Our children are so imitative that a child with marked talents will occasionally not reveal these in surroundings that lay emphasis on qualities unrelated to these talents. So many a boy with high-grade musical ability will fail to show this where music is looked down upon as something unworthy of a man. In the same way children will develop ideals in imitation of what goes on around them. Every child is likely at some time in his career to look forward to money-making as the most desirable end in life; but most normal children will pass beyond this ideal before adolescence. If, however, the atmosphere in which the child lives is one of money-getting, the child without strong tendencies toward other ideals is likely to allow this ideal to persist into adolescence and young manhood or womanhood. In such cases the ideal becomes fixed without indicating that the individual is "by nature" of an avaricious temperament or materialistically inclined. The same principle of imitativeness would, of course, apply to other ideals. This explains to us why the recurrence of certain ideals or modes of life in successive generations of a family leads to the supposition that there are "hereditary" elements at work. It is also a good reason why we should guard against the contaminating influence of unworthy ideals. It is impossible for us to carry about imitation virtues and fool our children into imitating them. Children begin to form their ideals early in life, and their first standards are derived from the people and the things about them that contribute to their pleasures--sweets and parents and the heroes of the fairy tales. As the child's experience broadens he borrows ideals from new acquaintances and the characters he meets in his reading. The child absorbs from his surroundings, from his acquaintances, and from his reading, as well as from the instruction that he receives in school or in church, materials for building a world of what _ought_ to be. And in this world he himself plays a very important role. We must therefore make sure that the materials for ideals which are within our control shall be of the best. Loose conversation, cynicism, open disrespect for the noble things in human character, lack of faith in human nature cannot be exhibited to the child day after day without having their sinister effect. It is true that some children, here and there, will resist these unfavorable influences, and will come out of the struggle strong and self-reliant, with faith in their own ideals and with faith in mankind. But we cannot afford to treat the developing character of the child on the theory that it needs exercise and temptation as a gymnast needs exercise and trying tasks. The temptation that becomes a habitual stimulus to wrong doing or wrong thinking has no moral value. The child is only too ready to follow the path of least resistance, and the temptations will come aplenty after the ideals begin to form.