of those they have taken charge of, than of their own.  And that which I was saying of goats was upon this account; that it is ordinary all about where I live, to see the countrywomen, when they want milk of their own for their children, to call goats to their assistance; and I have at this hour two men-servants that never sucked women’s milk more than eight days after they were born.  These goats are immediately taught to come to suckle the little children, know their voices when they cry, and come running to them.  If any other than this foster-child be presented to them, they refuse to let it suck; and the child in like manner will refuse to suck another goat.  I saw one the other day from whom they had taken away the goat that used to nourish it, by reason the father had only borrowed it of a neighbour; the child would not touch any other they could bring, and died, doubtless of hunger.  Beasts as easily alter and corrupt their natural affection as we:  I believe that in what Herodotus relates of a certain district of Lybia, there are many mistakes; he says that the women are there in common; but that the child, so soon as it can go, finds him out in the crowd for his father, to whom he is first led by his natural inclination.

Now, to consider this simple reason for loving our children, that we have begot them, therefore calling them our second selves, it appears, methinks, that there is another kind of production proceeding from us, that is of no less recommendation:  for that which we engender by the soul, the issue of our understanding, courage, and abilities, springs from nobler parts than those of the body, and that are much more our own:  we are both father and mother in this generation.  These cost us a great deal more and bring us more honour, if they have anything of good in them.  For the value of our other children is much more theirs than ours; the share we have in them is very little; but of these all the beauty, all the grace and value, are ours; and also they more vividly represent us than the others.  Plato adds, that these are immortal children that immortalise and deify their fathers, as Lycurgus, Solon, Minos.  Now, histories being full of examples of the common affection of fathers to their children, it seems not altogether improper to introduce some few of this other kind.  Heliodorus, that good bishop of Trikka, rather chose to lose the dignity, profit, and devotion of so venerable a prelacy, than to lose his daughter; a daughter that continues to this day very graceful and comely; but, peradventure, a little too curiously and wantonly tricked, and too amorous for an ecclesiastical and sacerdotal daughter.  There was one Labienus at Rome, a man of great worth and authority, and amongst other qualities excellent in all sorts of literature, who was, as I take it, the son of that great Labienus, the chief of Caesar’s captains in the wars of Gaul; and who, afterwards, siding with Pompey the great, so valiantly maintained