You have made a life-long change, if not in the very structure, at least in the permanent furnishing of her mind, and performed a work that can never by any possibility be undone.

The images which have been awakened in her mind, the emotions connected with them, and the effect of these images and emotions upon her faculties of imagination and conception, will infuse a life into them which will make her, in respect to this aspect of her spiritual nature, a different being as long as she lives.
_The Nature and Origin of general Ideas_.
It is the same substantially in respect to all those abstract and general ideas on moral or other kindred subjects which constitute the mental furnishing of the adult man, and have so great an influence in the formation of his habits of thought and of his character.

They are chiefly formed from combinations of the impressions made in childhood.

A person's idea of justice, for instance, or of goodness, is a generalization of the various instances of justice or goodness which ever came to his knowledge; and of course, among the materials of this generalization those instances that were brought to his mind during the impressible years of childhood must have taken a very prominent part.

Every story, therefore, which you relate to a child to exemplify the principles of justice or goodness takes its place, or, rather, the impression which it makes takes its place, as one of the elements out of which the ideas that are to govern his future life are formed.
_Vast Importance and Influence of this mental Furnishing,_ For the ideas and generalizations thus mainly formed from the images and impressions received in childhood become, in later years, the elements of the machinery, so to speak, by which all his mental operations are performed.