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THE TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
The volumes of the series already published are : — 
 
 Civilization of Chbistendom, and other Studies. 
 By Bernard Bosanquet, M.A. (Oxon.), LL.D. 
 (Glasgow). 4s. 6d. 
 
 Short Studies in Character. By Sophie Bryant, 
 D.Sc.(Lond.). 4s. 6d. 
 
 Social Rights and Duties. By Leslie Stephen. 2 
 vols. 9s. 
 
 The Teaching op Morality in the Family and the 
 School. By Sophie Bryant, D.So. (Lond.). 3s. 
 
 Other volumes to follow by 
 
 Professor A. Sidgwick, Professor D. G. Ritchie, and 
 J. H. MuiRHEAD (The Editor). 
 
%ht (Ethual ^ibrarp 
 
 THE 
 
 TEACHING OF MORALITY 
 
 IN 
 
 THE FAMILY AND THE SCHOOL 
 
 SOPHIE BRYANT, D.Sc. 
 
 HEAD MISTRESS OF THE NORTH LONDON COLLEGIATE SCHOOL FOR GIRLS, AUTHOR OF 
 "EDUCATIONAL ENDS " AND "STUDIES IN CHARACTER," ETC. 
 
 ■ '^ EEttW3»iLiQ2!" / 
 
 Ronton 
 SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO., Limited 
 
 NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN CO. 
 1897 
 
PEEFACE. 
 
 In the following pages I have attempted 
 rather to suggest than to describe the pro- 
 cedure appropriate to instruction in morality. 
 The part played by such instruction in the 
 whole system of moral education is first con- 
 sidered, and the application of the general 
 principles of good teaching to this particular 
 kind of teaching is later discussed. In the 
 first and second chapters there will be found 
 some analysis of the intellectual and instinct- 
 ive processes involved in the successful pur- 
 suit of moral wisdom. Finally, the subject 
 matter of lessons in morality is treated under 
 the two supplementary heads of Virtuous 
 Character and Social Membership. 
 
 I know that even now there are those who 
 have doubts as to the efficiency of any definite 
 
vi PREFACE. 
 
 instruction in the principles of the good life 
 simply as such. Some hold that the good 
 life can only be taught by living it, and 
 that systematic reflection on the ideals im- 
 plied in it are, in youth, more likely to be a 
 hindrance than a help. Others believe that 
 morality cannot be taught except as a sequel 
 to religion, thus missing, as it seems to me, 
 the full significance of the mutual relation- 
 ship which both derive from the human need 
 to see life whole and its meaning real. But, 
 without entering into argument with doubters 
 of either kind at this point, I would suggest 
 to the reader the test of plain experience. 
 My experience — based on some teaching to 
 school girls between the ages of about twelve 
 and eighteen — is (l) that young people are 
 much interested in the ideas of right and 
 wrong, (2) that they are apt to be impressed 
 and effectively moved by that strain of moral 
 reflection which shows the unity of virtue 
 in all the variety of the virtues, and (3) 
 that they acquire this kind of knowledge as 
 naturally as any other, while they are apt 
 
PREFACE. vii 
 
 to apply it with more interest and skill. 
 With greater certainty, however, I can speak 
 of the practical results of such teaching 
 as given in the North London Collegiate 
 School by my valued friend and leader, the 
 late Miss Frances Mary Buss. As regards 
 its permanency of effect and variety of appli- 
 cation in later as well as in earlier life, the 
 direct personal testimony of the learners is 
 singularly abundant and convincing. Thus 
 experience verifies that faith in the value of 
 instruction in morality, which is founded 
 on an estimate of the forces that regulate 
 human character and life. 
 
 SOPHIE BEYANT. 
 
 Hampstbad, May, 1897. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 PACE 
 
 Moral Education in General,- 1 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Intellectual Processes Involved in the Study op 
 
 Morality, - 33 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Moralizing Instincts Developed by the Study of 
 
 Morality, - 63 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 Principles of Teaching, - 83 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 The Subject Matter — Virtuous Character, 108 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 The Subject Matter — Social Membership, 132 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 MOEAL EDUCATION IN GENEEAL. 
 
 It is a doubtful wisdom that begins a treatise 
 with a definition, but we cannot well dispense 
 with some preliminary statement of the end 
 proposed in Moral Education. Otherwise 
 there is danger that we may aim too low, 
 or swerve sideways so as to miss the mark. 
 We want more than the production of nicely 
 behaved children, and we aim at the develop- 
 ment of something not quite the same as 
 orderly citizens, respectable men, or even 
 useful members of society. 
 
 In what, then, does morality essentially 
 consist? Morality, in the first place, is the 
 steady recognition by a man of himself as an 
 individual who ought to live according to 
 some system of conduct which binds him 
 
 A 
 
2 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 equally with all Ms fellows. This steady 
 recognition of the moral law, or duty, as 
 binding, passes over into that constantly re- 
 peated preference for dutiful courses which 
 is the good, or well and firmly directed, will. 
 Thus the authoritative idea of duty deter- 
 mines that a limit shall be set to all impulses 
 and desires, so that none shall be practically 
 operative if inconsistent with it. 
 
