LETTER XXVI.

MR. MOLYNEUX TO MK. LOCKE.

SIR, Dublin, April 18th, 1693. I HAVE lately received farther testimonies of your kindness and friendship to me in your last, of March 28th, which brings withal the welcome news of your having committed your work" Oi Education" to the press; than which I know not any thing that I ever expected with a more earnest desire. What my brother told me relating to that treatise he had from yourself in Holland; but, perhaps, you might have forgot what passed between you on that occasion. I perceive you fear the novelty of some notions therein may seem extravagant; but, if I may venture to judge of the author, I fear no such thing from him. I doubt not but the work will be new and peculiar, as his other performances; and this it is that renders them estimable and pleasant. He that travels the beaten roads may chance indeed to have company; but he that takes his liberty, and manages it with judgment, is the man that makes useful discoveries, and most beneficial to those that follow him. Had Columbus never ventured farther than his predecessors, we had yet been ignorant of a vast part of our earth, preferable (as some say) to all the other three. And if none may be allowed to try the ocean of philosophy farther than our ancestors, we shall have but little advancements or discoveries made in the mundus intellectualis; wherein, I believe, there is much more unknown than what we have yet found out,

LETTER XXVII.

MR. LOCKE TO MR. MOLYNEUX.

SIR, Oates, 23d August, 1693. YOURS of August 12th, which I received last night, eased me of a great deal of pain your silence had for some time put me in; for you must allow me to be concerned for your health as for a friend that I could not think in danger, or a disease, without a concern and trouble, suitable to that great esteem and love I have for you. But you have made me amends plentifully by the length and kindness, and let me add too, the freedom of your letter. For the approbation you so largely give to my book is the more welcome to me, and gives me the better opinion of my method, because it has joined with it your exception to one rule of it; which I am apt to think you yourself, upon second thoughts, will have removed, before I say any thing to your objections. It confirms to me that you are the good-natured man I took you for; and I do not at all wonder that the affection of a kind father should startle at it, at first reading, and think it very severe, that children should not be suffered to express their desires; for so you seem to understand me. And such a restraint, you fear, would be apt to mope them and hinder their diversion. But if you please to look upon the place, and observe my drift, you will find that they should not be indulged, or complied with in any thing their conceits have made a want to them, as necessary to be supplied. What you say,

that children would be moped for want of diver sion and recreation, or else we must have those about them study nothing all day, but how to find employment for them; and how this would rack the invention of any man living, you leave me to judge; seems to intimate as if you understood that children should do nothing but by the prescription of their parents or tutors, chalking out each action of the whole day in train to them. I hope my words express no such thing, for it is quite contrary to my sense, and I think would be useless tyranny in their governors, and certain ruin to the children. I am so much for recreation, that I would as much as possible have all they do be made so. I think recreation as necessary to them as their food, and that nothing can be recreation which does not delight. This, I think, I have so expressed; and when you have put that together, judge, whether I would not have them have the greatest part of their time left to them without restraint, to divert themselves any way they think best, so it be free from vicious actions, or such as may introduce vicious habits. And therefore, if they should ask to play, it could be no more interpreted a want of fancy, than if they asked for victuals when hungry; though, where the matter is well ordered, they will never need to do that: for when they have either done what their governor thinks enough in any application to what is usually made their business, or are perceived to be tired with it, they should, of course, be dismissed to their innocent diversions, without ever being put to ask for it. So that I am for the full liberty of diversion as much as you can be; and

upon a second perusal of my book, I do not doubt but you will find me so. But being allowed that, as one of their natural wants, they should not yet be permitted to let loose their desires or importunities for what they fancy. Children are very apt to covet what they see those above them in age have or do, to have or do the like, especially if it be their elder brothers and sisters. Does one go abroad? the other straight has a mind to do it too. Has such an one new or fine clothes, or playthings? they, if you once allow it them, will be impatient for the like, and think themselves ill dealt with if they have it not. This being indulged when they are little, grows up with their age, and with that enlarges itself to things of greater consequence, and has ruined more families in the world than one. This should be suppressed in its very first rise; and the desires you would not have encouraged, you should not permit to be spoken, which is the best way for them to silence them to themselves. Children should, by constant use, learn to be very modest in owning their desires, and careful not to ask any thing of their pa rents but what they have reason to think their parents will approve of; and a reprimand upon their ill bearing a refusal comes too late, when the fault is committed and allowed; and if you allow them to ask, you can scarce think it strange they should be troubled to be denied: so that you suffer them to engage themselves in the disorder, and think then the fittest time for a cure, and I think the sure and easiest way is prevention. For we must take the same nature to be in children that is in grown men ; and how often do we find men

take ill to be denied what they would not have been concerned for if they had not asked? But I shall not enlarge any further in this, believing you and I shall agree in the matter; and indeed it is very hard, and almost impossible, to give general rules of education, when there is scarce any one child which in some cases should not be treated differently from another. All that we can do in general, is only to show what parents and tutors should aim at, and leave to them the ordering of particular circumstances, as the case shall require.

One thing give me leave to be importunate with you about: you say your son is not very strong; to make him strong you must use him hardily, as I have directed; but you must be sure to do it by very insensible degrees, and begin an hardship you would bring him to only in the spring. This is all the caution needs be used. I have an example of it in the house I live in, where the only son of a very tender mother was almost destroyed by a too tender keeping. He is now, by a contrary usage, come to bear wind and weather, and wet in his feet and the cough, which threatened him under that warm and cautious management, has left him, and is now no longer his parents' constant apprehensions, as it was.

I am of your mind as to short-hand: I myself learned it since I was a man, but had forgot to put it in when I writ; as I have, I doubt not, overseen a thousand other things which might have been said on this subject. But it was only at first a short scheme for a friend, and is published to excite others to treat it more fully.