The faculty of judgment, which cannot come
into play without mature experience, should be left to itself; and
care should be taken not to anticipate its action by inculcating
prejudice, which will paralyze it for ever.
On the other hand, the memory should be specially taxed in youth,
since it is then that it is strongest and most tenacious. But in
choosing the things that should be committed to memory the utmost care
and forethought must be exercised; as lessons well learnt in youth are
never forgotten. This precious soil must therefore be cultivated so as
to bear as much fruit as possible. If you think how deeply rooted in
your memory are those persons whom you knew in the first twelve years
of your life, how indelible the impression made upon you by the events
of those years, how clear your recollection of most of the things that
happened to you then, most of what was told or taught you, it will
seem a natural thing to take the susceptibility and tenacity of the
mind at that period as the ground-work of education. This may be done
by a strict observance of method, and a systematic regulation of the
impressions which the mind is to receive.
But the years of youth allotted to a man are short, and memory is, in
general, bound within narrow limits; still more so, the memory of any
one individual.
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