 Character, being thus co-ordinated by the 
 
 consciousness of this law of life, freely shapes 
 
 itself according to the man's idea of duty. 
 
 All those elements of his nature which are 
 
 auxiliary to it — sympathy, faithfulness, truth, 
 
 and the like — are pressed into service and 
 
 wax strong ; while the whole unsocial brood 
 
 of malice, falsehood, and rampant selfishness 
 
 suffer the consequences of continual trampling 
 
 under foot. Thus dutifulness makes for the 
 
 growth of a character in which duty is the 
 
 natural unconstrained expression of personal 
 
 disposition. And, on the other hand, the 
 
 nurture by any means of such a personal 
 
 disposition — self-respecting, sympathetic, rea- 
 
MORAL EDUCATION IN GENERAL. 3 
 
 sonable — as is conformable to duty, tends to 
 establish the consciousness of duty on a safer 
 throne. 
 
 So far we have found in morality the 
 familiar ideas of conscience and virtuous 
 disposition, both finding expression in a 
 system of life to be lived. Knowledge of 
 this system, and judgment in applying it — 
 these make moral wisdom, the third element 
 in morality. It is necessary to understand the 
 content of conscience, both in general precept 
 and in particular application. This is a long 
 work of experience, reflection, and practical 
 judgment. Wisdom comes with the lapse of 
 years, but only to those who set their heart 
 on it early and search for it with care. The 
 little child is often peculiarly clear in the 
 sense of his need for more knowledge of good. 
 
 Thus is morality compounded ; and yet it 
 is not in truth compounded, but is simply 
 the whole outcome of a will set upon good, 
 from which emerges presently the completely 
 formed character and rightly judging reason, 
 expressing themselves in life as a free and 
 
4 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 finely fashioned will. But for our purpose 
 it will prove useful to note the complexity 
 of its development, since a great part of the 
 educator's work consists in removing obstacles 
 to that development. Thus we labour to 
 "train character" in the sense of cultivating 
 virtuous predispositions — amiable habits of 
 mind. And likewise we engage in moral 
 instruction, so filling the intellect with ideas 
 of the good life as continually to urge the 
 consciousness of duty to a more perfect 
 activity. 
 
 The educator labours to assist in bringing 
 about the full fruition of morality in the 
 child. It is not enough that he should 
 understand morality. He must understand 
 how morality gets itself accomplished with- 
 out his interference, and he must with much 
 searchings of heart consider how his interfer- 
 ence can be of use. His first step, therefore, 
 will be to inquire how, and under what 
 conditions, the good man most easily and 
 certainly becomes himself, and likewise under 
 what conditions he is likely to fail. It will 
 
MORAL EDUCATION IN GENERAL. 5 
 
 then remain for him to see what part he 
 can take in securing the presence of those 
 conditions that make for success and the 
 absence of all that tend to cause failure. 
 Stimulus, sympathy, and example he will 
 add as of course. 
 
 The child emerges in his world as a being 
 disposed to activity initiated by himself, but 
 disposed also to act from moment to moment 
 on the ideas suggested by others. To realize 
 this clearly, let us put before ourselves broadly 
 the main fact that acts issue from the idea 
 of the act, that, as a first approximation to 
 the truth, it may be said that if the idea 
 of an act for any reason arises vividly in 
 the mind it tends to translate itself naturally 
 into act. This being so, we must next ask 
 whence and why the ideas of action come ; 
 and we are at once at the source of some 
 of the most important varieties of individu- 
 ality. There is suggestion simple from with- 
 out, conveyed by words, by example, by 
 gesture ; and there is auto-suggestion from 
 within. The impressionable child takes up 
 
6 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 at once the idea expressed by another in 
 words — his imagination bodies it forth with- 
 out resistance freely — he does what he is 
 told without any particular sense of obedience 
 in doing it. The imitative child is more 
 specially susceptible to the idea suggested by 
 an act of example : he is more instinctively 
 dramatic perhaps than the other, that is, he 
 combines with his imagination a larger share 
 of undirected activity, and this fund of activity 
 is immediately stirred by sympathy with the 
 expression of another. Imitativeness and 
 impressionability run into each other, though 
 two central types may be distinguished. 
 The one is moved by an idea as such, 
 impressed in its wholeness and speciality on 
 the imagination, while the other is affected 
 more broadly by an impulse of vague sym- 
 pathy towards identification with acts of a 
 particular sort. Sometimes, as is well known, 
 a child who resists impressions yields to the 
 imitative impulse in a way that surprises 
 those who have been impressed by his indo- 
 cility. The explanation, however, is not far 
 
MORAL EDUCATION IN GENERAL. 7 
 
 to seek. A child of this sort is one of the 
 natural rebels, who receive instructions to act 
 with a distinct counterflow of hostile ideas of 
 their own, and who therefore do not act on 
 these instructions without consciousness of 
 obedience to some superior will. This con- 
 sciousness they resent ; but if the same 
 instruction is presented, not as instruction 
 but by example, the instinct of rebellion is 
 not aroused and the act follows. The re- 
 bellious instinct may co-exist with much 
 impressionability and much imitativeness ; 
 a positive resentment to any attempt to 
 control the will is its root. A child of 
 this type will do anything so long as he is 
 not driven, but will not act without the 
 subtle consciousness of his own initiative 
 behind the act. 
 
