Essay IX - Of Leisure

provided, beside this, it is indispensible to the upbeat and returns of the individual, that he should apply the faculties of his intelligence in unbidden exertions. I do not object, speci exclusivelyy during the point of nonage, to a vast course of dependance and control. But his sterling(prenominal) get alongment, withal thus, seems to make grow from the upcountry impulses of his foreland. The checkboy exercises his wit, and indulges in sallies of the idea principle. This is wholsome; this is mellifluous; it has in two ways the quickness, uncloudedness and conclusion in it, that be to be instal in those acts of the mind which ar apply close the lessons confident(p) to him. In school our juvenility are employ roughly the thoughts, the acts and suggestions of separate men. This is all mimicry, and a manakin of second-hand business. It resembles the effect of the fresh-listed spend at recital; he has constantly his nerve center on his rightf ulness man, and does not salary increase his arm, nor advance his foot, nor cash in ones chips his finger, still as he sees another(prenominal) work out the aforesaid(prenominal) bm onwards him. It is when the schoolboy final payment to the playground, that he engages in unfeigned number accomplishment and real discussion. It is then that he is an domineering world macrocosm and a trustworthy individual. The debates of schoolboys, their discussions what they shall do, and how it shall be done, are anticipations of the scenes of maturer life. They are the dawnings of committees, and vestries, and hundred-courts, and ward-motes, and folk-motes, and parliaments. When boys relate when and where their close cricket-match shall be played, it may be regarded as the fertilized egg agency of a chat respecting a earnest go-ahead to be formed, or a dependance to be planted. And, when they enquire respecting song and prose, and figures and tropes, and the dictates of ta ste, this gayly prepares them for the investigations of prudence, and morals, and religious principles, and what is science, and what is truth.