OF THE NATURAL LOVE OR KINDNESS OF PARENTS TO THEIR CHILDREN
THE SUMMARY
[Wisely said one (whosoever it was), That to banish amity and friendship from among men were as great hurt to the society of mankind as to deprive them of the light and heat of the sun: which being verified and found true in the whole course of this life, and in the maintenance of all estates; not without great cause nature hath cast and sprinkled the seed thereof in the generation and nourishment of a race and lineage, whereof she giveth evident testimonies in brute beasts, the better to move and incite us to our duty. That we may see, therefore, this precious seed and grain of amity, how it doth flower and fructify in the world, we must begin at the love and natural kindness of fathers and mothers to their children: for if this be well kept and maintained, there proceed from it an infinite number of contentments which do much assuage and ease the inconveniences and discommodities of our life. And Plutarch, entering into this matter, sheweth first in generality: That men learn (as it were) in the school of brute beasts, with what affection they should beget, nourish, and bring up their children; afterward he doth particulcirise thereof, and enrich the same argument by divers examples. But for that he would not have us think that he extolled dumb beasts above man and woman, he observeth and setteth down very well the difference that is of amities, discoursing in good and modest terms as touching the generation and nouriture of children, and briefly by the way representeth unto us the miserable entrance of man into this race upon earth, where he is to run his course. Which done, he proveth that the nourishing of infants hath no other cause and reason but the love of fathers and mothers; he discovereth the source of this affection; and for a conclusion, sheweth that what defect and fault soever may come between and be meddled among, yet it cannot altogether abolish the same.]
That which moved the Greeks at first to put over the decision of their controversies to foreign judges, and to bring into their country strangers to be their umpires, was the distrust and diffidence that they had one in another, as if they confessed thereby that justice was indeed a thing necessary for man's life, but it grew not among them: And is not the case even so as touching certain questions disputable in philosophy? for the determining whereof philosophers (by reason of the sundry and
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