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. I congratulate you, Strephon. Heaven has granted you your desire, and I hope now your prayer has been heard, you shall have all the contentment you promised yourself when it should.
STR. O Damocles, how ill do we mortals judge for ourselves! I was extremely impatient to be a father, but now that I am, I feel I have brought a very heavy burden upon me. For the public has a right to expect from me I should use my best endeavours to make my son a good citizen. And the child I have been the instrument of bringing into the world, has a right, as a rational creature in embrio, to claim my care to make him betimes really such. For this task hath nature left to parents. This, to me, is the language of his eager looks, and of all his melting groans and cries. Nature appears to me to call upon me by all these heart-moving signs shall I say, or voices, to think seriously of the important trust and charge I have brought upon myself. In this deep concern do I come to you, Damocles, for advice. Is it indeed possible that a child may be made early virtuous, and that all the vice in the world is chiefly owing to neglect of education, or wrong management of children in their tender, docile, pliable years? I have often heard that Socrates was wont to say, “That if a right course were taken with children, there would not be so much need of chastisement as the general practice has established: But tho’ we are generally wise enough to begin with other creatures we would make good for somewhat, when they are very young; yet our own offspring we sadly neglect in this point, and having taken a great deal of pains to make them ill children, we foolishly expect they should be good men.” But what can this course be? Socrates is no more: And to whom can I go but you, Damocles, who hath indeed had wonderful success in training up children in wisdom and virtue? The progress of some of your young pupils is in truth astonishing.
DAM. I do not boast of any particular secret in this business. But if children are sent to me uncorrupted, it must be my fault if they become such under my inspection. ’Tis difficult to amend, but it is, I think, very easy and very pleasant to form good habits. I know a certain set of philosophers have represented mankind as originally deformed, as coming into the world with very depraved minds, with a strong biass to vice, and a violent aversion to virtue, which the best education cannot totally overcome; as if habits could precede exercise, nay thought itself.—But setting aside all other reasons, by which I could easily shew the absurdity of this doctrine, I have never found in experience children not to be, at least, very susceptible of good impressions, when due care is bestowed to convey them into their tender minds: And indeed I have often wondered, considering the common mismanagement of children, that there are any footsteps of virtue left in the world.
STR. You call up my attention wonderfully. This I have often heard was your common doctrine. Pray let me hear you fully on this subject. I wish it were so as you say, and that I knew how to avoid these fatal mismanagements.
DAM. I desire to know what vice can be named which parents and those about children do not breed and nurse up in children’s minds.
STR. You mean by their bad example. Don’t you?
DAM. No, Strephon. That is indeed encouragement enough. But I mean downright teaching them vice.
STR. Can the worst of parents be so abandoned as to take pains directly to instruct children in vice, and recommend it to them?
DAM. Alas! Strephon, the best of parents do it, but it is because they do not reflect what they are doing.
STR. As how, for I am all attention. I would, methinks, sooner cut my dear infant’s throat, than have the least share in corrupting his mind. There is, in my sentiment, no comparison in point of guilt between the two, both monstrous crimes. But how is this done by the best of parents?
DAM. I will give you one or two familiar instances of it, which yet you may perhaps have not attended to. Do not very good parents instil revenge and cruelty into their infants before they can go? “Give me a blow that I may beat him,” is a lesson repeated to children every day. And it is thought nothing, because their little hands can do no hurt. But let me ask you, must not this lesson corrupt their minds? Is not this not only recommending the way of force and violence to them, but actually setting them into it, and practising them in it? Reflect a little how habits are contracted, how temper is formed, and then tell me whether it be strange that those who have been thus taught, practised and applauded when little, for striking and hurting others by proxy, and thus encouraged to take delight in doing harm and making others suffer, are prepared and prone to do it when they are strong enough to make their own weight felt, and to deal blows to some purpose. What say you Strephon?
STR. You confound me, Damocles. How was it possible I should never have made this obvious simple reflection to this moment? But go on, I beg you.
DAM. The coverings of our bodies, which a child ought early to be taught to consider merely as designed for modesty, and defence against the injuries of the weather, are they not made a matter of vanity and ostentation? A child is set a longing for some new finery, and when master is trimm’d with his embroidered suit, and his hair nicely dressed, how can his mother do less than lead him to the glass, and teach him to admire himself, calling him her prince, her charmer, and telling him how all the ladies must fall in love with him. We wonder how children come so early to like pageantry and show: And yet all children are taught to be proud of their cloaths before they can put them on. Is it strange they should continue to value themselves upon their outside, and to like dress and gawdy apparel when their parents have so early instructed and inured them to do so? Strephon, if we would reflect as we ought upon these very common practices, consider the force of early impressions, notions and habits, and withal call to mind that hunger and thirst, and a very few other appetites excepted, all the rest presuppose some previous idea of good or ill.—If we would, I say, duly ponder all this, we would not rashly charge nature with the perverseness and dissoluteness of the world, but be able to account for all the vices of mankind without blaming her, who will be found indeed to have provided us with no appetite or affection that is not necessary to us, necessary to make us capable of some noble acquisition or virtue.
STR. Enough, Damocles. To this source can I now trace luxury and voluptuousness in all its branches, avarice, false ambition, and indeed every vice. For