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. "The conversation," he says, "of these men is very
injurious; for, even if it does no immediate harm, it leaves its seeds
in the mind, and follows us even when we have gone from the speakers,--a
plague sure to spring up in future resurrection. Just as those who have
heard a symphony carry in their ears the tune and sweetness of the song
which entangles their thoughts, and does not suffer them to give their
whole energy to serious matters; so the conversation of flatterers and
of those who praise evil things, lingers longer in the mind than the
time of hearing it.
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