Children of men

“ CHAPTER XIV. THE CHILD AS MEMBER AND BUILDER OF SOCIETY. In great states, children are always trying to remain children, and the parents wanting to make men and women of them. In vile states, the children are always wanting to be men and women, and the parents to keep them children.—Ruskin. ”

“ Many parents neglect the training of their children until the boys and girls have grown to be almost men and women, and then they expect all at once to develop them into well-rounded characters, as if by magic. ”

“ So long as we so underrate the importance of childhood,—and that in proportion to the youth of the child,—those persons who should benefit our babies by their presence will not do so. Very great and learned men are proud to teach youths of eighteen and twenty in colleges ”

“ Children should be Brought up to Live for All Men––Studying reverently these signs of the times, what indications do we find for our guidance in the bringing up of children? The tender sympathy of the child must be allowed to flow in ways of help and kindness towards all life that anyway touches his. ”

“ Do we ask how he arrives at this rather startling theory? He observes that great men have great mothers; mothers, that is, blest with an infinite capacity for taking pains with their work of bringing up children. He likens this labour to a second bearing which launches the child into a higher life; and as this higher life is a more blessed life, he contends that every child has a right to this birth into completer being at the hands of his parents. ”

“ Girls and boys would be future men and women, not present children. They would have attained their full growth in our imaginations, and might as well have been men and women at once. On the other hand, those who have lost an infant, are never, as it were, without an infant child. ”

“ It is when they are taken into the solution of school-life that children, by the reciprocal interchange of influence with their fellows, undergo the series of reactions which converts them from children into boys and from boys into men. ”

“ Look how your children grow up. Taught from their earliest infancy to curb their love natures --restrained at every turn! Your blasting lies would even blacken a child's kiss. Little girls must not be tomboyish, must not go barefoot, must not climb trees, must not learn to swim, must not do anything they desire to do which Madame Grundy has decreed "improper." Little boys are laughed at as effeminate, silly girl-boys if they want to make patchwork or play with a doll. Then when they grow up, "Oh! Men dont care for home or children as women do!" ”

“ THE DEATH OF BALDER
HAMILTON WRIGHT MABIE
There was one shadow which always fell over Asgard. Sometimes in the long years the gods almost forgot it, it lay so far off, like a dim cloud in a clear sky; but Odin saw it deepen and widen as he looked out into the universe, and he knew that the last great battle would surely come, when the gods themselves would be destroyed and a long twilight would rest on all the worlds; and now the day was close at hand. Misfortunes never come singly to men, and they did not to the gods. ”

“ To bring the human race, family by family, child by child, out of the savage and inhuman desolation where He is not, into the light and warmth and comfort of the presence of God, is, no doubt, the chief thing we have to do in the world. ”

“ for she believed that the small hopes and plans and pleasures of children should be tenderly respected by grown-up people, and never rudely thwarted or ridiculed. ”

“ Lord, give to men who are old and rougher
The things that little children suffer,
And let keep bright and undefiled
The young years of the little child. ”

“ Note, The undutiful behaviour of children towards their parents is a very great provocation to God our common Father; and, if men do not punish it, he will. ”

“ Barely past her childhood, it required but a glance to discover that she was one of those children, born and bred in neglect and vice, who have never known what childhood is: who have never been taught to love and court a parent’s smile, or to dread a parent’s frown. The thousand nameless endearments of childhood, its gaiety and its innocence, are alike unknown to them. ”

“ It is not a question of adolescence, of physiological change. The boy of eighteen could be a father as well as the girl a mother; but he is not as well able to take his social position, to serve mankind in his craft, art, trade, or profession. ”

“ Here is a great secret of power, to treat these, lapsed and restored, like children; for what is the object of family discipline, of that obedience which has been described as the whole duty of a child? Is it not to ease the way of the child, while will is weak and conscience immature, by getting it on the habits of the good life where it is as easy to go right as for a locomotive to run on its lines? ”

“ An obligation we all have, young and old,—and to this the child should be trained,—the vast and endless service of humanity, to which our lives are pledged without exception. Seeing the parent devout in this honourable discharge of duty,—realising that his own training is with a view to that greater service when he is grown,—the child would go onward in life with the parent, not backward to him. ”

“ In a third land a child was to be born, and the proud father made ready gifts, and purchased silken robes, and prepared a feast for his friends; but, alas! when the longed-for soul entered the world it was housed in a woman-child's body, and straightway the joy was changed into mourning. Bitter reproaches were heaped upon the mother, for were there not enough women already on the earth? ”

“ What the next generation will be depends upon the physical, mental, and moral training of the children of to-day. These children are the to-morrow of society. Are they to be puny and dyspeptic, fretting and worrying through life as through a task? ”

“ A child was born in another country, and the tender eyes of his mother saw that his limbs were misshapen and his life-blood a sickly current. Yet her heart yearned over him, and she would have tended and trained him and loved him better than all the rest of her strong, well-favored brood; but when the elders of her people knew that the child was a weakling, they decreed that he should die, and she bent her head to the law, which was stronger than her love. ”

“ That depends; my dear, if you and that boy of mine there are living self-controlled lives, are at peace with God and at peace with each other, your children will enter the world at great advantage. They will be different, at their very birth, from the children of undisciplined parents, who pamper their bodies, indulge in unholy passions, and reproduce offspring like unto themselves. ”

“ Now this generation of children, when they come to maturity, marry—the earlier the more dependent they are and the less serious their views of life—and begin the story of their own parents, and their own childhood, all over again. ”

