To begin with the youth, or the military orbs, they are
circles to which the commonwealth must have a care to keep close.
A man is a spirit raised by the magic of nature; if she does not
stand safe, and so that she may set him to some good and useful
work, he spits fire, and blows up castles; for where there is
life, there must be motion or work; and the work of idleness is
mischief, but the work of industry is health. To set men to this,
the commonwealth must begin betimes with them, or it will be too
late; and the means whereby she sets them to it is education, the
plastic art of government. But it is as frequent as sad in
experience (whether through negligence, or, which in the
consequence is all one or worse, over-fondness in the domestic
performance of this duty) that innumerable children come to owe
their utter perdition to their own parents, in each of which the
commonwealth loses a citizen.
Wherefore the laws of a government, how wholesome soever in
themselves, are such as, if men by a congruity in their education
be not bred to find a relish in them, they will be sure to loathe
and detest. The education therefore of a man's own children is
not wholly to be committed or trusted to himself. You find in
Livy the children of Brutus, having been bred under monarchy, and
used to a court life, making faces at the Commonwealth of Rome:
"A king (say they) is a man with whom you may prevail when you
have need there should be law, or when you have need there should
be no law; he has favors in the right, and he frowns not in the
wrong place; he knows his friends from his enemies.
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