 Distinguished from these is the child im- 
 pervious to suggestion, who grows probably 
 into the man inaccessible to ideas, doomed to 
 an early descent into old fogeydom. This 
 child seems to be most perversely disobedient 
 when he is only impervious to the instructions 
 
8 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 given. It is not simply that his mind is 
 set on suggestions proceeding from himself. 
 His characteristic is that he is, for the greater 
 part, accessible to such suggestions only, 
 — that the suggestions of others produce 
 the minimum of influence upon him. The 
 normal mind accepts suggestions and works 
 them up with its own previous ideas to 
 regulate act. It is at once auto- and extra- 
 suggestible. Streams from two sources flow 
 together, the main stream of auto-suggestion 
 determining action as it occurs, but being 
 modified by the tributary stream of ideas 
 suggested from without. The mind abnor- 
 mally open to influence is so because of the 
 poverty of its main stream : the tributary in 
 that case becomes the river, and the course 
 of the river is determined by the influx of 
 tributaries. And on the other hand, the 
 merely auto-suggestible, or inaccessible, mind 
 is like a river flowing steadily along between 
 high banks which permit no access of new 
 streams into it. 
 
 It is not easy to over-estimate the import- 
 
MORAL EDUCA TJON IN GENERAL. 9 
 
 ance to the morality of each individual of 
 being in the normal mean thus defined, so 
 far as the practical ideas which govern life 
 are concerned. The three types are familiar 
 in our experience of men : the man of stead- 
 fast character and reasonable mind, his ideas 
 of right steady and clear, but capable of in- 
 finitely variable adaptation according to the 
 physical and social requirements of the case. 
 On either side of him stand the two faulty 
 extremes — extreme because deficient, each in 
 one or other of those two elements which 
 make up the harmony and balance in him — 
 on the one hand, the narrow man who can 
 only see the path on which his own feeble 
 lantern of original wisdom shines, on the 
 other, the man too easily influenced, who is 
 swayed hither and thither by every wind of 
 feeling and opinion, having no solid root of 
 preference or conviction in himself 
 
 As in medicine so in education, the scien- 
 tific art has two aims in view : — ^first, the 
 preservation of such healthy conditions of 
 life as shall make the production of the 
 
10 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 normal type probable ; and secondly, the 
 detection and proper diagnosis of unfavour- 
 able symptoms, with the adoption of remedial 
 treatment corresponding. In good education 
 every means is taken to develop, on the 
 one hand, the child's natural dependence and 
 insistence on his own initiative in action — 
 his moral originality, as it might be called — , 
 and to train him, on the other hand, to a 
 high degree of susceptibility to the thoughts 
 and feelings surrounding him — to moral do- 
 cility, as this might be called. As in the 
 intellectual, so in the moral life, originality 
 and docility are alike indispensable. It is 
 for education to establish conditions favour- 
 able to the development of both, and equally 
 favourable as a rule. The educator, how- 
 ever, must do more than this for the excep- 
 tional cases of those who lean to one or other 
 of the two extremes. First, he has to 
 discover them ; then to understand exactly 
 what is the nature of their complaint ; and 
 lastly, he has to adjust his general treatment 
 to them. Complex cases will occur, severely 
 
MORAL EDUCATION IN GENERAL. 11 
 
 taxing his skill ; but only general con- 
 siderations can be touched on here. The 
 morally indocile has to be trained to increase 
 his docility, and this will be best done by 
 attacking the fault in the intellectual quite 
 as much as in the moral domain. The fault 
 is difficult of treatment in the moral life, 
 for the wheat may be pulled up with the 
 tares. This will happen if we rely alto- 
 gether on checking the child's active expres- 
 sion of his own ideas, in order to remind 
 him that there are other interests to con- 
 sider. This is the most obvious method of 
 treatment, but a little reflection, as well as 
 observation, shows that it is the worst — ^the 
 worst, that is, of fairly reasonable methods. 
 It is bad, because each time it is applied 
 there is a check on the child's initiative to 
 express himself in act. Action has already 
 begun and is pulled up short. This must 
 happen sometimes, and should, but a regular 
 treatment of it is very enfeebling, and 
 destroys the ability to act promptly and 
 decidedly. A vigorous child resents such 
 
12 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 treatment, " will fight," and, I venture to 
 say, " will be right." It is, above all things, 
 essential to respect the child's initiative in 
 action — ^his self-will, as parents and teachers 
 call it. The necessary modijication of initi- 
 ative should occur hefore it has reached the 
 stage of pouring itself forth in action. 
 
 I advise then that, in the treatment of 
 the morally indocile or inaccessible, reliance 
 be placed chiefly on the cultivation of docility 
 in general intellectual work and in theoretic 
 moral instruction. At the same time, let 
 obedience not be despised. It is often an 
 unattractive but always a necessary virtue. 
 Its reasonableness is based on the actual 
 necessary subordination of the individual to 
 law and to his conditions, a hard fact which 
 must be learned early ; and the sooner it is 
 accepted as the ground of a great moral 
 virtue, and the occasion for the develop- 
 ment of more virtue, the better for the 
 child. ^ This hard fact of subordination is 
 
 ^Be it remembered, too, that obedience to love is not 
 pure obedience, and is therefore not enough. 
 
