ever upon the wing hunting for so easy a booty, as such an honest novice must be to the cunning sharpers of various sorts, with which the world abounds. Those who have wicked ends to promote, well know how to put on very deceitful appearances of different kinds, as may best serve their knavish purposes. Youth therefore ought to be learned to pull off the masks with which artful men may cover their designs, and be taught not to judge by the outside, but to discern through it into the filthy views that so often lurk under the most specious semblances.
“This skill in men and manners, is not the product of a few superficial thoughts, or even of much reading, but is the effect of experience and observation, in a man who has lived in the world with his eyes open, and conversed with men of all sorts: And to instil this knowledge into young minds with due precaution, to open this scene to them gradually, with a gentle and wary hand, and thus conduct them, as it were by the arm, into a world of dangers, by proper degrees, or step by step, requires great prudence, great dexterity. But he who thinks not this knowledge of mankind of more moment to his son than abstract speculations about the essences and modes of spirit and matter, than all the languages and all the learned sciences, forgets that the art of living right with men, and of managing one’s affairs with prudence, is the most necessary of all arts and sciences.
“Oh! my friend, said he, to one who desired to hear him on this subject, how large, how extensive, how profound, how difficult is this lesson, for it must comprehend all the dangers, temptations and snares that environ a young man from his first entrance upon the stage of the world, from all the several degrees, tempers, callings, professions, designs, and clubs or factions of men! A virtuous youth of birth and fortune must be prepared to be flattered and caressed by some, and ridiculed, affronted and shocked by others: He must be warned who are like to mislead, who to undermine, who to sooth and cajole, and who to banter and oppose him, and taught to distinguish the plain upright friend from the smooth officious villain.—But he must be taught thus to beware of the designs of men he hath to do with, and to distinguish realities from pretences and appearances, without contracting a too suspicious temper. For it is indeed hard to decide on which side the greater danger lies, in being too ready to confide, or too jealous and mistrustful. Both are extremes carefully to be avoided in forming youth: yet hood-winked they must not be, but accustomed to distinguish men, and to form right judgments of them, and to conceive of the world as they will really find it to be, so soon as they come into it. And therefore examples from history, from present times, and from just imitations of human manners, of men and things as they are, must be fairly set before them. In these faithful mirrors are they often to be shewn by a prudent teacher gradually, the whole of human life, all the various characters of mankind, all their different ruling passions, and all their different pursuits and arts.—And why indeed should we fear to shew virtue and vice together, or to set the one over against the other? Are not all the charms on the side of honesty and worth, till the mind is sadly corrupted by bad example; or till some appetite that might early have been directed into a very proper course, hath taken a very wrong one, and by indulgence is become too strong for precept, for reason, nay almost for suffering itself and fatal experience to conquer?—I say for fatal experience itself to subdue or reform. For have all the bad consequences Curio has suffered by his intemperance and debauchery been able to render him chaste and sober? And so is it with ambition, avarice, and every vice. Such is the fascination of habit. But what does this teach us, but that the great business of education is to form betimes good habits29 in the mind, that thinking and acting aright may by practice early become natural to young people. Accustom them to a graceful air in walking, in speaking, in the whole of their deportment, in all their motions from their childhood, and it will never leave them. And for the same reason, if we inure them to think well before they act, and to act prudently and virtuously, they will ever continue so to behave, as it were, by impulse: The first thoughts and motions of their minds on every occasion will be virtuous.
“They are strangers to human nature, continued he, who think it sufficient to give rules to their children: many good habits may be formed by exercise or practice, before precepts can be understood or retained: And rules without practice can never form habits. These can only be acquired by repeated acts. Therefore, what you think necessary for them to do, inure them to do it by frequent practice, as often as proper occasions return; nay, as much as is possible make occasions. By this method may the mind be made liberal, humane, compassionate, grateful, obedient and pliable to reason, long before the easiest reasonings can be fully comprehended.—Yet mistake me not, as if I were for delaying reasoning with children so long as is commonly done. They love and are pleased to be treated as rational creatures, much sooner than we are apt to imagine. And this is a noble pride that ought to be carefully cherished in them, and indeed made one of the principal handles for turning them into a right mould. Reason is called forth, strengthened and perfected by reasoning. And why is it, that it is so long of beginning to dawn in most children, but because we think it too early to draw it out, or invite it to disclose itself? As often as the kind experiment has been tried by such as understand how to make the young idea shoot, it hath been found that reasoning is understood by children almost as early as language. I do not mean that an infant should be argued with as a grown man, nay nor as one of six years old. Every thing in nature opens and expands itself gradually, and in proportion to the friendly aid it receives from art and culture. But when I say they should from the beginning be used to hear and obey reason, and so be treated like rational creatures, I mean, that they should always be made sensible, by the mildness of their managers, that it is not out of caprice or passion they desire or forbid them to do, but because it is useful and good for them so to do. This they are capable of understanding. And I think there is no virtue they should be excited to, nor no vice they should be kept from, of the fitness or unreasonableness of which they may not be convinced by arguments suited to their capacity and apprehension. To gain and preserve the parent’s and the tutor’s favour and love, and to avoid their displeasure, or falling into discredit or disgrace with them, are motives that will be intelligible from the earliest dawn of understanding. And this is always a very proper one to work by, while the instructor aims at nothing but establishing virtuous habits in their minds; that in particular, which is the foundation of all the rest, a liking to hear and act agreeably to reason, and desire to gain the love and esteem of the wise and good. Above all, let the examples they have ever before their eyes be such as we would have them to be. For by imitation do children learn not language merely, but whatsoever turn they first take of body or mind. By this means may they be insensibly moulded into any form. Had not nature made imitation natural to us, and given it a great power in forming our inward as well as our outward man, how very slow would our progress in any acquirement have been? But if kind nature hath thus framed us, let us follow nature, and make a proper use of this disposition and propensity, to form young children early and insensibly, without any pain to them, and with very little trouble to ourselves, into the inward temper and outward carriage we would have them betimes attain to. For whoever was so wicked, as not to wish his children to be good? And this is the only way of rendering them such, viz. by taking due care to practise and train them up in the good ways wherein they ought to walk. Teach them to relish no pleasure but what reason gives them, as it were out of her own hand: Teach them to make her their counsellor and their comforter; for she will lead them in the paths of honour, and fill their minds with consolation and joy that never cloys, and instead of enervating, invigorates the soul.”
But this method of nursing and educating virtue I find yet more fully illustrated by another conversation between our much loved Damocles and a friend of his, who had a more than ordinary share of those excellent and sweet affections, which are commonly called, in a peculiar sense, natural ones. Damocles having often asserted, that most vices were the early effects of bad education, and that by suitable care and discipline, any virtue might be taught and brought betimes to great vigour and perfection, almost in any mind, a certain father, called Strephon, very sollicitous about the right instruction of his son from his earliest years, is said to have thus accosted him.30
Damocles, you know I have been married for some time without having children, and that I was not a little uneasy on that account, but little did I foresee what an unknown anxiety was to sprout up in my breast, so soon as I saw a son come into the world.
DAM.
