My perfumed doublet gratifies my own scent at first; but after I have worn it three days together, ’tis only pleasing to the bystanders.  This is yet more strange, that custom, notwithstanding long intermissions and intervals, should yet have the power to unite and establish the effect of its impressions upon our senses, as is manifest in such as live near unto steeples and the frequent noise of the bells.  I myself lie at home in a tower, where every morning and evening a very great bell rings out the Ave Maria:  the noise shakes my very tower, and at first seemed insupportable to me; but I am so used to it, that I hear it without any manner of offence, and often without awaking at it.

Plato—­[Diogenes Laertius, iii. 38.  But he whom Plato censured was not a boy playing at nuts, but a man throwing dice.]—­reprehending a boy for playing at nuts, “Thou reprovest me,” says the boy, “for a very little thing.”  “Custom,” replied Plato, “is no little thing.”  I find that our greatest vices derive their first propensity from our most tender infancy, and that our principal education depends upon the nurse.  Mothers are mightily pleased to see a child writhe off the neck of a chicken, or to please itself with hurting a dog or a cat; and such wise fathers there are in the world, who look upon it as a notable mark of a martial spirit, when they hear a son miscall, or see him domineer over a poor peasant, or a lackey, that dares not reply, nor turn again; and a great sign of wit, when they see him cheat and overreach his playfellow by some malicious treachery and deceit.  Yet these are the true seeds and roots of cruelty, tyranny, and treason; they bud and put out there, and afterwards shoot up vigorously, and grow to prodigious bulk, cultivated by custom.  And it is a very dangerous mistake to excuse these vile inclinations upon the tenderness of their age, and the triviality of the subject:  first, it is nature that speaks, whose declaration is then more sincere, and inward thoughts more undisguised, as it is more weak and young; secondly, the deformity of cozenage does not consist nor depend upon the difference betwixt crowns and pins; but I rather hold it more just to conclude thus:  why should he not cozen in crowns since he does it in pins, than as they do, who say they only play for pins, they would not do it if it were for money?  Children should carefully be instructed to abhor vices for their own contexture; and the natural deformity of those vices ought so to be represented to them, that they may not only avoid them in their actions, but especially so to abominate them in their hearts, that the very thought should be hateful to them, with what mask soever they may be disguised.