MORAL EDUCATION IN GENERAL. 13 
 
 learned through experience of checks to self- 
 will, and therefore some checks are necessary 
 to the learning of obedience. But my point 
 is, that if we add to these a further series 
 of checks aimed at indocility, (which differs 
 from disobedience though allied to it,) we 
 may seriously endanger vigour of will, which 
 is the mainspring of character. Indocility 
 and vigorous originality of will coincide 
 perhaps more often than not, in which case 
 much checking does no harm, but the wise 
 parent can detect the signs of too little and 
 too much. There is too much when in- 
 itiative droops and flags. 
 
 Indocility is like a fever that makes itself 
 seen, and obviously demands treatment. De- 
 fective initiative is much more likely to be 
 neglected. To the average parent and the 
 average teacher the easily influenced child is 
 delightful so long as under good influences. 
 Few delight in the merely receptive as 
 friends : there is more companionship in a 
 person who meets one's ideas with other 
 ideas and stands up to his view of the case, 
 
14 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 though with courtesy and sympathy when 
 opposite developments arise. But we have 
 hardly learned to expect such companion- 
 ability, even in its rudiments, from children. 
 We are the losers thereby, because the very 
 crudity and freshness of a child's original 
 ideas make them very delightful ; and the 
 child is the loser, because we are apt to give 
 him little encouragement. Most children, 
 indeed, get into the way of keeping their 
 ideas to themselves ; or, at most, they com- 
 municate them only to one another. A 
 worse result is that we actually tend to 
 prefer the children who mostly reflect our 
 ideas after their manner, and are easily led 
 hy us. The danger is obvious. The easily 
 led child is the victim of influences : he 
 grows into the easily led man, and the 
 chances are great that he may fall under 
 evil influences at some critical moment. And 
 so it is that the naughty children, whose 
 indocility and rebellion scandalize their re- 
 spectable parents, often turn into better men 
 than do the " dear little angels " who never 
 
MORAL EDUCATION IN GENERAL. 15 
 
 opposed US in their lives. Children, indeed, 
 considering the distance there is between our 
 ideas and theirs, have no business to be so 
 "good," unless all the people around them 
 are very nearly perfect. 
 
 But even when the danger of the easily 
 influenced child is recognized, his case is by 
 no means easy to undertake. Everything 
 must be done to encourage initiative, occa- 
 sions invented on which the child is to 
 choose what shall be done, and determine 
 how to do it. In this case, the remedies 
 are best applied in the practical field itself; 
 the growth of original practical ideas even 
 of the simplest sort, and their expression in 
 act, has to be helped. Get such a child to 
 lead a game, to plan an excursion, to choose 
 his own books, to be secretary to a children's 
 society, and you give him most genuine moral 
 education. But at the same time, means to 
 the same end may be taken in all the intel- 
 lectual work, in all social converse, and in 
 theoretic moral instruction most of all. On 
 all sides encourage the formation of the 
 
16 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 child's ideas by the child : train him to 
 think for himself, to entertain other people's 
 thoughts — nay, to ponder them reverently — 
 but in the long run to have all his know- 
 ledge and all his opinions in his mind as 
 the product of his own thinking, the work 
 of his own reason. This is moral training, 
 and of the best kind. Place it in the back- 
 ground of the same kind of training in 
 practical life — ^the training to act in the 
 long run out of one's own head — and initia- 
 tive must inevitably be strengthened through 
 and through. 
 
 This acting out of one's own head in the 
 idealist's sense must, of course, be clearly 
 distinguished from the having one's own 
 way of the unregenerate sensationalist, 
 whose actions serve his natural personal de- 
 sires and impulses only. Morality assumes 
 these natural desires, and takes its start in 
 the regulation and limitation of them by 
 reference to an idea of order and suitability 
 by which their proper exercise is defined. 
 This is the Moral Idea, however crude and 
 
MORAL EDUCA TION IN GENERAL. 17 
 
 harsh may be its first outlines. It regulates, 
 and, by regulating, sanctifies and refines the 
 natural desires, and reduces their chaos to 
 a cosmos over which it rules. The first 
 step in morality has not been taken till the 
 idea of some moral order has asserted her 
 rule over all active impulses. If she does 
 not, life remains at the level of the brute. 
 Education must see to it above all else that 
 this does not happen. The means consist 
 in the quickening of reflection on conduct 
 and its significance, in surrounding the 
 child with an attractive idealizing atmo- 
 sphere, in the constant presentation of the 
 common relationships of life in a refined and 
 sacred light, in the obvious existence of a 
 social order within which he lives, and in 
 the tacit assumption that this order must be 
 maintained without exception. 
 
 Here, then, are three rules of expectation, 
 for the fulfilment of which the born educator 
 works : 
 
 (1) Expect the child to idealize con- 
 duct, that is, to bring all active impulses 
 
18 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 under the control of ideas — to think 
 about conduct. 
 
