From day comes night, and from the boy comes the man.
— Aristotle, Generation of Animals, 724a.22
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So when the nurse would discover its desires she guesses from
these indications what to offer it; if the child is quiet when
something is offered it, she thinks she has found the right thing,
but the wrong if it cries and screams. Thus, you see, the baby's
likes and dislikes are disclosed by these ominous signals, its
tears and screams: this holds good for a period of no less than
three years, no inconsiderable part of one's life to be spent ill
or well.
— Plato, Laws, Bk. 7, 792a
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But why an animal that is to stand erect must necessarily be a
biped, and must also have the superior parts of the body lighter,
and those that lie under heavier, is plain. Only if situated like
this could it possibly carry itself easily. And so man, the only
erect animal, has legs longer and stouter relatively to the upper
parts of his body than any other animals with legs. Children cannot
walk erect because they are always dwarf-like, the upper parts
of their bodies being too long and too stout in proportion to the
lower. With advancing years the lower increase disproportionately,
until they get their appropriate size, and then they succeed in
walking erect.
— Aristotle, Progression of Animals, 710b
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Why is it that children, who have a hot temperament, are not fond
of wine, although the Scythians and all who are courageous are
fond of wine because they have a hot temperament? Is it because
the latter, though they are hot, are also dry (for this is the
natural condition of a man) whereas children are hot and moist?
Now fondness for drink is due to a desire for moisture; and so
their moist condition prevents children from being thirsty, for
desire is a lack of something.
— Aristotle, Problems, Bk. 3, 872
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Now speaking is signifying something not merely by the voice but by
certain conditions of the voice, and not merely to signify pain or
pleasure; and
it is the letters which regulate these conditions. But children express
what they want to say in just the same way as wild beasts; for young
children
cannot yet make use of the letters in speech.
— Aristotle, Problems, Bk. 10, 895a
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Well, then if we employ all our ingenuity to keep our growing
child all through these three years from the experience of distress,
alarms and, so far as possible, pain itself, the growing soul is
all this time being rendered more cheerful and gracious.
— Plato, Laws, Bk. 7, 792b
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Children that come into the world before seven months can under
no circumstances survive. The seven months' children are the
earliest that are capable of life, and most of them are weakly– for
which reason, by the way, it is customary to swaddle them in wool– and
many of them are born with some of the orifices in the body imperforate,
for instance the ears or the nostrils. But as they get bigger
they become more perfectly developed, and many of them grow up.
— Aristotle, History of Animals, Bk. 7, 584b
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Until the child is forty days old it neither laughs nor weeps
during waking hours, but of nights it sometimes does both; and
for the most part it does not even notice being tickled, but passes
most of its time in sleep. As it keeps growing it gets more and
more wakeful; and moreover it shows signs of dreaming, though it
is long afterwards before it remembers what it dreams.
— Aristotle, History of Animals, Bk. 7, 587b
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Children are very commonly subject to convulsions, more especially
such of them as are more than ordinarily well-nourished on rich
or unusually plentiful milk from a stout nurse. Wine tends to excite
this malady, and red wine is worse than white, especially when
taken undiluted; and most things that tend to induce flatulency
are also bad, and constipation too is prejudicial. The majority
of deaths in infancy occur before a child is a week old, hence
it is customary to name the child at that age, from a belief that
it has now a better chance of survival. The malady is worst at
the full moon; and it is a dangerous symptom when the spasms begin
in the child's back.
— Aristotle, History of Animals, Bk. 7, 588a
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When twice seven years old, in the most of cases, the male begins
to engender seed; and at the same time hair appears upon the
pubes, in like manner, so Alcmaeon of Croton remarks, as plants
first
blossom and then seed. About the same time, the voice begins
to alter, getting harsher and more uneven, neither shrill as
formerly
nor deep as afterward, nor yet of any even tone, but like an
instrument whose strings are frayed and out of tune– they
say his voice is 'breaking.' Now this breaking of the voice is
the more apparent
in those who are making trial of their sexual powers; for in
those who are prone to lustfulness the voice turns into the voice
of
a man, but not so in the continent. For if a lad strives diligently
to hinder his voice from breaking, as some do of those who
devote themselves to music, the voice lasts a long while unbroken
and
may persist even with little change. And the breasts swell
and likewise the private parts, altering in size and shape. (And
at
this time of life those who try by friction to provoke emission
of seed are apt to experience pain as well as pleasure.) At
the same age in the female, the breasts swell and the so-called
menstrual
fluids commence to flow; and this fluid resembles fresh blood.
The 'whites' occur even in very young children, more especially
if their diet be largely of a fluid nature; and this malady
causes arrest of growth and loss of flesh. In the majority of
cases menstruation
begins by the time the breasts have grown to the height of
two fingers' breadth. In girls, too, about this time the voice
changes
to a deeper note; for while in general the woman's voice is
higher than the man's, so also the voices of girls are pitched
in a higher
key than the elder woman's, just as the boy's are higher than
the man's; and the girls' voices are shriller than the boys',
and a
maid's flute is tuned sharper than a lad's.
