During his childhood the younger Cato was at home considered an idiot. No one said anything of him beyond that he was silent and headstrong. It was only in the antechamber of Sulla that his uncle learned to know him. If he had never crossed its threshold, he might have been thought a fool until he was grown. If there had been no such person as Caesar, this very Cato, who read the secret of Caesar's fatal genius, and from afar foresaw his ambitious designs, would always have been treated as a visionary.[9] Those who judge of children so hastily are very liable to be mistaken. They are often more childish than the children themselves.
Respect children, and be in no haste to judge their actions, good or evil. Let the exceptional cases show themselves such for some time before you adopt special methods of dealing with them. Let nature be long at work before you attempt to supplant her, lest you thwart her work. You say you know how precious time is, and do not wish to lose it. Do you not know that to employ it badly is to waste it still more, and that a child badly taught is farther from being wise than one not taught at all? You are troubled at seeing him spend his early years in doing nothing. What! is it nothing to be happy? Is it nothing to skip, to play, to run about all day long? Never in all his life will he be so busy as now. Plato, in that work of his considered so severe, the "Republic," would have children accustomed to festivals, games, songs, and pastimes; one would think he was satisfied with having carefully taught them how to enjoy themselves. And Seneca, speaking of the Roman youth of old, says, "They were always standing; nothing was taught them that they had to learn when seated." Were they of less account when they reached manhood? Have no fear, then, of this supposed idleness. What would you think of a man who, in order to use his whole life to the best advantage, would not sleep? You would say, "The man has no sense; he does not enjoy life, but robs himself of it. To avoid sleep, he rushes on his death." The two cases are parallel, for childhood is the slumber of reason.
Apparent quickness in learning is the ruin of children. We do not consider that this very quickness proves that they are learning nothing. Their smooth and polished brain reflects like a mirror the objects presented to it, but nothing abides there, nothing penetrates it. The child retains the words; the ideas are reflected; they who hear understand them, but he himself does not understand them at all.