 (2) Expect the child to have his own 
 ideas of conduct, and in the long run 
 to act from them. 
 
 (3) Expect the child to treat all other 
 people's ideas with respect, and some 
 with reverence, and to be ready to 
 try his own by the touchstone of the 
 commonsense surrounding him. 
 
 And to these we may add the rule of 
 primitive obedience, to which reference has 
 already been slightly made : 
 
 (4) Expect the child to recognize the 
 existence of a moral law limiting the 
 exercise of his activity, and to accept 
 the conditions thus imposed with perfect 
 obedience. 
 
 Obedience of a higher kind is derived from 
 the co-operation of the first three conditions 
 with the fourth, or rather a development of 
 them to meet it ; but the rougher primitive 
 virtue cannot be dispensed with throughout 
 life, and is invaluable in the early stage as 
 
MORAL EDUCATION IN GENERAL. 19 
 
 setting a limit up to willing conformity, 
 with which it is a natural object of the 
 will to develop. The mistake that used to 
 be common about the virtue of primitive 
 obedience was that of overworking it in the 
 most shameless manner, making it do duty 
 for all other virtues to the great detriment 
 of them and it. The common error now is 
 to ignore its importance altogether ; and this 
 is a cruel training for adult life in which 
 the rigour of limiting conditions has to be 
 endured with content. 
 
 So much for the beginnings of moral life 
 and character, the water-courses which con- 
 tribute their streams to its flood. Let us 
 turn now from consideration of the form of 
 character to its matter — the content of the 
 ideas which govern life when well governed — , 
 and to the function of education in supplying 
 that matter. 
 
 Suppose a child idealistic, vigorous willed, 
 susceptible, obedient — using each word in the 
 sense of our four rules. Suppose such a one 
 face to face with the conditions of life in 
 
20 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 an ordinary well regulated home. What ■will 
 he do? He wiU find— (I said a well regu- 
 lated home) — that he is expected to do, and 
 to abstain from doing, a number of actions, 
 but that considerable freedom is allowed him 
 in details and during his time of play. 
 Some of these duties he takes as a matter 
 of course ; some of them he enjoys ; some 
 he dislikes, but is obedient. If he be, 
 indeed, of the high-spirited sort, he is never 
 readily obedient to what he continues to dis- 
 like. In that case he either rebels or learns 
 to like it ; and the latter is an easier task 
 to him than it is to act without the sense 
 of his own initiative behind the act. But 
 in either case he accepts his social and 
 physical world, and thinks himself more or 
 less into his necessary place of an agent in it. 
 There is, however, a voluntary place also 
 for him which he can make if he will. He 
 has much freedom — room to develop his active 
 impulses and the emotions implied in them ; 
 and he has the human ability to forecast, 
 little by little, his life by thought. Into 
 
MORAL EDUCATION IN GENERAL. 21 
 
 what place in his little social system will he 
 feel and think his way? Upon the use 
 he makes of his freedom, much more than 
 upon the promptitude of his obedience to 
 necessity, does his moral future depend. 
 
 Here appears the distinction between the 
 selfish and the social nature, between the 
 mind whose practical ideas are inspired by 
 personal desires, and the mind under the lead 
 of the ajffections, or of interests not centering 
 in self. Either through the afiections, or 
 through interest in ideas to be fulfilled, the 
 social nature develops itself and defends the 
 mind from absorption in purely selfish aims. 
 " If he begins to calculate," says Herbart, " he 
 is lost to pure morality," the calculation being 
 understood to apply to considerations of per- 
 sonal gain by means of personal actions. 
 The expression may be too strong, but it 
 must be admitted that if a little child begins 
 to calculate on the rewards of goodness to 
 any large extent, in cases where the prompt- 
 ings of afiection would be more natural, it 
 does not augur well for the future of that 
 
22 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 child. The calculation of interests to be 
 served has its proper place in morality, but 
 this is not its place. Calculation of interests 
 should not take place until interest has been 
 so widened as to include the whole of that 
 object, the service of which may, in these later 
 stages, be conceived as the object of morality. 
 
 Development of interest — many-sided in- 
 terest — ^interest in all that goes on about him 
 — this is the condition that the rightly- 
 valued freedom of the child should be rightly 
 used. Through widened interest the indivi- 
 dual is changed and widened, till his will is 
 brought into living touch with the will of 
 the community surrounding him, and its 
 good becomes his. 
 
 In this, education may play a most eflPec- 
 tive part. Interest is a matter both of 
 feeling and of knowledge. The quickening 
 of sympathy brings the mind of the child 
 into harmony with the feelings, and to per- 
 ception of the needs, of others ; and thus a 
 whole range of interests — the special social 
 interests — is established. Affection empha- 
 
MORAL EDUCA TION IN GENERAL. 23 
 
 sizes this effect, and by the depths of pos- 
 sible self-devotion which it reveals strengthens 
 and deepens the social nature. Every good 
 home educates much in this strain, and the 
 strain of sympathy should run through all 
 educational, as through all social, relations. 
 It quickens the mind to its work by drawing 
 it away from that obstinate absorption in 
 self and self s discomforts, which is the great 
 obstruction to progress in objective interests 
 of all kinds. 
 
