Your Morning Catherine
For Monday, September 9th, 2024
Week 77 of our regular morning feature here at Friedman of the Plains Worldwide in which we highlight the great words and works of great men and women, as well as those who are insufferable, delusional, and even fictional.
This Week Catherine the Great
“One cannot always know what children are thinking. Children are hard to understand, especially when careful training has accustomed them to obedience, and experience has made them cautious in their conversation with their teachers. Will you not draw from this the fine maxim that one should not scold children too much, but should make them trustful, so that they will not conceal their stupidities from us?”
A thoughtful statement unleavened by dogma. Keep it up, Catherine! You've got potential!
Interesting to speculate the make-up of her audience: While a vast majority of the less well-off remained illiterate, many in the middle classes could read more widely than could previous generations, authors like Voltaire and Rousseau and Paine, allowing them to consider whether or not to dip their children into the same kind of faith-infused nonsense that had in all likelihood diminished any joy they themselves might have felt as strangers in a strange land.