Consider too, how children, even at such a tender age, attach themselves to those who flatter, and avoid those who restrain, them: how well they know to obtain their object by a tear, or silent submission: how much artifice and jealousy they already possess! "I have seen," exclaims St. Austin, "a jealous child: it could not speak; but its face was pale, and the eyes were irritated against an infant that suckled with it."
From this it may be inferred, that infants know more at such an early period than is usually imagined: thus, by soft words and appropriate gestures, you may incline them towards honest and virtuous connexions, rather than introduce them to those which it would be dangerous for them to caress.--Thus, again, you may, by appropriate looks and tone of voice, represent to them, with horror, those whom they have seen exasperated with anger, or any other furious passion; and, on the other hand, by a correspondent serenity of manner, depicture to them those who are amiable and wise.
I do not wish to lay too great a stress on these subordinate matters: but, in reality, these different dispositions form a commencement of character which must not be neglected; and this mode of foreseeing, as it were, the future dispositions of children, has imperceptible consequences which facilitate their education.
If we still doubt of the power of these early prepossessions on future maturity, we need only call to mind how lively and affecting, at an advanced age, is the remembrance of those things which have delighted us in childhood. If, instead of terrifying the minds of young people with absurd notions of ghosts and spirits, which serve only to weaken and disturb the still delicate texture of the brain: if, instead of abandoning them to the caprice of a nurse for what they are to like or dislike, we endeavoured always to impress on their minds an agreeable idea of good, and a frightful one of evil--this foresight might hereafter be the foundation of every practical virtue. On the contrary, we frighten them with the idea of a clergyman clothed in black--we talk of death merely to excite terror--and recount tales of the dead revisiting the earth, at midnight, under hideous shapes! All this has a tendency to weaken and agitate the mind, and to excite a prejudice against the soundest doctrines.