things, than to see an imperious and headstrong child ordering about
those around him, impudently taking the tone of a master toward those
who, to destroy him, need only leave him to himself!

On the other hand, who does not see that since the weakness of infancy
fetters children in so many ways, we are barbarous if we add to this
natural subjection a bondage to our own caprices by taking from them
the limited freedom they have, a freedom they are so little able to
misuse, and from the loss of which we and they have so little to gain?
As nothing is more ridiculous than a haughty child, so nothing is more
pitiable than a cowardly child.

Since with years of reason civil bondage[5] begins, why anticipate it
by slavery at home? Let us leave one moment of life exempt from a yoke
nature has not laid upon us, and allow childhood the exercise of that
natural liberty which keeps it safe, at least for a time, from the
vices taught by slavery. Let the over-strict teacher and the
over-indulgent parent both come with their empty cavils, and before
they boast of their own methods let them learn the method of Nature
herself.

Reasoning should not begin too soon.

Locke's great maxim was that we ought to reason with children, and just
now this maxim is much in fashion. I think, however, that its success
does not warrant its reputation, and I find nothing more stupid than
children who have been so much reasoned with. Reason, apparently a
compound of all other faculties, the one latest developed, and with
most difficulty, is the one proposed as agent in unfolding the
faculties earliest used! The noblest work of education is to make a
reasoning man, and we expect to train a young child by making him
reason! This is beginning at the end; this is making an instrument of
a result. If children understood how to reason they would not need to
be educated. But by addressing them from their tenderest years in a
language they cannot understand, you accustom them to be satisfied with
words, to find fault with whatever is said to them, to think themselves
as wise as their teachers, to wrangle and rebel. And what we mean they
shall do from reasonable motives we are forced to obtain from them by
adding the motive of avarice, or of fear, or of vanity.

Nature intends that children shall be children before they are men. If
we insist on reversing this order we shall have fruit early indeed, but
unripe and tasteless, and liable to early