_When the foundation of a stock is laid Amiss, needs must the issue be unhappy_. A sure fund of confidence for facing the world lies therefore in honourable birth, and this must be a first consideration with all who are anxious for a right and proper procreation of children. It is quite natural that those whose birth is of base metal which will not bear scrutiny should tend to be weak-spirited and abject. The poet is quite right in saying: [Sidenote: C] _It slaves a man, stout-hearted though he be, To know his mother or his father base._ It is no doubt equally the case that persons of distinguished parentage become full of pride and self-assertion. Thus Themistocles’ son, Diophantus, is reported to have said on many occasions and to many persons that he had only to wish for a thing and the Athenian people voted for it. ‘What he liked, [Sidenote: D] his mother liked; what his mother liked, Themistocles liked; and what Themistocles liked, all Athens liked.’ A most praiseworthy pride was that exhibited by the Lacedaemonians, when they mulcted their own king Archidamus for condescending to marry a woman of small stature, their plea being that he intended to provide them with kinglets instead of kings. In this connexion there is one observation which my predecessors also have duly made. It is that those who approach their wives with a view to offspring should do so either while wholly abstaining from wine or at least after tasting it in moderation. [Sidenote: 2] This explains the remark of Diogenes on seeing a youth in a state of mad excitement: ‘Young fellow, your father begat you when he was drunk.’ So much for the question of birth. We will now turn to that of upbringing. Speaking generally, we must say of virtue what it is customary to say of the arts and sciences—that for right action three things must go together, namely, nature, reason, and habit. By reason I mean instruction; by habit I mean exercise. The [Sidenote: B] first elements come from nature; progress, from instruction; the actual use, from practice; the consummation, from all combined. In so far as any of these is defective, character must necessarily be maimed. Nature without instruction is blind; instruction without nature is futile; practice without both is abortive. In farming, the soil must first be good; next, the farmer must know his business; third, the seeds must be sound. Similarly with education. Nature is the soil, the teacher is the farmer, [Sidenote: C] the lessons and precepts are the seed. It may be confidently asserted that all three were harmoniously blended in the souls of those men whose renown is universal—Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, and others who have won imperishable glory.