— Aristotle, History of Animals, Bk. 7, 581a-581b
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And therefore what I would say is this. A child's first infant
consciousness is that of pleasure and pain; this is the domain
wherein the soul first acquires virtue or vice. For wisdom
and assured true conviction, a man is fortunate if he acquires them
even on the verge of old age, and, in every case, he that possesses
them with all their attendant blessings has come to the full
stature of man. By education, then, I mean goodness in the
form in which
it is first acquired by a child. In fact, if pleasure and liking,
pain and dislike, are formed in the soul on right lines before
the age of understanding is reached, and when that age is attained,
these feelings are in concord with understanding, thanks to
early discipline in appropriate habits—this concord, regarded
as a whole, is virtue. But if you consider the one factor in
it, the rightly disciplined state of pleasures and pains whereby a
man, from his first beginnings on, will abhor what he should
abhor and relish what he should relish—if you isolate this factor
and call it education, you will be giving it its true name.
At least, that is my own conviction.
— Plato, Laws, Bk. 2, 653a-653c
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After the children have been born, the manner of rearing them
may be supposed to have a great effect on their bodily strength.
It would appear from the example of animals, and of those nations
who desire to create the military habit, that food which has most
milk in it is best suited to human beings; but the less wine the
better, if they would escape diseases. Also all the motions to
which children can be subjected at their early age are very useful.
But in order to preserve their tender limbs from distortion, some
nations have had recourse to mechanical appliances which straighten
their bodies. To accustom children to the cold from their earliest
years is also an excellent practice, which greatly conduces to
health, and hardens them for military service. Hence many barbarians
have a custom of plunging their children at birth into a cold stream;
others, like the Celts, clothe them in a light wrapper only. For
human nature should be early habituated to endure all which by
habit it can be made to endure; but the process must be gradual.
Such care should attend them in the first stage of life.
— Aristotle, Politics, Bk. 7, 1336a
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The next period lasts to the age of five: during this no demand
should be made upon the child for study or labor, lest its
growth be impeded; and there
should be sufficient motion to prevent the limbs from being inactive.
This can be secured, among other ways, by play, but the play
should not be vulgar
or tiring or effeminate. The Directors of Education, as they are termed,
should be careful what tales or stories the children hear, for all such
things are designed to prepare the way for the business of
later life, and should
be for the most part imitations of the occupations which they will hereafter
pursue in earnest. Those who are wrong who in their Laws attempt to check
the loud crying and screaming of children, for these contribute
toward their
growth, and, in a manner, exercise their bodies. Straining the voice
has a strengthening effect similar to that produced by the
retention of breathing
violent exertions. The Directors of Education should have an eye to their
bringing up, and in particular should take care that they are left as
little as possible with slaves. For until they are seven years
old, they must
live at home, and therefore, even at this early age, it is
to be expected that
they should acquire a taint of meanness from what they hear and see.
Indeed, there is nothing which the legislator should be more
careful to drive away
than indecency of speech; for the light utterance of shameful words leads
soon to shameful actions. The young especially should never be allowed
to repeat or hear anything of the sort. A freeman who is
found saying or doing
what is forbidden, if he be too young as yet to have the privilege of
reclining at the public tables, should be disgraced and beaten,
and an elder person
degraded as his slavish conduct deserves. And since we do not allow improper
language, clearly we should also banish pictures and speeches from the
stage which are indecent. Let the rulers take care there
be no image or picture representing unseemly actions, except
in the
temples of those gods at whose
festivals the law permits even ribaldry, and whom the law also permits
to be worshipped by persons of mature age on behalf of themselves,
their children,
and their wives. But the legislator should not allow youth to be spectators
of iambi or of comedy until they are of an age to sit at the public tables
and to drink strong wine; by that time education will have armed them
against the evil influences of such representations.
— Aristotle, Politics, Bk. 7, 1336a–1336b
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Why do children and the young of other animals have shriller voices
than the full-grown of their species, and that though shrillness
involves a quality of violence? Is it because the voice is
a movement of the air, and the swifter the movement the shriller is the sound?
Now a little air can be moved more easily and quickly than
a large
quantity, and it is set in motion owing either to its concretion
or to its dissolution by heat. Now since we draw in cold air
when we inhale, the air within us can become concreted by the act of
inhalation; but exhalation, when heat sets air in motion, can
become voice, for it is when we are exhaling that we speak, not when we
are inhaling. And since the young are hotter than their elders,
and their interior passages are narrower, they may well have
less air in them. So, as there is less in them of that which is moved
and more motive power, namely heat, for both reasons the movement
of the air may be quicker; and, for the reasons already stated,
the quicker the movement the shriller the voice.
