nately to deny it; and on the other hand not to say what really is not true. For this reason Plato forbids fables and fictitious stories being recited to children, for he maintains that they should be led directly to truth.[1] I do not know how that can be approved which certain persons do, who habitually instruct children to transfer the blame upon others when some evil is committed by themselves, and who derive jest and pleasure from accomplishing it. But who except the boy becomes really injured? If he become accustomed to interchange lies and jokes, of course he learns to lie.
13. Failure in respect of justice, a desire for the property of others, does not greatly attach to this early age, unless the nurses themselves, or those who have the charge of children, introduce this corruption; and this occurs if, in the presence of children, any one stealthily takes away things belonging to another, and conceals or secures food for themselves clandestinely, or induces another to do the same; whether it be done in jest or in earnest, such children as see it will imitate it, being in this respect really little apes; for whatever they see, they remember and they do it, too. Nurses, and such as have charge of children, ought, in the highest degree, to be cautious in these matters.
- ↑ The reference is to the Republic of Plato, which Rousseau declared to be the finest treatise ever written on education, and which Comenius himself held in high regard. Plato says: “Our first duty will be to exercise a superintendence over the authors of fables, selecting their good productions and rejecting the bad. And the selected fables we shall advise our nurses and mothers to repeat to their children, that they may thus mold their minds with the fables, even more than they shape their bodies with the hand.” Again: “Whatever at that age is adopted as a matter of belief has a tendency to become fixed and indelible; and therefore, perhaps, we ought to esteem it of the greatest importance that the fictions which children first hear should be adapted in the most perfect manner to the promotion of virtue.”
