can do no Good to Children; their Want of Judgment makes them stand in need of Restraint and Discipline; and, on the contrary, Imperiousness and Severity, is but an ill Way of treating Men, who have Reason of their own to guide them, unless you have a Mind to make your Children when grown up, weary of you, and secretly to lay within themselves, When will you die, Father ?

§. 41. I imagine every one will judge it reasonable, that their Children, when little, should look upon their Parents as their Lords, their absolute Governors, and as such stand in Awe of them, and that, when they come to riper Years, they should look on them as their beft, as their only fure Friends, and as such love and reverence them. The Way I have mention'd, if I mistake not, is the only one to obtain this. We must look upon our Children, when grown up, to be like our selves, with the fame Paflions, the fame Defires. We would be thought rational Creatures, and have our Freedom; we love not to be uneasy under conftant Rebukes and Brow-beatings; nor can we bear severe Humours, and great Distance in those we converse with. Whoever has fuch Treatment when he is a Man, will look out other Company, other Friends, other Conversation, with whom he can be at Eafe. If therefore a strict Hand be kept over Children from the Beginning, they will in that

Age be tractable, and quietly submit to it, as never having known any other: And if, as they grow up to the Ufe of Reason, the Rigor of Government be, as they deferve it, gently relax'd, the Father's Brow more smooth'd to them, and the Distance by Degrees abated, his former Restraints will increase their Love, when they find it was only a Kindness to them, and a Care to make them capable to deserve the Favour of their Parents, and the Efteen of every Body else.

§. 42. Thus much for the fettling your Authority over your Children in general. Fear and Awe ought to give you the first Power over their Minds, and Love and Friendship in riper Years to hold it: For the Time must come, when they will be paft the Rod and Correction; and then, if the Love of you make them not obedient and dutiful, if the Love of Vertue and Reputation keep them not in laudable Courses, I afk, What Hold will you have upon them, to turn them to it? Indeed Fear of having a scanty Portion, if they difplease you, may make them Slaves to your Eftate, but they will be never the lefs ill and wicked in private; and that Reftraint will not last always. Every Man must fome Time or other be trufted to himself, and his own Conduct; and he that is a good, a vertuous and able Man, must be made fo

within. And therefore, what he is to re

ceive from Education, what is to sway and influence his Life, must be something put into him betimes; Habits woven into the very Principles of his Nature, and not a counterfeit Carriage, and dissembl'd Outfide, put on by Fear, only to avoid the prefent Anger of a Father, who perhaps may difinherit him.

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Punish

ment s.

§. 43. This being laid down in general, as the Course ought to be taken, 'tis fit we now come to confider the Parts of the Discipline to be us'd, a little more particularly. I have • spoken so much of carrying a strict Hand over Children, that perhaps I shall be fufpected of not confidering enough, what is due to their tender Age and Conftitutions. But that Opinion will vanish, when you have heard me a little farther: For I am very apt to think, that great Severity of Pu nishment does but very little Good, nay, great Harm in Education; and I believe it will be found, that Cateris paribus, those Children who have been most chaftis'd, feldom make the best Men. All that I have hitherto contended for, is, that whatsoever Rigor is necessary, it is more to be us'd, the younger Children are, and having by a due Applicati-on wrought its Effect, it is to be relax'd, and chang'd into a milder Sort of Government.

§. 44. A Compliance and Suppleness of their Wills, being by Awe. a steady Hand introduc'd by Pa

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rents, before Children have Memories to retain the Beginnings of it, will feem natural to them, and work afterwards in them, as if it were so, preventing all Occafions of struggling or repining. The only Care is, that it be begun early, and inflexibly kept to, 'till Awe and Respect be grown familiar, and there appears not the least Reluctancy in the Submiffion, and ready Obedience of their Minds. When this Reverence is once thus establish'd, (which it must be early, or else it will cost Pains and Blows to recover it, and the more, the longer it is deferr'd) 'tis by it mix'd still with as much Indulgence as they make not an ill Use of, and not by Beating, Chiding, or other ferwile Punishments, they are for the future to be govern'd as they grow up to more Understanding.

§. 45. That this is so, will be Self-deni- easily allow'd, when it is but consider'd, what is to be aim'd at in an ingenious Education, and upon what it turns.

1. He that has not a Mastery over his Inclinations, he that knows not how to refift the Importunity of present Pleasure or Pain, for the Sake of what Reason tells him is fit to be done, wants the true Principle of Vertue and Industry, and is in Danger never to be good for any Thing. This Temper therefore, so contrary to unguided Nature, is to be got betimes; and this Habit, as

the

the true Foundation of future Ability and Happiness, is to be wrought into the Mind, as early as may be, even from the first Dawnings of any Knowledge, or Apprehenfion in Children, and so to be confirm'd in them, by all the Care and Ways imaginable, by those who have the Oversight of their Education

§. 46. 2. On the other Side, if the Mind be curb'd, and bumbl'd Dejected. too much in Children; if their Spirits be abas'd and broken much, by too strict an Hand over them, they lose all their Vigor and Industry, and are in a worse State than the former. For extravagant young Fellows, that have Liveliness and Spirit, come sometimes to be set right, and so make able and great Men; but dejected Minds, timorous and tame, and low Spirits, are hardly ever to be rais'd, and very feldom attain to any Thing. To avoid the Danger that is on either Hand, is the great Art, and he that has found a Way how to keep up a Child's Spirit easy, active, and free, and yet, at the same Time, to restrain him from many Things he has a Mind to, and to draw him to Things that are uneasy to him, he, I say, that knows how to reconcile these seeming Contradictions, has, in my Opinion, got the true Secret of Education.

§. 47. The usual, lazy, and short Way by Chastisement, and the Rod, which is

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the