 An interest in the ideas, intentions, pur- 
 poses of others is quite as essential as interest 
 in their feelings and needs ; and this interest 
 once established leads readily on to interest 
 in abstract ideas of social welfare, of scien- 
 tific progress, of the reformer's hopes and the 
 statesman's plans. In their measure, accord- 
 ing to their understanding of it, children 
 can be in touch with all the living social 
 ideas around them. The parent should, as 
 it were, take the child by the hand and lead 
 him to the place whence he can see how 
 full of life and work and hope and courage 
 
24 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 this great world is, that the child's mind 
 may go out to it with wonder and interest 
 and the aspiration that he too one day shall 
 play his part in it. 
 
 And no less in small things than in great 
 things should interest be cultivated. Kind- 
 ness to animals, interest in natural objects, 
 curiosity about the wonders of science and 
 art — these are all elements in an individuality 
 well compounded for a happy and useful life. 
 A vast multiplicity of interests takes for the 
 well educated man the place of a narrow 
 round of desire for the boor. Thus there is 
 always something of interest to see, hear, 
 or do, and interests of these sorts are seldom 
 of an anti-social character. 
 
 The mind of a child thus trained to act 
 freely in accordance with social interests will 
 naturally form, or tend to form, some idea 
 of a plan of life for self. Some honourable 
 ambition early formed, even though it be 
 changed later, is a part of the normal pro- 
 cess of the good life. It belongs to the 
 dignity of man that he should have an aim 
 
MORAL EDUCA TION IN GENERAL. 25 
 
 — ^not drift contentedly in the mere enjoy- 
 ment of life from day to day. Parent and 
 teacher can forward the formation of some 
 purpose, temporary or permanent, and it 
 would be well that the purpose should be 
 of such a kind as to require some effort 
 for its attainment in the present. The barren 
 dream of good is a great danger. The mind 
 may get into the habit of living on instead 
 of hy its ideas. The well trained child has 
 some purpose, small or great, which he is 
 fulfilling now. 
 
 Eeference to purpose makes further pro- 
 gress more easy. The value of persistence 
 in plans becomes obvious to the child him- 
 self when he has a purpose behind the plans. 
 Training to persistence in a task, and faith- 
 fulness to promises, forms a most important 
 element in moral training. We all know 
 the child who begins several pieces of work 
 at once, and finishes none of them. This is 
 very bad, and must not be allowed to con- 
 tinue. Either by showing displeasure, or by 
 convincing of waste and wrong, or by simple 
 
26 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 compulsion, if all else fails, the lesson must 
 be taught that tasks begun should be finished, 
 that the unfinished task voluntarily begun is 
 a disgrace to the beginner. 
 
 The sacredness of a promise is another 
 lesson for which there is need and occasion 
 in the everyday life of the home. The 
 sense of this sacredness goes with the sense 
 of manly dignity implied in faithful per- 
 sistence of purposes ; and it introduces, on 
 the other hand, that tender regard to the 
 expectations of others on which depend so 
 many of the finer shades of moral character. 
 Closely bound up with this is the obligation 
 to truth and sincerity in all things, the 
 lessons on which are probably best driven 
 home by the same double-headed hammer, 
 appeal to manly dignity and to social sense. 
 I think a lie looks at its worst to a child 
 when it shows the liar as an object worthy 
 of self-contempt ; but the reminder that a 
 liar's word is useless, and that no one 
 believes what he says, is no less of value in 
 training. 
 
MORAL EDUCATION IN GENERAL. 27 
 
 Without attempting to run through a 
 whole catalogue of the virtues, I feel that 
 a word is due, as regards general training, 
 apart from instruction, to the fundamental 
 virtues of courage and self-denial. The easy 
 lives of a well protected, highly civilized 
 generation render these virtues difficult of 
 cultivation in childhood now. At least, it 
 is somewhat easy to neglect them, and it 
 does not do to let them take their chance. 
 The educator, therefore, must secure oppor- 
 tunities as they occur, and, if necessary, 
 make them. 
 
 Into each life should enter, and early 
 enough to mould it, some hard fare, some 
 hard living, something to do without, some- 
 thing to bear. It is useless to sing songs 
 and read stories about courage and self- 
 denial, and revel in luxury all the while. 
 If self-denial is to be learned it must be 
 practised, as our forefathers very well knew. 
 There are causes enough for which children 
 can be encouraged to give up something, 
 and care should be taken that the act is 
 
28 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 the child's own, done by his freedom, not 
 of necessity. This will be well, but I doubt 
 that it is enough if the general level of life 
 is full of ease and luxury. Moral fibre is 
 sure to sufiier if the tastes of childhood are 
 formed on too high a standard of comfort. 
 At least we should so order their lives as 
 to ensure to them the capacity of dispensing 
 with it for the sake of higher aims, should 
 the need arise. 
 
