us make choice of that which directly and professedly serves to that end.  If we are once able to restrain the offices of human life within their just and natural limits, we shall find that most of the sciences in use are of no great use to us, and even in those that are, that there are many very unnecessary cavities and dilatations which we had better let alone, and, following Socrates’ direction, limit the course of our studies to those things only where is a true and real utility: 

                              “Sapere aude;
               Incipe; Qui recte vivendi prorogat horam,
               Rusticus exspectat, dum defluat amnis; at ille
               Labitur, et labetur in omne volubilis oevum.”

["Dare to be wise; begin! he who defers the hour of living well is like the clown, waiting till the river shall have flowed out:  but the river still flows, and will run on, with constant course, to ages without end.”—­Horace, Ep., i. 2.]

’Tis a great foolery to teach our children: 

              “Quid moveant Pisces, animosaque signa Leonis,
               Lotus et Hesperia quid Capricornus aqua,”

["What influence Pisces have, or the sign of angry Leo, or
Capricorn, washed by the Hesperian wave.”—­Propertius, iv.  I, 89.]

the knowledge of the stars and the motion of the eighth sphere before their own: 

["What care I about the Pleiades or the stars of Taurus?”
—­Anacreon, Ode, xvii. 10.]

Anaximenes writing to Pythagoras, “To what purpose,” said he, “should I trouble myself in searching out the secrets of the stars, having death or slavery continually before my eyes?” for the kings of Persia were at that time preparing to invade his country.  Every one ought to say thus, “Being assaulted, as I am by ambition, avarice, temerity, superstition, and having within so many other enemies of life, shall I go ponder over the world’s changes?”

After having taught him what will make him more wise and good, you may then entertain him with the elements of logic, physics, geometry, rhetoric, and the science which he shall then himself most incline to, his judgment being beforehand formed and fit to choose, he will quickly make his own.  The way of instructing him ought to be sometimes by discourse, and sometimes by reading; sometimes his governor shall put the author himself, which he shall think most proper for him, into his hands, and sometimes only the marrow and substance of it; and if himself be not conversant enough in books to turn to all the fine discourses the books contain for his purpose, there may some man of learning be joined to him, that upon every occasion shall supply him with what he stands in need of, to furnish it to his pupil.  And who can doubt but that this way of teaching is much more easy and natural than that of Gaza,—­[Theodore Gaza, rector of the Academy of Ferrara.]—­in which the precepts are so intricate, and so harsh, and the words so vain, lean; and insignificant, that there is no hold to be taken of them, nothing that quickens and elevates the wit and fancy, whereas here the mind has what to feed upon and to digest.  This fruit, therefore, is not only without comparison, much more fair and beautiful; but will also be much more early ripe.