooling, and horseplay; keep
his nature and arm it with knowledge in the very direction in which it
points." And as Emerson goes on to show this reverence for childhood
and youth instead of opening up an easy and easy-going path to the
instructors, "involves at once, immense claims on the time, the thought,
on the life of the teacher. It requires time, use, insight, event, all
the great lessons and assistances of God; and only to think of using it
implies character and profoundness."

Summary. Power to grow depends upon need for others and plasticity.
Both of these conditions are at their height in childhood and youth.
Plasticity or the power to learn from experience means the formation of
habits. Habits give control over the environment, power to utilize
it for human purposes. Habits take the form both of habituation, or
a general and persistent balance of organic activities with the
surroundings, and of active capacities to readjust activity to meet new
conditions. The former furnishes the background of growth; the latter
c