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reformation. In consequence of this, nothing can be more wild 

 or imaginary than their various systems of improvement. Some 

 will have the children every day plunged in cold water, in order 

 to strengthen their bodies ; they will have them converse with 

 the servants in nothing but the Latin language, m order to 

 strengthen their minds ; every hour of the day must be appoint 

 ed for its own studies, and the child must learn to make these 

 very studies an amusement ; till about the age of ten or eleven 

 it becomes a prodigy of premature improvement. Quite oppo- 

 site to this, we have others, whom the courtesy of mankind also 

 calls philosophers; and they will have the child learn nothing 

 till the age of ten or eleven, at which the former has attained so 

 much perfection ; with them the mind is to be kept empty, until 

 it has a proper distinction of some metaphysical ideas about 

 truth ; and the promising pupil is debarred the use of even his 

 own faculties, lest they should conduct him into prejudice and 

 error. In this manner, some men, whom fashion has celebrated 

 for profound and fine thinkers, have given their hazarded and 

 untried conjectures, upon one of the most important subjects in 

 the world, and the most interesting to humanity. AVhen men 

 speculate at liberty upon innate ideas, or the abstracted distinc- 

 tions between will and power, they may be permitted to enjoy their 

 systems at pjeasure, as they are harmless, although they may be 

 wrong •, but when they allege that children are to be every day 

 plunged in cold water, and, whatever be their constitutions, in. 

 discriminately inured to cold and moisture ; that they are to be 

 kept wet in the feet, to prevent their catching cold ; and never 

 to be corrected when young, for fear of breaking their spirits 

 when old ; these are such noxious errors, that all reasonable men 

 should endeavour to oppose them. Many have been the chil- 

 dren whom these opinions, begun in speculation, have injurea 

 or destroyed in practice ; and I have seen many a little philoso- 

 phical martyr, whom I wished, but was unable to relieve. 



If any system be therefore necessary, it is one that would 

 serve to show a very plain point ; that very little system is ne- 

 cessary. The natural and common course of education is in 

 every respect the best ; I mean that in which the child is per- 

 mitted to i)lay among its little equals, from whose similar in 

 s: ructions it often gains the most useful stores of knowledge. A 

 child is not idle because it is playing about the fields, or pursu- 