 Practice in courage is still harder to get. 
 Fortunately the race has inherited a large 
 stock of this essential from earlier genera- 
 tions. Still there is a dangerous tendency 
 at times to despise it as a mere physical 
 quality — as if the muscles of the body were 
 to despise the bones and sinew for not 
 being muscle. And there are probably a 
 good many men in our town population who 
 would not be at all astonished to find them- 
 selves in full flight at the first sight of an 
 enemy. Yet it is a primitive and for ever 
 fundamental quality of the man who lives 
 his life well that he should be able to stand 
 
MORAL EDUCATION IN GENERAL. 29 
 
 steadfastly at his post in spite of danger. 
 We do well, therefore, to encourage all those 
 instincts in youth, which invite to manly 
 sports and adventurous enterprise in which 
 it is possible to be hurt, and especially 
 those in which safety depends on courage, 
 presence of mind, and skill in the face of 
 danger. 
 
 In a later chapter we will deal with the 
 system of virtues in more detail. An 
 adequate conception of that system is neces- 
 sary to all who have to do either with 
 direct moral instruction or with moral educa- 
 tion of the practical kind. But enough has 
 been said to indicate in a preliminary sense 
 the general nature of moral practice. 
 
 The purpose of the chapters which follow 
 is to discuss the problem of direct instruc- 
 tion in morality. On the practical solution 
 of this problem in each case depends the 
 efficiency of all lessons — regular or incidental 
 — ^that may be given on life and conduct, 
 by the parent in the family, the teacher in 
 
30 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 the school, and the preacher speaking in 
 church or assembly. In all such lessons it is 
 intended that the attention shall be arrested, 
 the intellect employed, the appropriate in- 
 stincts and sentiments evoked, so that the 
 thought and purpose of the learner may 
 build itself up within him in accordance 
 with an ideal of well-being and well-doing 
 to which his conduct ought to conform. 
 
 Are there any who have doubts as to the 
 usefulness for morality of such lessons in 
 morality ? Such doubts are strange ; but 
 they exist. They exist as the form taken 
 by a revulsion of feeling against those faulty 
 methods of instruction in all subjects from 
 which the more scientific spirit of our age 
 is gradually emancipating the whole field of 
 education, and the evils of which are the 
 greater in proportion to the importance of 
 the subject. Mr. Squeers, no doubt, taught 
 arithmetic so as to deaden to the utmost 
 his pupils' minds. One may well rejoice 
 that Mr. Squeers did not give systematic 
 lessons in morals. Example is certainly 
 
MORAL EDUCATION IN GENERAL. 31 
 
 better than precept, when the example is 
 good and the precept unintelligible. Apart 
 from Mr. Squeers, it may be said that a 
 generation which taught its little stock of 
 scientific truth unscientifically — that is dog- 
 matically — was not likely to teach morality 
 as a living doctrine. Mere verbal state- 
 ments, made and heard as such, do not 
 constitute real teaching in any subject. To 
 learn "by heart" either Euclid's propositions 
 or "My duty to my neighbour" is to 
 acquire deadness of intellect where life is 
 essential. Such a stupefying process stands, 
 in all its forms, condemned. 
 
 But real teaching is a very difierent thing. 
 It aims at the development of the mind 
 in relation to the subject matter. Its object 
 is complex, its methods subtle and highly 
 skilled ; but as to the value of the achieve- 
 ment there can be no doubt. He who 
 makes another think has not lived in vain ; 
 and surely among all achievements of in- 
 struction none can outweigh that by which 
 the growing mind is led to think and feel 
 
32 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 its way towards an ideal of life with whicli 
 it can, in all the fulness of its powers, be 
 satisfied. 
 
 To succeed in such an attempt it is not 
 enough to study — ^though we shall make it 
 our business to study — the ideal to be 
 taught. We must study also those move- 
 ments of intelligence and instinct which are 
 involved in the successful learning of that 
 ideal. And to this study let us now 
 proceed. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE INTELLECTUAL PROCESSES INVOLVED 
 IN THE STUDY OF MORALITY. 
 
 Our first business is to distinguish instruc- 
 tion in morality from the wider problem 
 of moral education, of which it forms a part. 
 Moral education is concerned with the whole 
 of the process by which persons grow from 
 worse to better, and with the external con- 
 ditions favourable to that growth. A full 
 account of it would show in detail the inner 
 working of all the leanings that "make for 
 righteousness," and trace the relation of 
 these to all circumstances in the environ- 
 ment which either help or hinder them. 
 Among those inner founts of energy that 
 make for good is the well-informed and 
 
 soundly working intellect that knows how 
 
 c 
 
34 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 to discriminate evil from good; and the 
 problem of moral instruction is this — How 
 can we by working on the intellect of 
 another determine the whole nature of that 
 other in the direction of righteousness? 
 Thus it comprises two questions : (1) How 
 can the teacher control and stimulate the 
 ideas of the learner to take certain forms? 
 (2) How can he do this so that those ideas 
 shall not he mere ideas barren of all 
 product except more ideas — shall be fraught 
 with motive urgency in the regulation of 
 conduct ? 
 
 All attempts at instruction in morality 
 imply a belief in the existence of answers 
 to these two questions ; and thereby they 
 imply an opinion that ideas do influence 
 life and can regenerate character, and that 
 instruction can influence ideas. But to 
 believe these two statements simply is to 
 grasp only half the truth. They are true, 
 but true conditionally, and to know the 
 conditions in any particular case is to be 
 able to solve the problem in that case. 
 
