he blade be forced, and usurp the capital it inherits;
if it be robbed by you its guardian of its birthright, or squandered
like a spendthrift, then there is not any ear, much less any corn; if
the blade be blasted or dwarfed in our haste and greed for the full
shock and its price, we spoil all three. It is not easy to keep this
always before one's mind, that the young "idea" is in a young body, and
that healthy growth and harmless passing of the time are more to be
cared for than what is vainly called accomplishment. We are preparing
him to run his race, and accomplish _that_ which is one of his chief
ends; but we are too apt to start him off at his full speed, and he
either bolts or breaks down--the worst thing for him generally being to
win. In this way a child or boy should be regarded much more as a mean
than as an end, and his cultivation should have reference to this; his
mind, as old Montaigne said, should be forged, as well as--indeed, I
would say, rather than--furnished, fed rather than filled,--two not
always coincident conditions. Now exercise--the joy of interest, of
origination, of activity, of excitement--the play of the
faculties,--this is the true life of a boy, not the accumulation of mere
words. Words--the coin of thought--unless as the means of buying
something else, are just as useless as other coin when it is hoarded;
and it is as silly, and in the true sense as much the part and lot of a
_miser_, to amass words for their own sakes, as to keep all your guineas
in a stocking and never spend them, but be satisfied with every now and
then looking greedily at them and making them chink. Therefore it is
that I dislike--as indeed who doesn't?--the cramming system. The great
thing with knowledge and the young is to secure that it shall be their
own--that it be not merely external to their inner and real self, but
shall go _in succum et sanguinem_; and therefore it is, that the
self-teaching that a baby and a child give themselves remains with them
forever--it is of their essence, whereas what is given them _ab extra_,
especially if it be received mechanically, without relish, and without
any energizing of the entire nature, remains pitifully useless and
_wersh_. Try, therefore, always to get the resident teacher _inside the
skin_, and who is forever giving his lessons, to help you and be on your
side.

Now in children, as we all know, _he_ works chiefly through the senses.
The quantity of accurate observa