Дети

You, Blessed One, give children to mortals so that they may have help in them and with them, like a rod, they can support their trembling limbs (2). It is better to be childless than to have stupid children; there one is childless, but here many are thin (2). Which of the people took care to conceive the best son? And what kind of art is it to give birth to a worthless son? The painter paints another picture from a picture no worse than the original; the sculptor cuts sculptures similar to the model; art makes out of gold whatever the mind conceives; the farmer reaps a good ear from a good seed, and the desire does not remain unfulfilled. But a mortal, neither good nor bad, does not know the properties of his offspring, what will come out of it. And a good one cannot guarantee that he will produce a better one. Another, being Paul, will give birth to a son who is a Christ-killer - the lawless Annas, or Caiaphas, or even some Judas. And another, himself completely in sin, like Judas, but is called the parent of the Divine Paul or Peter - the indestructible stone to which the keys are trusted. And the father does not know whether he will give birth to a dear son or daughter, but only the rebellion of the flesh is quenched on the marital bed. From one firstborn came both the envious Cain and the virtuous Abel, who made a pleasing sacrifice. Both the evil Esau and the good Jacob are Isaac’s children; and what is most remarkable is that twins and children of the same father are in no way similar to one another. And Solomon was first a sage, then he became the most vicious, following the morals of wicked wives. Pavlov’s power is great in both cases: when he humiliated Christ, and when, having changed his fiery zeal into kind love, he began to preach Christ to everyone. What of all this can we attribute to marriage? At least, I won’t attribute anything, because those who are mating do not achieve the image that they wanted. Whoever amuses himself with the game of grain depends only on throwing the dice, and to make it even or odd, this is not done by the hands of the player, but by random transformations of the dice; Likewise, marriage, when it sows children, does not give birth to them as prudent or bad, but nature or science instructs them to do so. And if you want to know the true reason, then the most perfect are perfect because they are formed by the Spirit or the Word. For a spark of piety is hidden in a person, like the power of fire in some stones. With the blows of iron, light is extracted from flints, so the Word brings out from mortals the piety hidden in them. But the worst for the most part borrow this quality from marriage, for it produces the worst in greater numbers. And in this transitory world, everyone has the same nail nailing their flesh to the ground and the same leaden load weighing down their souls; the same inheritance goes to everyone born on earth (2). The Athenians had an ancient, and, in my opinion, beautiful law - to send children, as soon as they reached adolescence, to study the arts, and to do it in this way: openly lay out the tools of each art and lead young people to them. Whatever tool someone looks at with pleasure and runs up to it, that tool will teach him the art, because most often there is success in what we have by nature, and sometimes we fail in what is not by nature (2). You might be interested in: