Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	alexander_n	young_a	youth_n	17	3	8.3602	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A35532	Selēnarhia, or, The government of the world in the moon a comical history / written by that famous wit and caveleer of France, Monsieur Cyrano Bergerac ; and done into English by Tho. St Serf, Gent.; Histoire comique des états et empires de la lune. English	Cyrano de Bergerac, 1619-1655.; St. Serfe, Thomas, Sir, fl. 1668.	1659 (1659)	Wing C7719; ESTC R18714	59,111	189

two Professors entred and we went to sit down where the cloath was spred where we found the youth he talkt of already at his meal they saluted him profoundly and used him with an high respect as a slave useth his Lord and Master I demanded the the cause of my Spirit who said it was because of his age because that in that World the aged bear all sort of respect to the young nay more Parents obey'd their children assoon as by the advice of the Synod of Philosophers they had attained to Reason You wonder said he at a custome so contrary to that of your Countrey but it is not at all repugnant to Reason for in your Conscience is not a young man who is hot in the force of imagination of judgment and execution fitter to govern a Family then an infirm bundle of threescore yeers besotted whose imagination is frozen by threescore winters and who governs himself but by what you call Experience of happy successes which in the mean while are but meer effects of hazard against all rules and Oeconomy of humane Prudence For judgment there is also as little though the People of your World make an Idol of old Age But to disabuse them they must know that what is call'd Prudence in an old man is nothing but a pannical apprehension and a mad fear of acting nothing but what they have already seen done so that when he doth not hazard a danger where a young man had lost himself it is not that he fore-judged the Catastrophe but that he wanted fire to warm the noble parts which make us dare whereas the boldness of that young man was as a pledge of the efficaciousness of his design because that order which makes the promptitude and facility of an execution was that which thrust him upon that enterprise For execution I should wrong your judgment if I went about to convince you with proofs you know youth only is fit for action which will enough perswade you to it Pray tell me why doe you respect a couragious man but because he can avenge your injuries and repel your oppressors and is it for any consideration but meer habit that you consider him where a Battalion of seventy Ianuaries hath frozen his blood and kill'd with cold all the noble Enthusiasms that young men are warmed with when you yeeld to the stronger is it not because that he should be obliged to you when you know you can no longer dispute the victory with him But why should you submit to him when idleness hath melted his muscles debilitated his arteries evaporated his Spirits and dried the marrow in his bones If you adored a woman would it not be because of her Beauty But to continue your adorations when old age had made her a Phantasm which represents nothing but the hideous picture of Death were very strange In fine when you love a man of Spirit it is because by the vivacity of his Genius he penetrates into a turbulent business and straight untangles it that he can defray by his good words the Assembly of the richest Carat and that he could digest the Sciences in one thought and yet you would continue your esteem when his worm-Organs split his weak noddle heavy and inoportune to good company and when he rather resembles a Fairy Deity then a reasonable man By which my son you may conclude it is fitter young men should manage the government of Families then old and the rather because that according to your Maximes Hercules Achilles Epaminondas Alexander and Caesar the most of which died before fifty years of age should have merited no honours being by your account too young when their youth was the onely cause of their admirable actions which a more advanced age would have frustrated because it would have wanted ardour and promptitude the Authors of such high Successes You say true all the Laws of our World loudly proclaim the respect we owe old Age for those that introduced those Laws were old men who justly feared that the young men should depose them from their usurpt Authority You owe nothing to your mortal Architecture but your Body your Soul coms from Heaven and it was in the power of hazard to have created your father your son as you now are his Nay how do you know but that he hath debarr'd you the inheritance of a Diadem May be your Soul departed Heaven with a design of inhabiting the King of the Romans in the belly of the Empress where may be to shorten her journey she lodged No no God would not have blotted you out of the calculation he made of Mankinde though your father had died a little boy but who knows if you had not been the work of some great Captain who would have associated you with his Glory as well as his goods so that you are no more obliged to your father for the life he gave you then you would be to a Pirate who should chain you to the Bank that he might there feed you Nay I will suppose he had ingendered you a Prince of King a Present loses its merit when it is not left in the receivers choice of receiving it or no Death was given to Caesar and to Cassius and Cassius was obliged to the slave of whom he begged it so was not Caesar to his murderers who forced him to accept that unwelcome gift Did your father consult your will when he embraced your Mother Did he ask you if you had a minde to see this age or to wait for another If you would be contented to be the son of a sot or if you had the ambition to derive your self from a gallant man But alas you who were most concerned in the business were he who was least consulted May be then if you had been lockt up in any place but in the Matrix of the Idea's of Nature and that your birth had been in your option you had said to the Parca My dear pretty Lady take the spindle of another in hand it is a great while since I am in the number of nothings and I had rather remain so a hundred yeers longer then to be to day to repent to morrow And yet this you must pass through your begging to return to the long black house from whence you were hal'd signified nothing for they seemed to understand you cry'd for the teat These are the reasons my son why fathers bear a respect to their children I know that I have inclined to the childrens side more then Justice required and that in their favour I have a little spoken against my Conscience but being willing to correct that pride with which some Parents brave their childrens weakness I have done as they who vvill straighten a crooked tree draw it on the other side that between two contorsions it may affect straightness so I have made fathers render to their children vvhat they took from them by taking away something that belonged to them that they might