Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/65

A SERMON OF THE DANGEROUS CLASSES IN SOCIETY. experience and the examples of noble men; he travels a read already smooth and beaten. The world's cultivation, so slowly and painfully achieved, helps civilize him. He may then go further on, and cultivate himself; may transcend the development of mankind, adding new rounds to tho ladder. So doing he aids future children, who will one day climb above his head, he possibly crying against them,—that they climb only to fall, and thereby sweep off him and all below : that no new rounds can be added to the old ladder.

Still, after all the helps which our fathers have provided, every future child must go through the same points which we and our predecessors passed through, only more swiftly. Every boy has his animal period, when he can only eat and sleep, intelligence slowly dawning on his mind. Then comes his savage period, when he knows nothing of rights, when all thine is mine to him, if he can get it. Then comes his barbarous period, when he is ignorant and dislikes to learn ; study and restraint are irksome. He hates the school, disobeys his mother ; has reverence for nobody. Nothing is sacred to him—no time, nor place, nor person. He would grow up wild. The greater part of children travel beyond this stage. The unbearable boy becomes a tolerable youth; then a powerful man. He loves his duty; outstrips the men that once led him so unwilling and reluctant, and will set hard lessons for his grandsire, which that grandsire, perhaps, will not learn. The young learns of the old, mounts the ladder they mounted and the ladder they made. The reverse is seldom true, that the old climbs the ladder which the young have made, and over that storms new heights. Now and then you see it, but such are extraordinary and marvellous men. In the old story, Saturn did not take pains to understand his children, nor learn thereof; he only devoured them up, till some outgrew and overmastered him. Did the generation that is passing from the stage-ever comprehend and fairly judge the new generation coming on? In the world, the barbarian passes on and becomes the civilized, then the enlightened.

In the physical process of growth from the baby to the max;, there is no direct intervention of the will. Therefore the process goes on regularly, and we do not see