enable it to twine round its supports, and thus bind up its weakness, so that it can sustain the weight of its fruit.  Beneficent Nature gives, then, to this age four things necessary to the entrance into the City of the Good Life.  The first is Obedience, the second Suavity, the third Modesty, the fourth Beauty of the Body, even as the Song says in the first section of this part.  It is, then, to be known that like one who has never been in a city, who would not know how to find his way about the streets without instruction from one who is accustomed to them, even so the adolescent who enters into the Wood of Error of this life would not know how to keep to the good path if it were not pointed out to him by his elders.  Neither would the instruction avail if he were not obedient to their commands, and therefore at this age obedience is necessary.  Here it might be possible for some one to speak thus:  Then, is that man to be called obedient who shall follow evil guidance as well as he who shall believe the good?  I reply that this would not be obedience, but transgression.  For if the King should issue a command in one way and the servant give forth the command in another, it would not be right to obey the servant, for that would be to disobey the King; and thus it would be transgression.  And therefore Solomon says, when he intends to correct his son, and this is his first commandment:  “Listen, my son, to the instruction of thy father.”  And then he seeks to remove him immediately from the counsel and teaching of the wicked man, saying, “My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not.”

Wherefore, as soon as he is born, the son clings to the breast of the mother; even so soon as some light of the Mind appears in him, he ought to turn to the correction of the father, and the father to instruction.  And let the father take heed that he himself does not set him an example in work or action that is contrary to the words of the correction; for naturally we see each son look more to the footprints of the paternal feet than to those of other men.  And therefore the Law, which provides for this, says and commands that the life of the father should appear to his sons always honourable and upright.  Thus it appears that obedience was necessary in this age; and therefore Solomon writes in the Book of Proverbs, that he who humbly and obediently sustains his just reproofs from the corrector shall be glorious.  And he says “shall be,” to cause men to understand that he speaks to the adolescent, who cannot be so in his present age.  And if any one should reflect on me because I have said obedience is due to the father and not to other men, I say that to the father all other obedience ought to be referred; wherefore the Apostle says to the Colossians:  “Sons, obey your fathers in all things, for such is the will of God.”  And if the father be not in this life, the son ought to refer to that which is said by the father in his last Will as a father; and if the father die intestate, the son ought to refer to him to whom the Law commits his authority; and then ought the masters and elders to be obeyed, for this appears to be a reasonable charge laid upon the son by the father, or by him who stands in the father’s place.