Human Nature (as daily Experience shews us) is, in the general, alike in all, from the Prince to the Peasant: the same Weaknesses attend us; the same Passions torment us; the same Diseases kill us: all are the Work of ONE GREAT ARTIST! all are born for the same great End! The Gifts of Fortune indeed are innumerably different; the Advantages of Education very many; and as a Train of Vices corrupts our Manners, so a Succession of Virtues may be said to enoble our Birth and purify our Blood. Hence it is we often see those exalted Virtues in the Great and Noble inherited by their Posterity; and hence too we often discover, even where Pains are taken to conceal it, an inbred Dignity, a Mein and Aspect superior to the Generality of Men. Still this Rule is by no Means universal; for the same Experience shews us, that great Men can do little things; even such as the private and obscure would be ashamed of. And how so? because Passion, not Reason, is their Guide. Parents then, we see, even of the highest Rank, are under an indispensable Obligation of regulating the Manners of their Children. Philosophers say, that all Passions are in all Men; but that their Predominance is unequal, and different in different Men: if so, the Great stand in most need of having them subdued, or at least regulated, as the Power to indulge them is greater in them than in others. But granting that Parents of Quality are convinced of these Truths, and take all the Steps already recommended for training up their Children in proper Decorum; granting too, that they design every thing for their real Advantage; they have still many things both to do and avoid which are not common to all. Their first Care must be to avoid Sycophants, Flatterers, and Hypocrites; they are but too constant Attendants on the Great, and their Business is to diffuse an imperceptible Poison (if I may be allowed the Metaphor) over both Parents and Children. Nothing is so amiable as Truth, nothing more desirable, and yet nothing more difficult to reach the Great. If a Nobleman has a Child whose Parts are weak, whose Genius is slow and shallow, it is undoubtedly a Misfortune, but cannot be his Fault: the natural Blindness of Parents keeps them from seeing these Defects so clearly as another; but the unnatural, at least unmanly Artifices of the Flatterer totally prevent their seeing them at all: and thus the noble Heir is mistakenly taught to think himself what Nature has forbid he shall ever be.