— Aristotle, Problems, Bk.11, 900a–900b
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When I see a little child, for whom it is still proper to speak
in this way, lisping and playing, I like it and it seems to me
pretty and ingenious and appropriate to the child's age, and when
I hear it talking with precision, it seems to me disagreeable and
it vexes my ears and appears to me more fitting for a slave, but
when one hears a grown man lisping or sees him playing the child,
it looks ridiculous and unmanly and worthy of a beating.
— Plato, Gorgias, 485b–485c
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Why do children hesitate more in their speech than
grown men? Is it because, just as when we are children, we
always have
less control
over our hands
and feet and at a still earlier age cannot walk at all, so the young
cannot control their tongue? Now when they are quite small, they
cannot speak at
all but can only make sounds like the animals, because they lack control.
This is the cause not only of hesitancy in speech but also of lisping
and stammering. Lisping is due to the inability to master a letter– not
any letter but some particular one; stammering is due to the dropping
out of some particular letter or syllable; hesitancy is due to
the inability
to join one syllable to another sufficiently quickly. All three are due
to want of power; for the tongue is not an efficient servant
of the intelligence.
The same thing occurs in those who are drunken and in the old; but always
to a lesser extent than in children.
— Aristotle, Problems, Bk. 11, 902b
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The frame is thus enabled to cope with its nutriment, solid or
liquid, and presents a spectacle of health and beauty, to say nothing
of robustness. Now in view of those facts, how, let me ask, shall
we proceed to act? Would you have us raise a laugh by express statutes
directing the pregnant mother to take constitutionals, to mold
her infant, when she has borne it, like so much wax while it is
still plastic, and to keep it swaddled for its first two years?
And what of the nurse? Shall we compel her under legal penalties
to be incessantly carrying her charges to the country, the public
temples, the homes of their relatives, until they are strong enough
to stand on their own feet, and ever later to persist in carrying
a child about until it has completed its third year, for fear the
limbs may be distorted in infancy if too much weight is thrust
upon them? Shall we enact that our nurses must be the most robust
that we can get, and that there must be more than one for each
infant, and crown our work by prescribing a penalty for the offended
in case of neglect for any of these various directions? Surely
not. It would be to lay ourselves open to more than enough of the
consequences I have mentioned.
— Plato, Laws, Bk. 7, 789d
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Why is it that men are more inclined for sexual intercourse in
the winter and women in the summer? Is it because men are hotter
and drier in their nature, and women moister and cooler? In men
therefore during the winter the moisture and heat are sufficient
to cause the impulse (and it is moisture and heat which give rise
to the production of semen), whereas in women the heat is less
and the moisture is congealed owing to the lack of fire. But in
summer in women the heat is well proportioned, whereas in men it
is more than sufficient; for the excess dissolves much of their
strength. For this reason also children are thinner during the
summer; for it is a case of 'fire added to fire.'
— Aristotle, Problems, Bk. 4, 880a
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If the baby's thrust is in the direction of the head, the woman
bears her child easily. But if its side is proceeding, or it moves
toward the feet the woman gives birth with difficulty. Already
many of these women have perished, or their babies, or both.
— Hippocrates, Nature of the Child, 30
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Ajax: Yes. Let me speak to my boy and see his face.
Tecmessa: He’s not far off. The servants are looking after him.
Ajax: Why doesn’t he come at once, then?
Tecmessa: Eurysaces! Your father is calling for you.
You bring him! You have him by the hand.
Ajax: Is he coming? Doesn’t he hear your words?
Tecmessa: Here he is. See, the servant’s bringing him.
Ajax: Lift him up, lift him to me. He won’t be frightened,
Even by seeing this fresh-butchered gore,
Not if he really is my son. Break in
The colt straight off to his father’s rugged ways;
Train him to have a nature like his sire.
My boy, have better luck than your father had,
Be like him in all else; and you will not be base.
You know, even now I somewhat envy you:
You have no sense of all this misery.
Not knowing anything’s the sweetest life—
Ignorance is an evil free from pain—
Till the time comes when you learn of joy and grief.
And when you come to that,
Then you must show your father’s enemies
What sort of a man you are, and what man’s son.
Till then feed on light breezes, basking
In the tenderness of your young life, giving your mother joy.
For rest assured, the Greeks will not offer you outrage
Or hatefully insult you, even when we are parted.
I leave you a strong warden at the door,
Teucer. He will protect and rear you up
And stint you nothing, even though now he’s far away,
Gone on a distant raid in enemy country.
— You, men at arms and seafarers, my followers,
I enjoin this act of kindness on you all:
Pass on my command to Teucer; bid him take
My boy here to my home, present him
To Telamon and my mother, Eriboea,
And let him tend and nourish their old age
With constancy, till at the last they find
Their dark apartments with the god below.
As for my arms—
I say no arbiter of the Greeks shall set them
As a prize of competition for the army;
Certainly my destroyer shall not. Rather
You, my boy, take from me this great weapon
From which you have your name, Eurysaces;
Hold and direct it by its stalwart strap,
This sevenfold-oxhide-thick unbreachable shield.
The rest of my armor shall be buried with me.
— Sophocles, Ajax, 538–78
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