But we respect Nero the less for his indifferent singing and harp-twanging just as we respect Louis XVI.

less for making very poor locks; and, if Seneca had adopted a loftier tone with his pupil from the first, Rome might have been spared the disgraceful folly of Nero's subsequent buffooneries in the cities of Greece and the theatres of Rome.

We may lay it down as an invariable axiom in all high education, that it is _never_ sensible to permit what is bad for the supposed sake of preventing what is worse.

Seneca very probably persuaded himself that with a mind like Nero's--the innate worthlessness of which he must early have recognised--success of any high description would be simply impossible.

But this did not absolve him from attempting the only noble means by which success could, under any circumstances, be attainable.
Let us, however, remember that his concessions to his pupil were mainly in matters which he regarded as indifferent--or, at the worst, as discreditable--rather than as criminal; and that his mistake probably arose from an error in judgment far more than from any deficiency in moral character.
Yet it is clear that, even intellectually, Nero was the worse for this laxity of training.