"As for Execution, I should wrong your Judgment if I endeavoured to convince it by proofs: You know that Youth alone is proper for Action; and were you not fully perswaded of this, tell me, pray, when you respect a Man of Courage, is it not because he can revenge you on your Enemies or Oppressors? And does any thing, but meer Habit, make you consider[5] him, when a Battalion of Seventy _Januarys_ hath frozen his Blood and chilled all the noble Heats that youth is warmed with? When you yield to the Stronger, is it not that he should be obliged to you for a Victory which you cannot Dispute him? Why then should you submit to him, when Laziness hath softened his Muscles, weakened his Arteries, evaporated his Spirits, and suckt the Marrow out of his Bones? If you adore a Woman, is it not because of her Beauty? Why should you then continue your Cringes, when Old Age hath made her a Ghost, which only represents a hideous Picture of Death? In short, when you loved a Witty Man, it was because by the Quickness of his Apprehension he unravelled an intricate Affair, seasoned the choicest Companies with his quaint Sayings, and sounded the depth of Sciences with a single Thought; and do you still honour him, when his worn Organs disappoint his weak Noddle, when he is become dull and uneasy in Company, and when he looks like an aged Fairy[6] rather than a rational Man? "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.