“My lord Ottaviano, since you have highly praised good education, and seemed almost to think that it is the chief means of making a man virtuous and good, I should like to know whether this instruction, which the Courtier must give his prince, ought to be begun with practice and with daily behaviour as it were, so as to accustom him to right doing without his perceiving it; or whether a beginning ought to be made by demonstrating to his reason the quality of good and evil, and by making him understand, before he sets out, which is the good way and the one to follow, and which is the bad way and the one to avoid: in short whether his mind ought to be first imbued and implanted with the virtues through the reason and intelligence or through practice.”
My lord Ottaviano said:
“You start me upon too long a discourse; still, in order that you may not think I abstain from lack of will to answer your questions, I say that just as our mind and body are two things, so too the soul is divided into two parts, of which one has the reason in it, and the other has the appetite. Then, just as in generation the body precedes the soul, so the unreasoning part of the soul precedes the reasoning part: which is clearly perceived in children, in whom anger and lust are seen almost as soon as they are born, but with the lapse of time reason appears. Hence care must be taken of the body earlier than of the soul, and of appetite earlier than of reason; but care of the body with a view to the soul, and of the appetite with a view to reason: for just as intellectual worth is perfected by instruction, so is moral worth perfected by practice. We ought, therefore, first to teach through habit, which is able to govern the as yet unreasoning appetites and to direct them towards the good by means of that fair use; next we ought to establish them through the understanding, which, although it shows its light more tardily, still furnishes a mode of making the virtues more perfectly fruitful to one whose mind is well trained by practice,—wherein, to my thinking, lies the whole matter.”
“Before you go further, I should like to know what care ought to be taken of the body, since you said that we ought to take care of it earlier than of the soul.”
“As to that,” replied my lord Ottaviano, laughing, “ask those who nourish their bodies well, and are plump and fresh; for mine, as you see, is not too well conditioned. Yet of this also it would be possible to say much, as of the proper time for marriage, to the end that the children may not be too near or too far from their father’s age; of the exercises and education to be followed from birth and during the rest of life, in order to make them handsome, strong and sturdy.”
My lord Gaspar replied:
“That which would best please women for making their children handsome and beautiful, methinks would be that community wherein Plato in his Republic wishes them to be held, and after that manner.”[[441]]
Then my lady Emilia said, laughing: