Filial piety is the greatest of Chinese virtues.

Indeed, an undutiful son is a monstrosity, a case of moral deformity.

It could now hardly be otherwise.

For a father sums up in propria persona a whole pedigree of patriarchs whose superimposed weight of authority is practically divine.
This condition of servitude is never outgrown by the individual, as it has never been outgrown by the race.
Our boy now begins to go to school; to a day school, it need hardly be specified, for a boarding school would be entirely out of keeping with the family life.

Here, he is given the "Trimetrical Classic" to start on, that he may learn the characters by heart, picking up incidentally what ideas he may.