"Conclude then from thence, Son, that it is fitter Young Men should govern Families, than Old; and the rather, that according to your own Principles, Hercules, Achilles, Epaminondas, Alexander, and Cæsar, of whom most part died under Fourty Years of Age, could have merited no Honours, as being too Young in your account, though their Youth was the only cause of their Famous Actions; which a more advanced Age would have rendered ineffectual, as wanting that Heat and Promptitude that rendered them so highly successful. But you'll tell me, that all the Laws of your World do carefully enjoin the Respect that is due to Old Men: That's true; but it & as true also, that all who made Laws have been Old Men, who feared that Young Men might justly have dispossessed them of the Authority they had usurped.
"You owe nothing to your mortal Architector, but your Body only; your Soul comes from Heaven, and Chance might have made your Father your Son, as now you are his. Nay, are you sure he hath not hindered you from Inheriting a Crown? Your Spirit left Heaven, perhaps with a design to animate the King of the Romans, in the Womb of the Empress; it casually encountered the Embryo of you by the way, and it may be to shorten its journey, went and lodged there: No, no, God would never have razed your name out of the List of Mankind, though your Father had died a Child. But who knows, whether you might not have been at this day the work of some valiant Captain, that would have associated you to his Glory, as well as to his Estate. So that, perhaps, you are no more indebted to your Father—for the life he hath given you, than you would be to a Pirate who had put you in Chains, because he feeds you: Nay, grant he had begot you a Prince, or King; a Present loses its merit, when it is made without the Option of him who receives it. Cæsar was killed, and so was Cassius too: In the mean time Cassius was obliged to the Slave, from whom he begg'd his Death, but so was not Cæsar to his Murderers, who forced it upon him. Did your Father consult your Will and Pleasure, when he Embraced your Mother? Did he ask you, if you thought fit to see that Age, or to wait for another; if you would be satisfied to be the Son of a Sot, or if you had the Ambition to spring from a Brave Man? Alas, you whom alone the business concerned, were the only Person not consulted in the case. May be then, had you been shut up any where else, than in the Womb of Nature's Ideas, and had your Birth been in your own Opinion, you would have said to the Parca, my dear Lady, take another Spindle in your Hand: I have lain very long in the Bed of Nothing, and I had rather continue an Hundred years still without a Being, than to Be to day, that I may repent of it to morrow: However, Be you must, it was to no purpose for you to whimper and squall to be taken back again to the long and darksome House they drew you out of, they made as if they believed you cryed for the Teat.
"These are the Reasons, at least some of them, my Son, why Parents bear so much respect to their Children: I know very well that I have inclined to the Childrens side more than in justice I ought; and that in favour of them, I have spoken a little against my Conscience. But since I was willing to repress the Pride of some Parents, who insult over the weakness of their little Ones; I have been forced to do as they do who to make a crooked Tree streight bend it to the contrary side, that betwixt two Conversions it may become even: Thus I have made Fathers restore to their Children what they have taken from them, by taking from them a great deal that belonged to them; that so another time they may be content with their own. I know very well also that by this Apology I have offended all Old men: But let them remember, that they were Children before they were Fathers, and Young before they were Old; and that I must needs have spoken a great deal to their advantage, seeing they were not found in a Parsley-bed:[7] But, in fine, fall back, fall edge, though my Enemies draw up against my Friends, it will go well enough still with me; for I have obliged all men, and only disobliged but one half."
With that he held his tongue, and our Landlord's Son spoke in this manner: "Give me leave," said he to him, "since by your care I am informed of the Original, History, Customs, and Philosophy, of the World of this little Man; to add something to what you have said; and to prove that Children are not obliged to Parents for their Generation, because their Parents were obliged in Conscience to procreate them.
"The strictest Philosophy of their World acknowledges that it is better to dye, since to dye one must have lived, than not to have had a Being. Now seeing, by not giving a Being to that Nothing, I leave it in a state worse than Death, I am more guilty in not producing, than in killing it. In the mean time, my little Man, thou wouldst think thou hadst committed an unpardonable Parracide, shouldst thou have cut thy Sons throat: It would indeed be an enormous Crime, but it is far more execrable, not to give a Being to that which is capable of receiving it: For that Child whom thou deprivest of life for ever, hath had the satisfaction of having enjoyed it for some time. Besides, we know that it is but deprived of it, but for some ages; but these forty poor little Nothings, which thou mightest have made forty good Souldiers for the King, thou art so malicious as to deny them Life, and lettest them corrupt in thy Reins, to the danger of an Appoplexy, which will stifle thee."
This Philosophy did not at all please me, which made me three or four times shake my head; but our Preceptor held his tongue, because Supper was mad to be gone.
We laid our selves along, then, upon very soft Quilts, covered with large Carpets; and a young man that waited on us, taking the oldest of our Philosophers, led him into a little parlour apart, where my Spirit called to him to come back to us as soon as he had supped.
This humour of eating separately, gave me the curiosity of asking the Cause of it: "He'll not relish," said he, "the steam of Meat, nor yet of Herbs, unless they die of themselves, because he thinks they are sensible of Pain." "I wonder not so much," replied I, "that he abstains from Flesh, and all things that have had a sensitive Life: For in our World the Pythagoreans, and even some holy Anchorites, have followed that Rule; but not to dare, for instance, cut a Cabbage, for fear of hurting it; that seems to me altogether ridiculous." "And for my part," answered my Spirit, "I find a great deal of probability in his Opinion."
The Soul of Plants
"For tell me, Is not that Cabbage you speak of, a Being existent in Nature, as well as you? Is not she the common Mother of you both? Yet the Opinion that Nature is kinder to Mankind, than to Cabbage-kind, tickles and makes us laugh: But seeing she is incapable of Passion, she can neither love nor hate any thing; and were she susceptible of Love, she would rather bestow her affection upon this Cabbage, which you grant cannot offend her, than upon that Man who would destroy her, if it lay in his power.