I try to think as a young person does. Young people don't know that their ideas have been tried before and probably won't work. That makes them experiment and hit upon great discoveries.

I'm thinking of Emerson:
"A boy is in the parlour what the pit is in the playhouse; independent, irresponsible, looking out from his corner on such people and facts as pass by, he tries and sentences them on their merits, in the swift, summary way of boys, as good, bad, interesting, silly, eloquent, troublesome. He cumbers himself never about consequences, about interests: he gives an independent, genuine verdict. You must court him: he does not court you. But the man is, as it were, clapped into jail by his consciousness. As soon as he has once acted or spoken with eclat, he is a committed person, watched by the sympathy or the hatred of hundreds, whose affections must now enter into his account. "

It was normal to use boy and man to indicate child and adult, regardless of sex. If it were written today, it would be clear it's talking about conscious minds without regard to sex.