Good admonition and bad
example only build with one hand to pull down with the other.
Hence the vast importance of exercising great care in the selection
of companions, especially in youth. There is a magnetic affinity
in young persons which insensibly tends to assimilate them to each
other's likeness. Mr. Edgeworth was so strongly convinced that
from sympathy they involuntarily imitated or caught the tone of the
company they frequented, that he held it to be of the most
essential importance that they should be taught to select the very
best models. "No company, or good company," was his motto. Lord
Collingwood, writing to a young friend, said, "Hold it as a maxim
that you had better be alone than in mean company. Let your
companions be such as yourself, or superior; for the worth of a man
will always be ruled by that of his company." It was a remark of
the famous Dr. Sydenham that everybody some time or other would be
the better or the worse for having but spoken to a good or a bad
man. As Sir Peter Lely made it a rule never to look at a bad
picture if he could help it, believing that whenever he did so his
pencil caught a taint from it, so, whoever chooses to gaze often
upon a debased specimen of humanity and to frequent his society,
cannot help gradually assimilating himself to that sort of model.
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