[111] It is in the order of nature that domestic life should be preparatory to social, and that the mind and character should first be formed in the home.

There the individuals who afterwards form society are dealt with in detail, and fashioned one by one.

From the family they enter life, and advance from boyhood to citizenship.

Thus the home may be regarded as the most influential school of civilisation.

For, after all, civilisation mainly resolves itself into a question of individual training; and according as the respective members of society are well or ill-trained in youth, so will the community which they constitute be more or less humanised and civilised.
The training of any man, even the wisest, cannot fail to be powerfully influenced by the moral surroundings of his early years.