Locke: Reverence

Some Thoughts Concerning Education - by John Locke, 1693

§ 99 Reverence. When, by making your son sensible that he depends on you, and is in your power, you have established your authority; and by being inflexibly severe in your carriage to him, when obstinately persisting in any ill-natured trick which you have forbidden, especially lying, you have imprinted on his mind that awe which is necessary; and on the other side, when (by permitting him the full liberty due to his age, and laying no restraint in your presence to those childish actions, and gaiety of carriage, which, whilst he is very young, is as necessary to him as meat or sleep) you have reconciled him to your company, and made him sensible of your care and love of him by indulgence and tenderness, especially caressing him on all occasions wherein he does any thing well, and being kind to him after a thousand fashions, suitable to his age, which nature teaches parents better than I can: when, I say, by these ways of tenderness and affection, which parents never want for their children, you have also planted in him a particular affection for you, he is then in the state you could desire, and you have formed in his mind that true reverence, which is always afterwards carefully to be increased and maintained in both parts of it, love and fear, as the great principles whereby you will always have hold upon him to turn his mind to the ways of virtue and honour.

§ 100 Temper. When this foundation is once well laid, and you find this reverence begin to work in him, the next thing to be done, is carefully to consider his temper[ament], and the particular constitution of his mind. Stubbornness, lying, and ill-natured actions, are not (as has been said) to be permitted in him from the beginning, whatever his temper be: those seeds of vices, are not to be suffered to take any root but must be suppressed in their appearance; and your authority is to be established from the very dawning of any knowledge in him, that it may operate as a natural principle, whereof he never perceived the beginning, never knew what it was, or could be otherwise. By this, if the reverence he owes you be established early, it will always be sacred to him, and it will be as hard for him to resist it as the principles of his nature.

§ 101 Having thus very early established your authority, and, by the gentler applications of it, shamed him out of what leads towards any immoral habit; as soon as you have observed it in him (for I would by no means have chiding used, much less blows, till obstinacy and incorrigibleness make it absolutely necessary), it will be fit to consider which way the natural make of his mind inclines him. Some men, by the unalterable frame of their constitutions, are stout, others timorous; some confident others modest, tractable or obstinate, curious or careless. There are not more differences in men's faces, and the outward lineaments of their bodies, than there are in the makes and tempers of their minds; only there is this difference, that the distinguishing characters of the face; and the lineaments of the body, grow more plain and visible with time and age but the peculiar physiognomy of the mind is most discernible in children; before art and cunning have taught them to hide their deformities, and conceal their ill inclinations under a dissembled outside.

§ 102 Begin therefore betimes nicely to observe your son's temper, and that, when he is under least restraint. See what are his predominant passions and prevailing inclinations; whether he be fierce or mild, bold or bashful, compassionate or cruel, open or reserved, etc. For as these are different in him, so are your methods to be different, and your authority must hence take measures to apply it self [in] different ways to him. These native propensities, these prevalences of constitution, are not to be cured by rules, or a direct contest, especially those of them that are the humbler and meaner sort, which proceed from fear and lowness of spirit; though with art they may be much mended, and turned to good purposes. But of this be sure, after all is done, the bias will always hang on that side that nature first placed it: and, if you carefully observe the characters of his mind now in the first scenes of his life, you will ever after be able to judge which way his thoughts lean, and what he aims at even hereafter, when, as he grows up, the plot thickens, and he puts on several shapes to act it.