"In the supremacy of self-control," says Herbert Spencer,
"consists one of the perfections of the ideal man. Not to be
impulsive--not to be spurred hither and thither by each desire
that in turn comes uppermost--but to be self-restrained, self-
balanced, governed by the joint decision of the feelings in
council assembled, before whom every action shall have been fully
debated and calmly determined--that it is which education, moral
education at least, strives to produce." (1)
The first seminary of moral discipline, and the best, as we have
already shown, is the home; next comes the school, and after that
the world, the great school of practical life. Each is
preparatory to the other, and what the man or woman becomes,
depends for the most part upon what has gone before. If they have
enjoyed the advantage of neither the home nor the school, but
have been allowed to grow up untrained, untaught, and
undisciplined, then woe to themselves--woe to the society
of which they form part!
The best-regulated home is always that in which the discipline is
the most perfect, and yet where it is the least felt. Moral
discipline acts with the force of a law of nature. Those subject
to it yield themselves to it unconsciously; and though it shapes
and forms the whole character, until the life becomes crystallized
in habit, the influence thus exercised is for the most part unseen
and almost unfelt.
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