Page:Home Education by Isaac Taylor (1838).djvu/130

 The season of early childhood, as compared with the preceding years of infancy, is distinguished, as well in other respects, as by a distinct consciousness of the passage of time; and this simple circumstance renders a different mode of treatment necessary. A child, before its fifth year, and even later, if in perfect health, does not know that the day is long; for the infant mind glides down the stream of moments, conscious only of the present, and altogether without thought of periods, intervals, and measured seasons of duration:the infant mind has no weariness, or disquietude, connected with the slow numbering of hours, days, weeks, months. But at length, and in pro-portion as the mind acquires the habit of pondering upon its own conditionof reflecting, it becomes an occupant of duration, and learns to measure the eras of the day by the periodic changes of its own feelings.

This mental revolution must then be provided for by stated occupations. Deprived of this means of diverting the uneasy consciousness of time, the mind either sinks into inanity, or seeks relief in the devices of a mischievous activity. The listlessness of a child is altogether a different thing from the inapplicable thoughtlessness of an infant; and it is a state of mind which should always be relieved. As soon as Time is felt, the mind and the body have only the alternative of being employed, or idle; and idleness is not a passive, but an active ill.

At the entrance upon childhood, there is therefore needed the forms, at least, if not much of the substance of serious application. There must be school hours, and a certain regard paid to the clock, even in relation to amusements. As to the two, or perhaps three, hours of the day, at twice, which are spent in school, it will be easy to fill them up with a jog-trot application to the mechanical branches of education. But here, a capital distinction between school and home education must be pointed out, and