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The Child Is the Father of the Man

OUTLINE
  1. Introduction.
  2. Various opinions of writers about the child.
  3. Good atmosphere is necessary for the of child growth.
  4. Conclusion.

The Child Is the Father of the Man

Just as the morning foreshadows the day, so does the child reveal the future man it is going to be, showing all those tendencies which subsequently become distinct. A man is but an overgrown child, and generally retains in him some of the refreshing features of childhood.

The child may not be the spiritual being as Wordsworth has painted it, but it is fresh from God, and is quite innocent. We can observe its mind very easily and analyses its character. On doing so, we shall come across certain inherited dispositions. Good and bad, which lie in it in a germicide condition like seeds which one day would sprout up into flower and fruits? Byron calls the child “a rose with all its sweetest leaves yet folded”. Pollock says that children are “living jewels, dropped unstained from heaven.” But all the same they are the tomorrow of society and as such have embedded in them the glory of manhood also, holding in their hands the destiny of the nation.

A man’s destiny hinges on his childhood. It is, therefore imperative on our part to see that the child is able to retain some of his pristine innocence and purity when he grows up. The conventions and the false creeds of the world should not be grafted  on his minds, so that in later years he may have come of the child’s heart left to respond to the earliest enchantment.’ The careers of many children have been blighted for want of proper care and training. If we want to give the child something positive, let us plant in him the seeds of those virtues which would bear only sweet fruit in life. For the nothing is no necessary as a good home and a good company. We daily come across examples of men who developed rightly under right influence and of men who went astray because none cared to preserve in them the instincts of childhood.

 

Not that all the instincts of a child are to be fostered. The child is the father of the man. He has in him all those tendencies which would become prominent later on. So we should curb down the vicious tendencies and encouraging the virtuous ones. Only we should keep him free from the contamination of the social .conventions as long as he is not able to form a mature judgement. Let us not teach him our so-called wisdom what will make him lose his angelic lustre and become a slave to customs and the world.
If there is anything that will endure.
The eye of God because if still is pure.
It is the spirit of a little child,
Fresh from his hand, and therefore, undefiled.
Nearer the gate of paradise than we,
Our children breathe its airs, its angels see;
And when they pray God hears their simple prayer,
Yea, even sheathed his sword, in judgement bare, Stoddard)