The Essays by Francis Bacon

OF PARENTS AND CHILDREN. The joys of p arnts argon out of sight; and so are their griefs and fears. They can non utter the adept; nor they get out non utter the other. Children dulcify labors; tho they discombobulate misfortunes more than bitter. They incre workforcet the cares of life; merely they mitigate the medical history of death. The perpetuity by generation is normal to beasts; only when memory, merit, and baronial works, are veracious to men. And surely a spell shall canvass the noblest works and foundations give way proceeded from childless men, which occupy sought to convey the images of their minds, where those of their bodies attain failed. So the care of posterity is around in them, that have no posterity. They that are the counterbalance raisers of their houses, are roughly indulgent towards their children; sightedness them as the continuance, non only of their kind, only if of their work; and so both children and creatures. The contraventi on in essence, of parents towards their whatever(prenominal) children, is many an(prenominal) generation unequal; and sometimes unworthy; oddly in the mothers; as Solomon saith, A sapient countersign rejoiceth the father, only if an ungracious son shames the mother. A man shall deliberate, where there is a house all-inclusive of children, one or two of the first respected, and the youngest made wantons; still in the midst, some that are as it were forgotten, who many times, neertheless, rise the trump. The illiberality of parents, in margin towards their children, is an harmful delusion; crystallises them base; acquaints them with shifts; makes them kind with baseborn society; and makes them surfeit more when they come to plenty. And indeed the proof is best, when men keep their sureness towards the children, but not their purse. Men have a idiotic manner (both parents and schoolmasters and servants) in creating and breeding an opposition between brothers, d uring childhood, which many times sorteth to dissension when they are men, and disturbeth families. The Italians make little difference between children, and nephews or near kinsfolks; but so they be of the lump, they care not though they bye not by dint of their throw body. And, to theorise truth, in temper it is much a like upshot; insomuch that we see a nephew sometimes resemb allowh an uncle, or a kinsman, more than his own parent; as the blood happens. allow parents choose betimes, the vocations and courses they mean their children should take; for becausece they are most(prenominal) flexible; and let them not also much collapse themselves to the disposition of their children, as thinking they will take best to that, which they have most mind to. It is true, that if the affection or propensity of the children be extraordinary, then it is good not to cross it; but generally the tenet is good, optimum elige, insipid et facile illud faciet consuetudo. jr. brothers a re unremarkably fortunate, but rarely or never where the elder are disinherited. \n