3. Parents, therefore, will not fully perform their duty, if they merely teach their offspring to eat, to drink, to walk about, to talk, and to be adorned with clothing; for these things are merely subservient to the body, which is not the man, but his tabernacle only; the guest (the rational soul) dwells within, and rightly claims greater care than its outward tenement.[1] Plutarch has rightly derided such parents as desire beauty, riches, and honors for their children, and endeavor to promote them in these respects, regarding very little the adornment of the soul with piety and virtue, saying: “That those persons valued the shoe more than the foot.” And Crates the Theban, a Gentile philosopher, vehemently complaining of the madness of such parents, declared, as the poet relates:—
“Were I permitted to proclaim aloud everywhere,
I should denounce all those infatuated and shamefully wicked,
Whom destructive money agitates with excessive zeal.
Ye gather riches for your children, and neither nourish them with doctrine,
Nor cherish within them intellectual capability.”
- ↑ A. Bronson Alcott once said: “Character, natural and acquired, modified by temperament, by education, by society, government, and religion, is a subject worthy of all attention. All that affects its formation and reformation, all that mysterious process by which the human mind accomplisbes its great purposes—the perfection of its nature and the elevation of its hopes—should be regarded by a deep and scrutinizing attention by all those entrusted with its high capacities and lofty destinies.”
- ↑ Plato notes in this connection: “My belief is, not that a good body will by its own excellence make the soul good; but on the con-
