refreshing fruit, by virtue of the seeds which may he sown in it--by the
cultivation that may be bestowed upon it, In his infancy, those objects
are pointed out to him which he is to estimate or to despise, to seek
after or to avoid, to love or to hate. It is his parents, his
instructors, who render him either virtuous or wicked, wise or
unreasonable, studious or dissipated, steady or trifling, solid or vain.
Their example, their discourse, modify him through his whole life,
teaching him what are the things he ought either to desire or to avoid;
what the objects he ought to fear or to love: he desires them, in
consequence; and he imposes on himself the task of obtaining them,
according to the energy of his temperament, which ever decides the force
of his passions. It is thus that education, by inspiring him with
opinions, by infusing into him ideas, whether true or false, gives him
those primitive impulsions after which he acts, in a manner either
advantageous or prejudicial both to himself and to others. Man, at his
birth, brings with him into the world nothing but the necessity of
conserving himself, of rendering his existence happy: instruction,
example, the customs of the world, present him with the means, either
real or imaginary, of achieving it; habit procures for him the facility
of employing these means: he attaches himself strongly to those he
judges best calculated, most proper to secure to him the possession of
those objects which they have taught him, which he has learned to desire
as the preferable good attached to his existence. Whenever his
education--whenever the examples which have been afforded him--whenever
the means with which he has been provided, are approved by reason, are
the result of experience, every thing concurs to render him virtuous;
habit strengthens these dispositions in him; he becomes, in consequence,
a useful member of society; to the interests of which, every thing ought
to prove to him his own permanent well-being, his own durable felicity,
is necessarily allied. If, on the contrary, his education--his