Proverbial Philosophy / The First and Second Series

by Unknown

OF EDUCATION.

A babe in a house is a well-spring of pleasure, a messenger of peace and love:

A resting place for innocence on earth; a link between angels and men:

Yet is it a talent of trust, a loan to be rendered back with interest;

A delight, but redolent of care; honey-sweet, but lacking not the bitter.

For character groweth day by day, and all things aid it in unfolding,

And the bent unto good or evil may be given in the hours of infancy:

Scratch the green rind of a sapling, or wantonly twist it in the soil,

The scarred and crooked oak will tell of thee for centuries to come;

Even so mayst thou guide the mind to good, or lead it to the marrings of evil,

For disposition is builded up by the fashioning of first impressions:

Wherefore, though the voice of instruction waiteth for the ear of reason,

Yet with his mother's milk the young child drinketh Education.

Patience is the first great lesson; he may learn it at the breast:

And the habit of obedience and trust may be grafted on his mind in the cradle:

Hold the little hands in prayer, teach the weak knees their kneeling;

Let him see thee speaking to thy God; he will not forget it afterward:

When old and grey will he feelingly remember a mother's tender piety,

And the touching recollection of her prayers shall arrest the strong man in his sin.

Select not to nurse thy darling one that may taint his innocence,

For example is a constant monitor, and good seed will die among the tares.

The arts of a strange servant have spoiled a gentle disposition:

Mother, let him learn of thy lips, and be nourished at thy breast.

Character is mainly moulded by the cast of the minds that surround it:

Let then the playmates of thy little one be not other than thy judgment shall approve:

For a child is in a new world, and learneth somewhat every moment,

His eye is quick to observe, his memory storeth in secret,

His ear is greedy of knowledge, and his mind is plastic as soft wax.

Beware then that he heareth what is good, that he feedeth not on evil maxims,

For the seeds of first instructions are dropped into the deepest furrows.

That which immemorial use hath sanctioned, seemeth to be right and true;

Therefore, let him never have to recollect the time when good things were strangers to his thought.

Strive not to centre in thyself, fond mother, all his love;

Nay, do not thou so selfishly, but enlarge his heart for others;

Use him to sympathy betimes, that he learn to be sad with the afflicted;

And check not a child in his merriment,—should not his morning be sunny?

Give him not all his desire, so shalt thou strengthen him in hope;

Neither stop with indulgence the fountain of his tears, so shall he fear thy firmness.

Above all things graft on him subjection, yea, in the veriest trifle;

Courtesy to all, reverence to some, and to thee unanswering obedience.

Read thou first, and well approve, the books thou givest to thy child;

But remember the weakness of his thought, and that wisdom for him must be diluted:

In the honied waters of infant tales, let him taste the strong wine of truth:

Pathetic stories soften the heart; but legends of terror breed midnight misery;

Fairy fictions cram the mind with folly, and knowledge of evil tempteth to like evil:

Be not loth to curb imagination, nor be fearful that truths will depress it;

And for evil, he will learn it soon enough; be not thou the devil's envoy.

Induce not precocity of intellect, for so shouldst thou nourish vanity;

Neither can a plant, forced in the hot-bed, stand against the frozen breath of winter.

The mind is made wealthy by ideas, but the multitude of words is a clogging weight:

Therefore be understood in thy teaching, and instruct to the measure of capacity.

Analogy is milk for babes, but abstract truths are strong meat;

Precepts and rules are repulsive to a child, but happy illustration winneth him:

In vain shalt thou preach of industry and prudence, till he learn of the bee and the ant;

Dimly will he think of his soul, till the acorn and the chrysalis have taught him;

He will fear God in thunder, and worship His loveliness in flowers;

And parables shall charm his heart, while doctrines seem dead mystery:

Faith shall he learn of the husbandman casting good corn into the soil;

And if thou train him to trust thee, he will not withhold his reliance from the Lord.

Fearest thou the dark, poor child? I would not have thee left to thy terrors;

Darkness is the semblance of evil, and nature regardeth it with dread:

Yet know thy father's God is with thee still, to guard thee:

It is a simple lesson of dependence; let thy tost mind anchor upon Him.

Did a sudden noise affright thee? lo, this or that hath caused it:

Things undefined are full of dread, and stagger stouter nerves.

The seeds of misery and madness have been sowed in the nights of infancy;

Therefore be careful that ghastly fears be not the night companions of thy child.

Lo, thou art a landmark on a hill; thy little ones copy thee in all things:

Let, then, thy religion be perfect: so shalt thou be honoured in thy house.

Be instructed in all wisdom, and communicate that thou knowest,

Otherwise thy learning is hidden, and thus thou seemest unwise.

A sluggard hath no respect; an epicure commandeth not reverence;

Meanness is always despicable, and folly provoketh contempt.

Those parents are best honoured whose characters best deserve it;

Show me a child undutiful, I shall know where to look for a foolish father:

Never hath a father done his duty, and lived to be despised of his son:

But how can that son reverence an example he dare not follow?

Should he imitate thee in thine evil? his scorn is thy rebuke.

Nay, but bring him up aright, in obedience to God and to thee;

Begin betimes, lest thou fail of his fear; and with judgment, that thou lose not his love:

Herein use good discretion, and govern not all alike,

Yet, perhaps, the fault will be in thee, if kindness prove not all sufficient:

By kindness, the wolf and the zebra become docile as the spaniel and the horse;

The kite feedeth with the starling, under the law of kindness:

That law shall tame the fiercest, bring down the battlements of pride,

Cherish the weak, control the strong, and win the fearful spirit.

Be obeyed when thou commandest; but command not often:

Let thy carriage be the gentleness of love, not the stern front of tyranny.

Make not one child a warning to another; but chide the offender apart:

For self-conceit and wounded pride rankle like poisons in the soul.

A mild rebuke in the season of calmness, is better than a rod in the heat of passion;

Nevertheless, spare not, if thy word hath passed for punishment;

Let not thy child see thee humbled, nor learn to think thee false;

Suffer none to reprove thee before him, and reprove not thine own purposes by change;

Yet speedily turn thou again, and reward him where thou canst,

For kind encouragement in good cutteth at the roots of evil.

Drive not a timid infant from his home, in the early spring-time of his life,

Commit not that treasure to an hireling, nor wrench the young heart's fibres:

In his helplessness leave him not alone, a stranger among strange children,

Where affection longeth for thy love, counting the dreary hours;

Where religion is made a terror, and innocence weepeth unheard;

Where oppression grindeth without remedy, and cruelty delighteth in smiting.

Wherefore comply with an evil fashion? Is it not to spare thee trouble?

Can he gather no knowledge at thy mouth? Wilt thou yield thine honour to another?

What can he gain in learning, to equal what he loseth in innocence?

Alas! for the price above gold, by which such learning cometh!

For emulative pride and envy are the specious idols of the diligent,

Oaths and foul-mouthed sin burn in the language of the idle:

Bolder in that mimic world of boys stareth brazen-fronted vice,

Than thereafter in the haunts of men, where society doth shame her into corners.

My soul, look well around thee, ere thou give thy timid infant unto sorrows.

There be many that say, We were happiest in days long past,

When our deepest care was an ill-conned book,

And when we sported in that merry sunshine of our life,

Sadness a stranger to the heart, and cheerfulness its gay inhabitant.

True, ye are now less pure, and therefore are more wretched:

But have ye quite forgotten how sorely ye travailed at your tasks,

How childish griefs and disappointments bowed down the childish mind?

How sorrow sat upon your pillow, and terror hath waked you up betimes,

Dreading the strict hand of justice, that would not wait for a reason,

Or the whims of petty tyrants, children like yourselves,

Or the pestilent extract of evil poured into the ear of innocence?

Behold the coral island, fresh from the floor of the Atlantic,

It is dinted by every ripple, and a soft wave can smooth its surface;

But soon its substance hardeneth in the winds and tropic sun,

And weakly the foaming billows break against its adamantine wall:

Even thus, though sin and care dash upon the firmness of manhood,

The timid child is wasted most by his petty troubles;

And seldom, when life is mature, and the strength proportioned to the burden,

Will the feeling mind, that can remember, acknowledge to deeper anguish,

Than when, as a stranger and a little one, the heart first ached with anxiety,

And the sprouting buds of sensibility were bruised by the harshness of a school.

My soul, look well around thee, ere thou give thine infant unto sorrows.

Yet there be boisterous tempers, stout nerves, and stubborn hearts,

And there is a riper season, when the mind is well disciplined in good,

And a time, when youth may be bettered by the wholesome occasions of knowledge,

Which rarely will he meet with so well, as among the congregation of his fellows.

