We bend the tree when it is young.--_Bulgarian Proverb_.
Fools and bairns should na see things half done. --_Scotch Proverb_.
No one is born master.--_Italian Proverb_.
_Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius in sensu_ is a favourite dictum of philosophy; primitive peoples might, perhaps, be credited with a somewhat different crystallization of thought: _nihil est in puero quod non prius in parenti_, "nothing is in the child which was not before in the parent," for belief in prenatal influence of parent upon child is widely prevalent. The following remarks, which were written of the semi-civilized peoples of Annam and Tonquin, may stand, with suitable change of terms, for very many barbarous and savage races:--
"The education of the children begins even before they come into the world. The prospective mother is at once submitted to a kind of material and moral _regime_ sanctioned by custom. Gross viands are removed from her table, and her slightest movements are regarded that they may be regular and majestic. She is expected to listen to the reading of good authors, to music and moral chants, and to attend learned societies, in order that she may fortify her mind by amusements of an elevated character. And she endeavours, by such discipline, to assure to the child whom she is about to bring into the world, intelligence, docility, and fitness for the duties imposed by social life" (518. XXXI. 629).
Among primitive peoples these ceremonies, dietings, doctorings, tabooings, number legion, as may be read in Ploss and Zmigrodzki.
The influence of the mother upon her child, beginning long before birth, continued in some parts of the world until long after puberty. The Spartan mothers even preserved "a power over their sons when arrived at manhood," and at the puberty-dance, by which the Australian leaves childhood behind to enter upon man's estate, his significant cry is: "My mother sees me no more!" (398. 153). Among the Chinese, "at the ceremony of going out of childhood, the passage from boyhood into manhood, the goddess of children 'Mother,' ceases to have the superintendence of the boy or girl, and the individual comes under the government of the gods in general."
That women are teachers born, even the most uncultured of human races have not failed to recognize, and the folk-faith in their ministrations is world-wide and world-old; for, as Mrs. Browning tells us:--