CHAP. II.

Education of the Will.

25

wills, there is a far larger number who have very weak wills, or no wills at all. They are characterless. They have no strong will for vice, yet they have none for virtue. They are the passive recipients of impressions, which, however, take no hold of them. They seem to go neither forward nor backward. As the wind blows, so their vane turns round; and when the wind blows from another quarter, it turns round again. Any instrument can write on such spirits; any will can govern theirs. They cherish no truth strongly, and do not know what earnestness is. Such persons constitute the mass of society everywhere—the careless, the passive, the submissive, the feeble, and the indifferent.

It is, therefore, of the utmost importance that attention should be directed to the improvement and strengthening of the Will; for without this there can be neither independence, nor firmness, nor individuality of character. Without it we cannot give truth its proper force, nor morals their proper direction, nor save ourselves from being machines in the hands of worthless and designing men. Intellectual cultivation will not give decision of character. Philosophers discuss; decisive men act. "Not to resolve," says Bacon, "is to resolve "—that is to do nothing.

"The right time," says Locke, "to educate the Will aright is in youth. There is a certain season when our minds may be enlarged, when a vast stock of useful truths may be acquired; when our passions will. readily submit to the government of reason; when right principles may be so fixed in us as to influence every important action in our future lives. But the season for this extends neither to the whole nor to any considerable length of our continuance upon earth. It is limited to but a few years of our term; and if throughout these we neglect it, error or ignorance is,

according to the ordinary course of things, entailed upon us. Our Will becomes our law; and our lusts gain a strength which we afterwards vainly oppose."

The first Lord Shaftesbury, in a conversation with Locke, broached a theory of character and conduct which threw a light upon his own. He said that wisdom lay in the heart and not in the head, and that it was not the want of knowledge but the perverseness of will that filled men's actions with folly, and their lives with disorder. Mere knowledge does not give vigour to character. man may reason too much. He may weigh the thousand probabilities on either side, and come to no action, no decision. Knowledge is thus a check upon action. The Will must act in the light of the spirit and the understanding, and the soul then springs into full life and action.

A

Indeed, the learning of letters and words and sentences is not of the importance that some think it to be. Learning has nothing to do with goodness or happiness. It may destroy humility and give place to pride. The chief movers of men have been little addicted to literature. Literary men have often attained to greatness of thought which influences men in all ages; but they rarely attain to moral greatness of action.

Men cannot be raised in masses, as the mountains were in the early geological states of the world. They must be dealt with as units; for it is only by the elevation of individuals that the elevation of the masses can be effectually secured. Teachers and preachers may influence them from without, but the main action comes from within. Individual men must exert themselves and help themselves, otherwise they never can be effectually helped by others. "As habits belonging to the body," says Dr. Butler, "are produced by external acts, so habits of the mind are produced

CHAP. II.

Teaching and Morality.

27

by the exertion of inward practical purposes-by carrying them into action or acting upon them-the principles of obedience, of veracity, justice, and charity.”

In speaking of Butler, Mr. Stephen, in his recent work, says that "his attitude is impressive from the moral side alone; but from that side its grandeur is undeniable. In the 'Analogy,' as distinctly as in the Sermons, the deification of the Conscience is the beginning, middle, and end of Butler's preaching. Duty is his last word. Whatever doubts and troubles beset him, he adheres to the firm conviction that the secret of the universe is revealed, so far as it is revealed, through Morality."

There is little or no connection between school teaching and morality. Mere cultivation of the intellect has hardly any influence upon conduct. Creeds posted upon the memory will not eradicate vicious propensities. The intellect is merely an instrument, which is moved and worked. by forces behind it-by emotions, by self-restraint, by selfcontrol, by imagination, by enthusiasm, by everything that gives force and energy to character. The most of these principles are implanted at home, and not at school. Where the home is miserable, worthless, and unprincipled -a place rather to be avoided than entered-then school is the only place for learning obedience and discipline. At the same time, home is the true soil where virtue grows. The events of the household are more near and affecting to us than those of the school and the academy. It is in the study of the home that the true character and hopes of the times are to be consulted.

To train up their households is the business of the old; to obey their parents and to grow in wisdom is the business of the young. Education is a work of authority and respect. Christianity, according to Guizot, is the greatest

Religious

school of respect that the world has ever seen. instruction alone imparts the spirit of self-sacrifice, great virtues and lofty thoughts. It penetrates to the conscience, and makes life bearable without a murmur against the mystery of human conditions.

"The great end of training," says a great writer, "is liberty; and the sooner you can get a child to be a law unto himself, the sooner you will make a man of him." "I will respect human liberty," said Monseigneur Dupanloup, "in the smallest child even more scrupulously than in a grown man; for the latter can defend it against me, while the child cannot. Never will I insult the child so far as to regard him as material to be cast into a mould, to emerge with the stamp given by my will."

Paternal authority and family independence is a sacred domain; and, if momentarily obscured in troublous times, Christian sentiment protests and resists until it regains its authority. But liberty is not all that should be struggled for; obedience, self-restraint, and self-government, are the conditions to be chiefly aimed at. The latter is the principal end of education. It is not imparted by teaching, but by example. The first instruction for youth, says Bonald, consists in habits not in reasonings, in examples rather than in direct lessons. Example preaches better than precept, and that too because it is so much more difficult. At the same time, the best influences grow slowly, and in a gradual correspondence with human needs.

To act rightly, then, is the safety-valve of our moral nature. Good will is not enough; it does not always produce good deeds. Persevering action does most. What is done with diligence and toil imparts to the spectator a silent force, of which we cannot say how far it may reach. The Rev. Canon Liddon, in his lecture to young men at

CHAP. II.

Work and Idleness.

29

St. Paul's Cathedral, made an eloquent allusion to Work as the true end of life. "The life of man," he said, “is made up of action and endurance, and life is fruitful in the ratio in which it is laid out in noble action or in patient perBut the physical workers are not the only true workers. The lives of thought do not lie outside this division, for true thought is undemonstrative action. . . To pass life in indolence, in a state of moral coma, is degrading, for life is only ennobled by work."

severance.

Noble work is the true educator. Idleness is a thorough demoraliser of body, soul, and conscience. Nine tenths of the vices and miseries of the world proceed from idleness. Without work, there can be no active progress in human welfare. No more insufferable misery can be conceived than that which must follow incommunicable privileges. Imagine an idle man condemned to perpetual youth, while all around him decay and die. How sincerely would he call upon death for deliverance ! "The weakest living creature," says Carlyle, "by concentrating his powers on a single object, can accomplish something; whereas the strongest, by dispersing his over many, may fail to accomplish anything."

Have we difficulties to contend with? Then work through them. No exorcism charms like labour. Idleness of mind and body resembles rust. It wears more than work. "I would rather work out, than rust out," said a noble worker. Schiller said that he found the greatest happiness in life to consist in the performance of some mechanical duty. He was also of opinion that "the sense of beauty never furthered the performance of a single duty." The highest order of being is that which loses sight in resolution, and feeling in work.

The greatest of difficulties often lie where we are not