Without the aid of example nothing can be done; it is by this magnetic power alone that sympathetic feelings can be awakened.

It acts as a talisman on the inmost feelings of the soul, and excites them to activity; which should be the constant aim of all persons engaged in the important work of education.

As we find that vicious principles are strengthened by habit, and good principles proportionally weakened, so, on the contrary, immoral dispositions are weakened by the better feelings being brought into action.
The great defect in the human character is _selfishness_, and to remove or lessen this is the great desideratum of moral culture.

How happy were mankind, if, instead of each one living for himself, they lived really for one another! The perfection of moral excellence cannot be better described than as the attainment of that state in which we should "love our neighbour as ourselves." The prevalence of self-love will be very obvious to the observant master or mistress, in the conduct of the children under their care, and it is this feeling that they must be ever striving to check or eradicate.

Nor need they despair of meeting with some degree of success.