But if, in spite of your precautions, the child contrives to do some damage, if he breaks some useful article, do not punish him for your carelessness, do not even scold him; let him hear no word of reproval, do not even let him see that he has vexed you; behave just as if the thing had come to pieces of itself; you may consider you have done great things if you have managed to hold your tongue.

May I venture at this point to state the greatest, the most important, the most useful rule of education?  It is:  Do not save time, but lose it.  I hope that every-day readers will excuse my paradoxes; you cannot avoid paradox if you think for yourself, and whatever you may say I would rather fall into paradox than into prejudice.  The most dangerous period in human life lies between birth and the age of twelve.  It is the time when errors and vices spring up, while as yet there is no means to destroy them; when the means of destruction are ready, the roots have gone too deep to be pulled up.  If the infant sprang at one bound from its mother’s breast to the age of reason, the present type of education would be quite suitable, but its natural growth calls for quite a different training.  The mind should be left undisturbed till its faculties have developed; for while it is blind it cannot see the torch you offer it, nor can it follow through the vast expanse of ideas a path so faintly traced by reason that the best eyes can scarcely follow it.

Therefore the education of the earliest years should be merely negative.  It consists, not in teaching virtue or truth, but in preserving the heart from vice and from the spirit of error.  If only you could let well alone, and get others to follow your example; if you could bring your scholar to the age of twelve strong and healthy, but unable to tell his right hand from his left, the eyes of his understanding would be open to reason as soon as you began to teach him.  Free from prejudices and free from habits, there would be nothing in him to counteract the effects of your labours.  In your hands he would soon become the wisest of men; by doing nothing to begin with, you would end with a prodigy of education.

Reverse the usual practice and you will almost always do right.  Fathers and teachers who want to make the child, not a child but a man of learning, think it never too soon to scold, correct, reprove, threaten, bribe, teach, and reason.  Do better than they; be reasonable, and do not reason with your pupil, more especially do not try to make him approve what he dislikes; for if reason is always connected with disagreeable matters, you make it distasteful to him, you discredit it at an early age in a mind not yet ready to understand it.  Exercise his body, his limbs, his senses, his strength, but keep his mind idle as long as you can.  Distrust all opinions which appear before the judgment to discriminate between them.  Restrain and ward off strange impressions; and to prevent the birth of evil do not hasten to do well, for goodness is only possible when enlightened by reason.  Regard all delays as so much time gained; you have achieved much, you approach the boundary without loss.  Leave childhood to ripen in your children.  In a word, beware of giving anything they need to-day if it can be deferred without danger to to-morrow.