Page:The Great Didactic of John Amos Comenius (1896).pdf/381

 ready to work together for the common good, and to help one another. And they actually will do so if they have been properly taught.

13. (xi) Virtue must be inculcated at a very early stage before vice gets possession of the mind.

For if you do not sow a field with good seed it will produce nothing but weeds of the worst kind. But if you wish to subdue it, you will do so more easily and with a better hope of success if you plough it, sow it, and harrow it in early spring. Indeed, it is of the greatest importance that children be well trained in early youth, since a jar preserves for a long time the odour with which it has been imbued when new.

14. (xii) The virtues are learned by constantly doing what is right.

We have seen in chaps. and that it is by learning that we find out what we ought to learn, and by acting that we learn to act as we should. So then, as boys easily learn to walk by walking, to talk by talking, and to write by writing, in the same way they will learn obedience by obeying, abstinence by abstaining, truth by speaking the truth, and constancy by being constant. But it is necessary that the child be helped by advice and example at the same time.

15. (xiii) Examples of well-ordered lives, in the persons of their parents, nurses, tutors, and school-fellows, must continually be set before children.

For boys are like apes, and love to imitate whatever they see, whether good or bad, even though not bidden to do so; and on this account they learn to imitate before they learn to use their minds. By “examples,” I mean living ones as well as those taken from books; in fact, living ones are the more important because they make a stronger impression. And therefore, if parents are worthy and careful guardians of domestic discipline, and if tutors are chosen with the greatest possible care, and are men of exceptional virtue, a great advance will have been made towards the proper training of the young in morals.