Mr. Walter Bagehot tells us that the great initial difficulty in the formation of communities was the fixing of custom. However this be in the case of primitive communities it seems to me indisputable that in the case of a child brought up in normal surroundings there is a clearly observable instinct to fall in with a common mode of behaviour. This respect for custom is related to the imitative instincts of the child. He does what he sees others do, and so tends to fall in with their manner of life. We all know that these small people take their cue from their elders as to what is allowable. Hence one difficulty of moral training. A little boy when two years and one month old had happened to see his mother tear a piece of calico. The next day he was discovered to have taken the sheet from the bed and made a rent in it. When scolded, he replied in his childish German, ‘Mamma mach put,’ _i.e._, ‘macht caput’ (breaks calico). It is well when the misleading effect of ‘example’ is so little serious as it was in this case. In addition to this effect of others’ doings in making things allowable in the child’s eyes, there is the binding influence of a repeated regular manner of proceeding. This is the might of ‘custom’ in the full sense of the term, the force which underlies all a child’s conceptions of ‘right’. In spite of the difficulties of moral training, of drilling children into orderly habits—and I do not lose sight of these—it may confidently be said that they have an inbred respect for what is customary, and wears the appearance of a rule of life. Nor is this, I believe, altogether a reflexion, by imitation, of others’ orderly ways, and of the system of rules which is imposed on him by others. I am quite ready to admit that the institution of social life, the regular procession of the daily doings of the house, aided by the system of parental discipline, has much to do with fixing the idea of orderliness and regularity in the child’s mind. Yet I believe the facts point to something more, to an innate disposition to follow precedent and rule, which precedes education, and is one of the forces to which education can appeal. This disposition has its roots in habit, which is apparently a law of all life: but it is more than the blind impulse of habit, since it is reflective and rational, and implies a recognition of the universal.