Chapter XVII. That it is Good to Train Children From a Still Early Age in Habits of Religion

[P] [1] ‘I TELL you then; and I affirm that the man who is to excel in anything must practise that very thing from his earliest youth, both in sport and in earnest, in every particular pertaining to the subject. Take for instance, the man who is to be a good husbandman or a builder of some kind; the one must play at building children’s houses, and the other at tilling the ground, and be who brings up either of them must provide small copies of the real tools for him; and whatever branches of knowledge must be learnt beforehand they must begin to learn; the carpenter for instance must learn to measure by rule or line, and the soldier to play at riding or some other such exercise; and by their sports the teacher must try to turn the children’s pleasures and desires to the point which they must reach to attain their end in life.

‘The chief point then in education, we say, is the right “training in the nursery,” which will best lead the soul of the child in his play to the love of that, in which, when he has become a man, he will need to be perfect in the excellence of his work.’

This also Moses had previously enacted, saying, ‘And these words, which I command thee this, day, shall be in thy heart and in thy soul, and thou shalt enforce them upon thy sons.’ [2] This the Hebrews are accustomed to do, training up all their young children from a tender age in the precepts of religion: and this is zealously practised to the present time in accordance with an ancestral custom in the Jewish nation.