kind to him after a thousand fashions suitable to his age, which nature teaches parents better than I can: When, I say, by these ways of tenderness and affection, which parents never want for their children, you have also planted in him a particular affection for you; he is then in the state you could desire, and you have formed in his mind that true reverence which is always afterwards carefully to be continued, and maintained in both parts of it, love, and fear, as the great principles whereby you will always have hold upon him, to turn his mind to the ways of virtue and honour.
§100. When this foundation is once well laid, and you find this reverence begin to work in him, the next thing to be done, is carefully to consider his temper, and the particular constitution of his mind. Stubbornness, lying, and ill-natured actions, are not (as has been said) to be permitted in him from the beginning, whatever his temper be. Those seeds of vices are not to be suffered to take any root, but must be carefully weeded out, as soon as ever they begin to show themselves in him; and your authority is to take place and influence his mind, from the very dawning of any knowledge in him, that it may operate as a natural principle, whereof he never perceived the beginning, never knew that it was, or could be otherwise. By this, if the reverence he owes you be established early, it will always be sacred to him, and it will be as hard for him to resist as the principles of his nature.
§101. Having thus very early set up your authority, and by the gentler applications of it shamed him out of what leads towards an immoral habit, as soon as you have observed it in him, (for I would by no means have chiding used, much less blows, till obstinacy and incorrigibleness make it absolutely necessary) it will be fit to consider which way the natural make of his mind inclines him. Some men by the unalterable frame of their constitutions, are stout, others timorous, some confident, others modest, tractable, or obstinate, curious or careless, quick or slow. There are not more differences in men’s faces, and the outward