8. Influence of association to be watched educating young children.
I mention this, not out of any great necessity
there is in this present argument to distinguish nicely between natural and acquired antipathies; but I take notice of
it for another purpose, viz., that those who have children, or the charge of their education, would think it worth
their while diligently to watch, and carefully to prevent the undue connexion of ideas in the minds of young
people. This is the time most susceptible of lasting impressions; and though those relating to the health of the
body are by discreet people minded and fenced against, yet I am apt to doubt, that those which relate more
peculiarly to the mind, and terminate in the understanding or passions, have been much less heeded than the thing
deserves: nay, those relating purely to the understanding, have, as I suspect, been by most men wholly
overlooked.
