And so it is with children; their first great instructor is example.
However apparently trivial the influences which contribute to form the character of the child, they endure through life.

The child's character is the nucleus of the man's; all after-education is but superposition; the form of the crystal remains the same.

Thus the saying of the poet holds true in a large degree, "The child is father of the man;" or, as Milton puts it, "The childhood shows the man, as morning shows the day." Those impulses to conduct which last the longest and are rooted the deepest, always have their origin near our birth.

It is then that the germs of virtues or vices, of feelings or sentiments, are first implanted which determine the character for life.
The child is, as it were, laid at the gate of a new world, and opens his eyes upon things all of which are full of novelty and wonderment.

At first it is enough for him to gaze; but by-and-by he begins to see, to observe, to compare, to learn, to store up impressions and ideas; and under wise guidance the progress which he makes is really wonderful.
Lord Brougham has observed that between the ages of eighteen and thirty months, a child learns more of the material world, of his own powers, of the nature of other bodies, and even of his own mind and other minds, than he acquires in all the rest of his life.