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Opinion & Essays
- Dec, 1995 Issue #37
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ARISTOTLE ON YOUTH
Greek philosopher. (384-322 BC )
"...no man chooses the young to guide him, because he does not expect them to be prudent....
The young are more troubled by their passions than are their elders."
- TOPICS, Book III, Chapter 2.
"...for in children may be observed the traces and seeds of what will one day be settled
psychological habits, though psychologically a child hardly differs for the time being from an animal...."
- HISTORY OF ANIMALS, Book VIII, Chapter 1.
"...it is thought that a young man of practical wisdom cannot be found. The cause is that
such wisdom is concerned not only with universals but with particulars, which become familiar from experience, but a young man has
no experience, for it is length of time that gives experience...."
- NICOMACHEAN ETHICS, Book VI, Chapter 8.
"...in learning and in forming judgements on matters relating to their sense-perceptions
children are inferior to adults owing to the great amount of restlessness and motion in their souls."
- PHYSICS, Book VII, Chapter 3.
"The name self-indulgence is applied also to childish faults.... Children in fact live at
the beck and call of appetite, and it is in them that the desire for what is pleasant is strongest. If, then, it is not going to be
obedient and subject to the ruling principle, it will go to great lengths; for in an irrational being the desire for pleasure is insatiable
even if it tries every source of gratification, and the exercise of appetite increases its innate force, and if appetites are strong
and violent they even expel the power of calculation."
- NICOMACHEAN ETHICS, Book III, Chapter 12.
Copyright © 1995, Woodbury Reports, Inc. (This article may be reproduced
without prior approval if the copyright notice and proper publication and author attribution accompanies the copy.)
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