But while we give Seneca this credit, and allow that his intentions were thoroughly upright, we cannot but impugn his judgment for having thus deliberately adopted the morality of expedience; and we believe that to this cause, more than to any other, was due the extent of his failure and the misery of his life.  We may, indeed, be permitted to doubt whether Nero himself—­a vain and loose youth, the son of bad parents, and heir to boundless expectations—­would, under any circumstances, have grown up much better than he did; but it is clear that Seneca might have been held in infinitely higher honour but for the share which he had in his education.  Had Seneca been as firm and wise as Socrates, Nero in all probability would not have been much worse than Alcibiades.  If the tutor had set before his pupil no ideal but the very highest, if he had inflexibly opposed to the extent of his ability every tendency which was dishonourable and wrong, he might possibly have been rewarded by success, and have earned the indelible gratitude of mankind; and if he had failed he would at least have failed nobly, and have carried with him into a calm and honourable retirement the respect, if not the affection, of his imperial pupil.  Nay, even if he had failed completely, and lost his life in the attempt, it would have been infinitely better both for him and for mankind.  Even Homer might have taught him that “it is better to die than live in sin.”  At any rate he might have known from study and observation that an education founded on compromise must always and necessarily fail.  It must fail because it overlooks that great eternal law of retribution for and continuity in evil, which is illustrated by every single history of individuals and of nations.  And the education which Seneca gave to Nero—­noble as it was in many respects, and eminent as was its partial and temporary success—­was yet an education of compromises.  Alike in the studies of Nero’s boyhood and the graver temptations of his manhood, he acted on the foolishly-fatal principle that

     “Had the wild oat not been sown,
      The soil left barren scarce had grown,
      The grain whereby a man may live.”

Any Christian might have predicted the result; one would have thought that even a pagan philosopher might have been enlightened enough to observe it.  We often quote the lines—­

     “The child is father of the man,”

and

     “Just as the twig is bent the tree inclines.”

But the ancients were quite as familiar with the same truth under other images.  “The cask,” wrote Horace, “will long retain the odour of that which has once been poured into it when new.”  Quintilian, describing the depraved influences which surrounded even the infancy of a Roman child, said, “From these arise first familiarity, then nature.”