Cleo. The obligations we have to good parents for their care and education, is certainly very great.
Hor. That is the least. We are indebted to them for our being; we might be educated by an hundred others, but without them we could never have existed.
Cleo. So we could have no malt liquor, without the ground that bears the barley: I know no obligations for benefits that never were intended. Should a man see a fine parcel of cherries, be tempted to eat, and devour them accordingly with great satisfaction, it is possible he might swallow some of the stones, which we know by experience do not digest: If twelve or fourteen months after, he should find a little sprig of a cherry-tree growing in a field, where nobody would expect it, if he recollected the time, he had been there before, it is not improbable that he might guess at the true reason how it came there. It is possible, likewise, that for curiosity’s sake, this man might take up this plant, and take care of it; I am well assured, that whatever became of it afterwards, the right he would have to it from the merit of his action, would be the same which a savage would have to his child.
Hor. I think there would be a vast difference between the one and the other: the cherry-stone was never part of himself, nor mixed with his blood.
Cleo. Pardon me; all the difference, as vast as you take it to be, can only consist in this, That the cherry-stone was not part of the man who swallowed it, so long, nor received so great an alteration in its figure, whilst it was, as some other things which the savage swallowed, were, and received in their figure, whilst they stayed with him.
Hor. But he that swallowed the cherry-stone, did nothing to it; it produced a plant as a vegetable, which it might have done as well without his swallowing it.
Cleo. That is true; and I own, that as to the cause to which the plant owes its existence, you are in the right: but I plainly spoke as to the merit of the action; which in either case could only proceed from their intentions as free agents; and the savage might, and would in all probability act with as little design, to get a child, as the other had eat cherries in order to plant a tree. It is commonly said, that our children are our own flesh and blood: but this way of speaking is strangely figurative. However, allow it to be just, though rhetoricians have no name for it, what does it prove, what benevolence in us, what kindness to others in the intention?
Hor. You shall say what you please, but I think, that nothing can endear children to their parents more, than the reflection that they are their own flesh and blood.
Cleo. I am of your opinion; and it is a plain demonstration of the superlative value we have for our own selves, and every thing that comes from us, if it be good, and counted laudable; whereas, other things that are offensive, though equally our own, are in compliment to ourselves, industriously concealed; and, as soon as it is agreed upon that any thing is unseemly, and rather a disgrace to us than otherwise, presently it becomes ill manners to name, or so much as to hint at it. The contents of the stomach are variously disposed of, but we have no hand in that; and whether they go to the blood, or elsewhere, the last thing we did to them voluntarily, and with our knowledge, was swallowing them; and whatever is afterwards performed by the animal economy, a man contributes no more to, than he does to the going of his watch. This is another instance of the unjust claim we lay to every performance we are but in the least concerned in, if good comes of it, though nature does all the work; but whoever places a merit in his prolific faculty, ought likewise to expect the blame, when he has the stone, or a fever. Without this violent principle of innate folly, no rational creature would value himself on his free agency, and at the same time accept of applause for actions that are visibly independent of his will. Life in all creatures is a compound action, but the share they have in it themselves, is only passive. We are forced to breathe before we know it; and our continuance palpably depends upon the guardianship and perpetual tutelage of nature; whilst every part of her works, ourselves not excepted, is an impenetrable secret to us, that eludes all inquiries. Nature furnishes us with all the substance of our food herself, nor does she trust to our wisdom for an appetite to crave it; to chew it, she teaches us by instinct, and bribes us to it by pleasure. This seeming to be an action of choice, and ourselves being conscious of the performance, we perhaps may be said to have a part in it; but the moment after, nature resumes her care, and again withdrawn from our knowledge, preserves us in a mysterious manner, without any help or concurrence of ours, that we are sensible of. Since, then, the management of what we have eat and drank remains entirely under the direction of nature, what honour or shame ought we to receive from any part of the product, whether it is to serve as a doubtful means toward generation, or yields to vegetation a less fallible assistance? It is nature that prompts us to propagate as well as to eat; and a savage man multiplies his kind by instinct as other animals do, without more thought or design of preserving his species, than a new-born infant has of keeping itself alive, in the action of sucking.
Hor. Yet nature gave the different instincts to both, for those reasons.