‘GIVE ME THE CHILD UNTIL HE IS SEVEN AND I WILL GIVE YOU THE MAN.”

“GIVE ME THE CHILD UNTIL HE IS SEVEN AND I WILL GIVE YOU THE MAN.” I posted here that I think I have the same self that I had fifty years ago when I was 16 . If pressed, I would have said that I have the same self I had when I was ten. I would choose that line of demarcation because that was when I first started reading grownup books (in my case, all the Sherlock Holmes stories). THE UP SERIES has made me reconsider. A sentence is repeated in each episode— a sentence from the Jesuits—“Give me the child until he is seven and I will give you the man.” I don’t think that one can predict what each of the seven year olds in THE UP SERIES will become—at least, Mary Jane and I couldn’t as we watched. But, looking back, it is possible to see, in the grownups, the children who were seven. It must be true that one could also find me in the seven year old I was.