Mankind seem to agree that children should be left under the
management of women during their childhood. Now, from all the
observation that I have been able to make, women of sensibility
are the most unfit for this task, because they will infallibly,
carried away by their feelings, spoil a child's temper. The
management of the temper, the first, and most important branch of
education, requires the sober steady eye of reason; a plan of
conduct equally distant from tyranny and indulgence: yet these
are the extremes that people of sensibility alternately fall
into; always shooting beyond the mark. I have followed this train
of reasoning much further, till I have concluded, that a person
of genius is the most improper person to be employed in
education, public or private. Minds of this rare species see
things too much in masses, and seldom, if ever, have a good
temper. That habitual cheerfulness, termed good-humour, is,
perhaps, as seldom united with great mental powers, as with
strong feelings. And those people who follow, with interest and
admiration, the flights of genius; or, with cooler approbation
suck in the instruction which has been elaborately prepared for
them by the profound thinker, ought not to be disgusted, if they
find the former choleric, and the latter morose; because
liveliness of fancy, and a tenacious comprehension of mind, are
scarcely compatible with that pliant urbanity which leads a man,
at least, to bend to the opinions and prejudices of others,
instead of roughly confronting them.
