I may lay hold on all Opportunities of Instructing him:" He said no more, that he might give me the Liberty to speak, if I had a mind to it; and then made a sign, that they should strip me of my disgraceful Ornaments, in which I still glistered. The Two Professors, whom we expected, entered just as I was undrest, and we went to sit down to Table, where the Cloth was laid, and where we found the Youth he had mentioned to me, fallen to already. They made him a low Reverence, and treated him with as much respect as a Slave does his Lord. I asked my Spirit the reason of that, who made me answer, that it was because of his Age; seeing in that World, the Aged rendered all kind of Respect and Difference[3] to the Young; and which is far more, that the Parents obeyed their Children, so soon as by the Judgment of the Senate of Philosophers they had attained to the Years of Discretion.[4] [Sidenote: Why Parents Obey Children] "You are amazed," continued he, "at a Custom so contrary to that of your Country; but it is not all repugnant to Reason: For say, in your Conscience, when a brisk young Man is at his Prime in Imagining, Judging, and Acting, is not he fitter to govern a Family than a Decrepit piece of Threescore Years, dull and doting, whose Imagination is frozen under the Snow of Sixty Winters, who follows no other Guide but what you call the Experience of happy Successes; which yet are no more but the bare effects of Chance, against all the Rules and Oeconomy of humane Prudence? And as for Judgment, he hath but little of that neither, though the people of your World make it the Portion of Old Age: But to undeceive them, they must know, That that which is called Prudence in an Old Man is no more but a panick Apprehension, and a mad Fear of acting any thing where there is danger: So that when he does not run a Risk, wherein a Young Man hath lost himself; it is not that he foresaw the Catastrophe, but because he had not Fire enough to kindle those noble Flashes, which make us dare: Whereas the Boldness of that Young Man was as a pledge of the good Success of his design; because the same Ardour that speeds and facilitates the execution, thrust him upon the undertaking.