enough, we should scarcely be able to
know them apart. But if this be true of the old, how much more true
is it of the young, whose plastic natures are so much more soft and
impressionable, and ready to take the stamp of the life and conversation
of those about them!

"There has been," observed Sir Charles Bell in one of his letters, "a
good deal said about education, but they appear to me to put out of
sight EXAMPLE, which is all-in-all. My best education was the example
set me by my brothers. There was, in all the members of the family, a
reliance on self, a true independence, and by imitation I obtained it."
[121]

It is in the nature of things that the circumstances which contribute to
form the character, should exercise their principal influence during the
period of growth. As years advance, example and imitation become custom,
and gradually consolidate into habit, which is of so much potency that,
almost before we know it, we have in a measure yielded up to it our
personal freedom.

It is related of Plato, that on one occasion he reproved a boy for
playing at some foolish game. "Thou reprovest me," said the boy, "for
a very little thing." "But custom," replied Plato, "is not a little
thing." Bad custom, consolidated into habit, is such a tyrant that men
sometimes cling to vices even while they curse them. They have become
the slaves of habits whose power they are impotent to resist. Hence
Locke has said that to create and maintain that vigour of mind which is
able to contest the empire of habit, may be regarded as one of the chief
ends of moral discipline.

Though much of the education of character by example is spontaneous and
unconscious, the young need not necessarily be the passive followers
or imitators of those about them. Their own conduct, far more than
the conduct of their companions, tends to fix the purpose and form the
principles of their life. Each possesses in himself a power of will and
of free activity, which, if courageously exercised, will enable him to
make his own individual selection of friends and associates. It is only
through weakness of purpose that young people, as well as old, become
the slaves of their inclinations, or give themselves up to a servile
imitation of others.

It is a common saying that men are known by the company they keep. The
sober do not naturally associate with the drunken, the refined with
the coarse, the decent with the dissolute. To associate with depraved
pe