Only for infancy, fond mother, rend not those first affections;

Only for the sensitive and timorous, consign not thy darling unto misery.

A man looketh on his little one, as a being of better hope;

In himself ambition is dead, but it hath a resurrection in his son:

That vein is yet untried,—and who can tell if it be not golden?

While his, well nigh worked out, never yielded aught but lead:

And thus is he hurt more sorely, if his wishes are defeated there,

He has staked his all upon a throw, and lo! the dice have foiled him.

All ways, and at all times, men follow on in flocks,

And the rife epidemic of the day shall tincture the stream of education.

Fashion is a foolish watcher posted at the tree of knowledge,

Who plucketh its unripe fruit to pelt away the birds;

But, for its golden apples,—they dry upon the boughs,

And few have the courage or the wisdom to eat in spite of fashion.

One while, the fever is to learn, what none will be wiser for knowing,

Exploded errors in extinct tongues, and occasions for their use are small;

And the bright morning of life, for years of misspent time,

Wasted in following sounds, hath tracked up little sense,

Till at noon a man is thrown upon the world, with a mind expert in trifles,

Having yet everything to learn that can make him good or useful:

The curious spirit of youth is crammed with unwholesome garbage,

While starving for the mother's milk the breasts of nature yield;

And high-coloured fables of depravity lure with their classic varnish,

While truth is holding out in vain her mirror much despised.

Of olden time, the fashion was for arms, to make an accomplished slayer,

And set gregarious man a-tilting with his fellows;

Thereafter, occult sciences, and mystic arts, and symbols,

How to exorcise a wizard, and how to lay a ghost;

Anon, all for gallantry and presence, the minuet, the palfrey, and the foil,

And the grand aim of education was to produce a coxcomb;

Soon came scholastical dispute with hydra-headed argument,

And the true philosophy of mind confounded in a labyrinth of words;

Then the Pantheon, and its orgies, initiating docile childhood,

While diligent youth strove hard to render his all unto Cæsar;

And now is seen the passion for utility, when all things are accounted by their price,

And the wisdom of the wise is busied in hatching golden eggs:

Perchance, not many moons to come, and all will again be for abstrusity,

Unravelling the figured veil that hideth Egypt's gods;

Or in those strange Avatars seeking benignant Vishnu,

Kali, and Kamala the fair, and much invoked Ganesa.

The mines of knowledge are oft laid bare through the forked hazel wand of chance,

And in a mountain of quartz we find a grain of gold.

Of a truth, it were well to know all things, and to learn them all at once,

And what, though mortal insufficiency attain to small knowledge of any?

Man loveth exclusions, delighting in the sterile trodden path,

While the broad green meadow is jewelled with wild flowers:

And whether is it better with the many to follow a beaten track,

Or by eccentric wanderings to cull unheeded sweets?

When his reason yieldeth fruit, make thy child thy friend;

For a filial friend is a double gain, a diamond set in gold.

As an infant, thy mandate was enough, but now let him see thy reasons;

Confide in him, but with discretion: and bend a willing ear to his questions.

More to thee than to all beside, let him owe good counsel and good guidance;

Let him feel his pursuits have an interest, more to thee than to all beside.

Watch his native capacities; nourish that which suiteth him the readiest;

And cultivate early those good inclinations wherein thou fearest he is most lacking:

Is he phlegmatic and desponding? let small successes comfort his hope:

Is he obstinate and sanguine? let petty crosses accustom him to life:

Showeth he a sordid spirit? be quick, and teach him generosity:

Inclineth he to liberal excess? prove to him how hard it is to earn.

Gather to thy hearth such friends as are worthy of honour and attention;

For the company a man chooseth is a visible index of his heart:

But let not the pastor whom thou hearest be too much a familiar in thy house,

For thy children may see his infirmities, and learn to cavil at his teaching.

It is well to take hold on occasions, and render indirect instruction;

It is better to teach upon a system, and reap the wisdom of books:

The history of nations yieldeth grand outlines: of persons, minute details:

Poetry is polish to the mind, and high abstractions cleanse it.

Consider the station of thy son, and breed him to his fortune with judgment:

The rich may profit in much which would bring small advantage to the poor.

But with all thy care for thy son, with all thy strivings for his welfare,

Expect disappointment, and look for pain: for he is of an evil stock, and will grieve thee.

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