Consider the infinite
risk; to be born of wicked parents and trained in vice! to be born of
silly parents, and trained to unrealities! of parents who regard you as a
sort of chattel or property, belonging more to them than to yourself!
Again, you may draw utterly unsympathetic parents, who will never be able
to understand you, and who will thwart you as long as they can to the
utmost of their power (as a hen when she has hatched a duckling), and
then call you ungrateful because you do not love them, or parents who may
look upon you as a thing to be cowed while it is still young, lest it
should give them trouble hereafter by having wishes and feelings of its
own.
"In later life, when you have been finally allowed to pass muster as a
full member of the world, you will yourself become liable to the
pesterings of the unborn--and a very happy life you may be led in
consequence! For we solicit so strongly that a few only--nor these the
best--can refuse us; and yet not to refuse is much the same as going into
partnership with half a dozen different people about whom one can know
absolutely nothing beforehand--not even whether one is going into
partnership with men or women, nor with how many of either. Delude not
yourself with thinking that you will be wiser than your parents. You may
be an age in advance of _them_, but unless you are one of the great ones
(and if you are one of the great ones, woe betide you), you will still be
an age behind your children.
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