Of the Impressions of Education
I
A certain nobleman had a dunce of a son. He sent him to a learned man, saying: "Verily you will give instruction to this youth, peradventure he may become a rational being." He continued to give him lessons for some time, but they made no impression upon him, when he sent a message to the father, saying: "This son is not getting wise, and he has well-nigh made me a fool!" Where the innate capacity is good, education may make an impression upon it; but no furbisher knows how to give a polish to iron which is of a bad temper. Wash a dog seven times in the ocean, and so long as he is wet he is all the filthier. Were they to take the ass of Jesus to Mecca, on his return from that pilgrimage he would still be an ass.
II
A philosopher was exhorting his children and saying: "O emanations of my soul, acquire knowledge, as no reliance can be placed on worldly riches and possessions, for once you leave home rank is of no use, and gold and silver on a journey are exposed to the risk either of thieves plundering them at once, or of the owner wasting them by degrees; but knowledge is a perennial spring and ever-during fortune. Were a professional man to lose his fortune, he need not feel regret, for his knowledge is of itself a mine of wealth. Wherever he may sojourn the learned man will meet respect, and be ushered into the upper seat, whilst the ignorant man must put up with offal and suffer want:—If thou covet the paternal heritage, acquire thy father's knowledge, for this thy father's wealth thou may'st squander in ten days. After having been in authority, it is hard to obey; after having been fondled with caresses, to put up with men's violence:—There once occurred an insurrection in Syria, and everybody forsook his former peaceful abode. The sons of peasants, who were men of learning, came to be employed as the ministers of kings; and the children of noblemen, of bankrupt understandings, went a begging from village to village."
III
A certain learned man was superintending the education of a king's son; and he was chastising him without mercy, and reproving him with asperity. The boy, out of all patience, complained to the king his father, and laid bare before him his much-bruised body. The king was much offended, and sending for the master, said: "You do not treat the children of my meanest subject with the harshness and cruelty you do my boy; what do you mean by this?" He replied: "To think before they speak, and to deliberate before they act, are duties incumbent upon all mankind, and more immediately upon kings; because whatever may drop from their hands and tongue, the special deed or word will somehow become the subject of public animadversion; whereas any act or remark of the commonalty attracts not such notice:—Let a dervish, or poor man, commit a hundred indiscretions, and his companions will not notice one out of the hundred; and let a king but utter one foolish word, and it will be echoed from kingdom to kingdom:—therefore in forming the morals of young princes, more pains are to be taken than with the sons of the vulgar. Whoever was not taught good manners in his boyhood, fortune will forsake him when he becomes a man. Thou may'st bend the green bough as thou likest; but let it once get dry, and it will require heat to straighten it:—'Verily thou may'st bend the tender branch, but it were labor lost to attempt making straight a crooked billet.'"
The king greatly approved of this ingenious detail, and the wholesome course of discipline of the learned doctor; and, bestowing upon him a dress and largess, raised him one step in his rank as a nobleman!
IV
In the west of Africa I saw a schoolmaster of a sour aspect and bitter speech, crabbed, misanthropic, beggarly, and intemperate, insomuch that the sight of him would derange the ecstasies of the orthodox; and his manner of reading the Koran cast a gloom over the minds of the pious. A number of handsome boys and lovely virgins were subject to his despotic sway, who had neither the permission of a smile nor the option of a word, for this moment he would smite the silver cheek of one of them with his hand, and the next put the crystalline legs of another in the stocks. In short their parents, I heard, were made aware of a part of his disloyal violence, and beat and drove him from his charge. And they made over his school to a peaceable creature, so pious, meek, simple, and good-natured that he never spoke till forced to do so, nor would he utter a word that could offend anybody. The children forgot that awe in which they had held their first master, and remarking the angelic disposition of their second master, they became one after another as wicked as devils; and relying on his clemency, they would so neglect their studies as to pass most part of their time at play, and break the tablets of their unfinished tasks over each other's heads:—"When the schoolmaster relaxes in his discipline, the children will stop to play at marbles in the market-place."