Polishing is a process which may reach different
degrees of brilliancy according to the material on which it is
performed; and so in the teaching of manners a great deal depends upon
the quality of the nature, and the amount of expression which it is
capable of acquiring. It is useless to press for what cannot be given,
at the same time it is unfair not to exact the best that every one is
able to give. As in all that has to do with character, example is better
than precept.
But in the matter of manners example alone is by no means enough;
precept is formally necessary, and precept has to be enforced by
exercise. It is necessary because the origin of established
conventionalities is remote; they do not speak for themselves, they are
the outcome of a general habit of thought, they have come into being
through a long succession of precedents. We cannot explain them fully to
children; they can only have the summary and results of them, and these
are dry and grinding, opposed to the unpremeditated spontaneous ways of
acting in which they delight. Manners are almost fatally opposed to the
sudden happy thoughts of doing something original, which occur to
children's minds. No wonder they dislike them; we must be prepared for
this. They are almost grown up before they can understand the value of
what they have gone through in acquiring these habits of unselfishness,
but unlike many other subjects to which they are obliged to give time
and labour, they will not leave this behind in the schoolroom.
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