“ But the child,—the child must pocket every insult, as belonging to a class beneath respect.
Is it not time that we summoned our wits from their wool-gathering,—however financially profitable the wool may be,—and gave a little honest thought to the status of childhood? Childhood is not a pathological condition, nor a term of penal servitude, nor a practical joke. A child is a human creature, and entitled to be treated as such. A human body three feet long is deserving of as much respect as a human body six feet long. ”

“ These three originate and culminate in the true self-reverence. In speaking of filial duty, we are concerned with reverence toward what is above us. The parent is the physical, mental, and moral [Pg 206] superior of the child. It is his duty to assist the child's physical, mental, and moral growth; to lift it by degrees out of its position of inferiority, so that it may attain the fullness of its powers, and help to carry on the mission of mankind when the older generation shall have retired from the scene. ”

“ Chapter 9 The Culture Of Character The Treatment of Defects
The Ultimate Object of Education––Suppose the parent see that the formation of character is the ultimate object of education; see, too, that character is, in the rough, the inherited tendencies of the child, modified by his surroundings, but that character may be debased or ennobled by education; that it is the parents' part to distinguish the first faint budding of family traits; to greet every fine trait as the highest sort of family possession to be nourished and tended with care ”

“ There is a truth in this old saying that the parents and guardians of children would do well to ponder in their hearts, for it is a well substantiated statement that the first ten years of a child’s life stamp upon his character the imprint for good or ill-breeding. ”

“ Let them study their own bodies. What do you see among them? You see children that are born into the world sickly, weak and unable to walk for years; they are poor, emaciated little things, almost without flesh on their bones. ”

“ Lads and lassies, hear our plea—give us of your courtesy; we, not you, need sympathy, being parents. 'Tis a most exacting age, children are so very sage, the "complex" now is all the rage, we're but parents. ”

“ The child may be 'father of the man', and the savage the hoary sire of the civilised; but to measure the full proportions of an adult from the swaddling-clothes of an infant or to estimate the aspirations of a cultured person from the narrow notions of a barbarian, is to taunt the stately oak that it was once a tiny acorn. The first germs of conscience are in the infant bosom, pregnant with possibilities of growth under the pure atmosphere of a pious home and the genial light of a godly instruction. Nor has history been barren of striking examples of the working of conscience in children. ”

“ Thus met two innocent little beings, unconscious representatives of races widely separated in moral and intellectual culture, but children of the same Heavenly Father, and equally subject to the attractions of great Mother Nature. Blessed childhood, that yields spontaneously to those attractions, ignoring all distinctions of pride or prejudice! ”

“ While each child possesses an individuality all its own, nevertheless, there are certain general principles of psychologic conduct and family discipline which are more or less applicable to all children. ”

“ If heredity means so much, if, as would seem at the first glance, the child comes into the world with his character ready-made, what remains for the parents to do but to enable him to work out his own salvation without let or hindrance of their making, upon the lines of his individuality? The strong naturalism, shall we call it, of our day, inclines us to take this view of the objects and limitations of education ”

“ We, of this self-conscious, incredulous generation, sentimentalise our children, analyse our children, think we are endowed with a special capacity to sympathise and identify ourselves with children; we play at being children. And the result is that we are not more child-like, but our children are less child-like. It is so tiring to stoop to the child, so much easier to lift the child up to you. Know you what it is to be a child? It is to be something very different from the man of to-day. ”

“ This is how we find children—with intelligence more acute, logic more keen, observing powers more alert, moral sensibilities more quick, love and faith and hope more abounding; in fact, in all points like as we are, only much more so, but absolutely ignorant of the world and its belongings, of us and our ways, and, above all, of how to control and direct and manifest the infinite possibilities with which they are born.
Our conception of a child rules our relations towards him. ”

“ Let us look at some white silk.—Silk you know is imported from Italy, it is produced by a worm which feeds on the leaves of the mulberry-tree. Cotton is imported from Asia, of which we make our fine cotton stockings. The wool of sheep supplies us with worsted stockings, the chief wear of the working classes of men, and the skins of animals give us that necessary finish to our dress, gloves. The best and handsomest of this latter article are made in France, but are prohibited from being sold in England, that they may not injure our own manufactures. ”

“ The able boy is a tyrant when his will is crossed. There is the timid, affectionate little maid who will even tell a fib to shield her sister; and there is the high-spirited girl who never lies, but who does, now and then, bully; and so on, without end. What is the parents’ part here? To magnify the quality; make the child feel that he or she has a virtue to guard—a family possession, and, at the same time, a gift from above. A little simple reasonable teaching may help. ”

“ Examine your child; he has qualities, he is generous; see to it that the lovable little fellow, who would give away his soul, is not also rash, impetuous, self-willed, passionate, 'nobody's enemy but his own.' It rests with parents to make low the high places and exalt the valleys, to make straight paths for the feet of their little son. ”

“ In the case of pride of birth, it is well that the child should be brought face to face and heart to heart with the 'great humility' of our Pattern. But that being done, this sense of family distinction is a wonderful lever to raise the little world of the child's nature. Noblesse oblige. He must needs add honour and not dishonour to a distinguished family. ”

“ Their tempers, unruffled by the endless jealousies and competitions incident to our mode of life, were singularly placid, and that love of offspring, where children were truly an unmixed blessing, was a common sentiment which united all the branches of the family, and predominated over every other. ”

“ But however good the children be, the parents owe it to society to make them better than they are, and to bless the world with people, not merely good-natured and well-disposed, but good of set purpose and endeavour. ”