o which the organs and
faculties have been accustomed can not thus be controlled. Parents
hence, in addition to correct personal influence in the family, should
provide for their children teachers whose habits and character are in
all respects what they are willing their children should form. If they
neglect to do this, the utmost they can reasonably expect is that their
children will become what the teacher is.

The principle that repetition is necessary in order to make a durable
impression on the organ of the mind, and thus constitute a mental habit,
explains how natural endowments are modified by external situation. The
extent to which this modification may be carried, and is actually
carried in every community, is much greater than most persons are aware
of. Take a child, for example, of average propensities, sentiments, and
intellect, and place him among a class of people in whom the selfish
faculties are exclusively exercised--a class who regard gain as the end
of life, and look upon cunning and cheating as legitimate means, and who
never express disapprobation or moral indignation against either crime
or selfishness--and his lower faculties, being exclusively exercised,
will increase in strength, while the higher ones, remaining unemployed,
will become enfeebled. A child thus situated will, consequently, not
only act as those around him do, but insensibly grow up resembling them
in disposition and character; for, by the law of repetition, the organs
of the selfish qualities will have acquired proportionally greater
aptitude and vigor, just as do the muscles of the fencer or dancer. But
suppose the same individual placed, _from infancy_, in the society of a
superiorly endowed moral and intellectual people, the moral faculties
will then be habitually excited, and their organs invigorated by
repetition, till a greater aptitude will be induced in them, or, in
other words, till a higher moral character will be formed. The natural
endowments of individuals set limits to these modifications of
character; but where original dispositions and tendencies are not
strongly marked, the range is very wide.

In the cultivation of the brain and mental faculties, each organ should
be exercised directly upon its own appropriate objects, and not merely
roused or addressed through the medium of another organ. When we wish to
teach the graceful and rapid evolutions of fencing, we do not content
ourselves with merely giving direction