sides the ancient ones. There are minds which manifest themselves, both elsewise and in this wise, as Lipsius, in the learned and laborious structure of his “Politics.”[1] (a) I mean to say[2] that, however this may be, and of whatever worth these idle thoughts of mine,[3] I have not planned to conceal them, any more than a portrait of myself, bald and turning gray, in which the painter had drawn, not a perfect face, but mine.[4] For likewise these are the humours and opinions personal to me; I give them out as what I believe, not as what is to be believed; I aim here only at revealing myself, who may perchance be different to-morrow, if fresh experience changes me. I have no authority to be believed, nor do I desire to be so, feeling myself too poorly instructed to instruct another.
Some one who had read the preceding pages[5] said to me the other day, at my house, that I ought to have enlarged a little on the subject of the education of children. Well, madame, if I have any competence on that subject, I can make no better use of it than to make a present of it to the little man who threatens soon to make a happy exit from you (you are too noble by nature[6] to begin otherwise than with a boy); for, having had so large a part in the arrangement of your marmiage,[7] I have some right and interest in the greatness and prosperity of all that comes from it; besides that, the long-standing claim that you have upon my service well constrains me to desire honour, good, and profit for whatever concerns you. But, really, I know nothing of this matter except that the greatest and most weighty difficulty in human knowledge seems to lie at that point where it deals with the nurture and education of children. (c) Just as in agriculture the methods that precede planting are certain and easy, and the same with planting itself; but after what is planted has taken on life, there is a great variety of methods, and much difficulty in raising it; in like manner with
- ↑ Politica, sive civilis doctrine (Leyden, 1589).
- ↑ Recurring to the point at which the interpolation of the Édition Municipale begins, on page 198.
- ↑ Inepties.
- ↑ See infra, Book II, chap. 17.
- ↑ Chap. 25, “Of Pedantry.”
- ↑ Genereux (Latin generosus).
- ↑ He had signed the contract as proxy for the bridegroom’s parents.
