together, of making and keeping the language of the home uniform
throughout our world-wide community. Purely intellectual development
beyond the matter of language we may leave for a space. There remains
the distinctive mental and moral function of the home, the
determination by precept, example, and implication of the cardinal
habits of the developing citizen, his general demeanour, his
fundamental beliefs about all the common and essential things of life.

This group of people, who constitute the home, will be in constant
reaction upon him. If as a whole they bear themselves with grace and
serenity, say and do kindly things, control rage, and occupy themselves
constantly, they will do much to impose these qualities upon the new-
comer. If they quarrel one with another, behave coarsely and
spitefully, loiter and lounge abundantly, these things will also stamp
the child. A raging father, a scared deceitful mother, vulgarly acting,
vulgarly thinking friends, all leave an almost indelible impress.
Precept may play a part in the home, but it is a small part, unless it
is endorsed by conduct. What these people do, on the whole, believe in
and act upon, the child will tend to believe in and act upon; what they
believe they believe, but do not act upon, the child will acquire also
as a non-operative belief; their practices, habits, and prejudices will
be enormously prepotent in his life. If, for example, the parent talks
constantly of the contemptible dirtiness of Boers and foreigners, and
of the extreme beauty of cleanliness and--even obviously--rarely
washes, the child will grow to the same professions and the same
practical denial. This home circle it is that will describe what, in
modified Herbartian phraseology, one may call the child's initial
circle of thought; it is a circle many things will subsequently enlarge
and modify, but of which they have the centering at least and the
establishment of the radial trends, almost beyond redemption. The