And the education which Seneca gave to Nero--noble as it was in many respects, and eminent as was its partial and temporary success--was yet an education of compromises.

Alike in the studies of Nero's boyhood and the graver temptations of his manhood, he acted on the foolishly-fatal principle that "Had the wild oat not been sown, The soil left barren scarce had grown, The grain whereby a man may live." Any Christian might have predicted the result; one would have thought that even a pagan philosopher might have been enlightened enough to observe it.

We often quote the lines-- "The child is father of the man," and "Just as the twig is bent the tree inclines." But the ancients were quite as familiar with the same truth under other images.

"The cask," wrote Horace, "will long retain the odour of that which has once been poured into it when new." Quintilian, describing the depraved influences which surrounded even the infancy of a Roman child, said, "From these arise _first familiarity, then nature_." No one has laid down the principle more emphatically than Seneca himself.

Take, for instance, the following passage from his Letters, on evil conversation.