INTELLECTUAL PROCESSES INVOLVED. 35 
 
 Persons have noble ideas of life and char- 
 acter, and yet do not act upon them. And 
 ideas are poured out day after day in every 
 school in Europe, without any result on the 
 ideas of the child. In the latter case, this 
 happens because the conditions of instruction 
 in general have not been realized, and the 
 teaching is bad. In the former case, since 
 the ideas are moral ideas and ought not 
 therefore to exist without being effective, we 
 may say with equal emphasis that they have 
 been wrongly learned : there was something 
 wanting or wrong in the conditions under 
 which they were acquired, in consequence of 
 which they were created to be barren. 
 
 It will be our business, therefore, to con- 
 sider : 
 
 (a) The conditions that are fulfilled 
 
 in all successful instruction whatever 
 
 the subject matter ; 
 
 (6) The conditions that are fulfilled in 
 
 the production and maintenance of ideas 
 
 of conduct when they really work as 
 
 practical ideas. 
 
36 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 Behind, however, there lies a further 
 question as to the general intellectual con- 
 ditions of moral progress. To quicken the 
 operation of these conditions is better than 
 to impress ready-made ideas. Let us begin, 
 therefore, by considering how intellect works 
 in relation to the moral life. In what ways 
 does reflection tend to regulate conduct and 
 develop character ? 
 
 We may broadly distinguish two ways at 
 the outset. (1) Good character grows by the 
 'practice of right conduct, and ideas of right 
 conduct tend to produce the practice, and are 
 themselves produced directly by a process of 
 imagination and reason. (2) Good character 
 grows by constant attention to right ideas 
 of character on all occasions of action and 
 deliberation. 
 
 These ideas constitute conscience, or the 
 moral standard in its subjective and most 
 familiar aspect. Character itself grows about 
 and clings to them, and they control conduct 
 more or less effectively, even before they have 
 brought character into subjection. Such are 
 
INTELLECTUAL PROCESSES INVOLVED. 37 
 
 the ideas of truth, honour, purity that go to 
 make up our idea of a satisfactory self. 
 
 There are therefore two obvious methods 
 of moral training intellectually considered ; 
 and both are necessary. The first is to train 
 the learner to think about conduct, in order 
 that he may form for himself a reasonable 
 scheme of conduct — ^reasonable in the com- 
 plete sense of being a scheme which must 
 recommend itself to every one in so far as 
 he thinks it out — a scheme that can be 
 recognized as good universally — a scheme, 
 therefore, which is instinct with regard for 
 the feelings and thoughts of others. The 
 second is to train him so to think about 
 character, and with so much imaginative 
 garniture and emotional colour, as to bring 
 to the supreme place in seZ/-consciousness an 
 ideal of self consistent with this scheme of 
 conduct. 
 
 The first is the more obvious, safer, and 
 easier method, and the second cannot be 
 separated from it as a matter of educational 
 practice. But difierent minds work difi'er- 
 
38 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 ently under the same procedure, and the 
 teacher needs to keep this fact in view, else 
 by labouring one aspect of a lesson too much 
 he may lose his hold on those learners who 
 more readily attach themselves to the other. 
 Every lesson on conduct implies a lesson on 
 character — on a sort of person ; and neither 
 should be neglected. The lesson on character 
 goes home of its own accord when the self- 
 consciousness of the learner, as one who acts 
 out what he is, awakens to appropriate the 
 idea of that sort of person. The wise teacher 
 makes this happen : the child feels that he 
 would like to act and to feel himself acting 
 like, for example, the brave heroes of Ther- 
 mopylae in Grecian story — to feel himself 
 like one of them. 
 
 The emotional glow which accompanies this 
 idea of self as so and so, transmutes the bare 
 idea into a practical aspiration to do like- 
 wise ; and if an opportunity occurs to express 
 this, and it is expressed, in conduct, a 
 complete step is taken in the establishment 
 of a working ideal of character. It is im- 
 
INTELLECTUAL PROCESSES INVOLVED. 39 
 
 portant that the emotional glow should occur ; 
 but it cannot be forced. The teacher can see 
 that there is opportunity, and time, and the 
 stimulus of sympathy in his own feeling : 
 the rest is by the grace of human nature 
 working in the individual mind. So far as 
 deliberate plan goes, the purpose to be kept 
 in view is, therefore, mainly the development 
 of a rational ideal of conduct, the reference 
 to self as agent not being neglected. 
 
 Let us turn, therefore, to consider in detail 
 the intellectual processes concerned in the 
 creation of this rational ideal of conduct, 
 and the conditions under which they work 
 efficiently to that end. 
 
 That imagination plays a large part in 
 this, as in the production of all practical ideas, 
 every one will suspect even before inquiry. 
 Imagination, indeed, plays a large part in 
 all mental activity. By frequent excursion 
 into the concrete realities it saves thought 
 from becoming mechanical. In this case it 
 more specially concerns us in two aspects. 
 
 (1) Dramatic imagination is imagination of 
 
40 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 consequences dealing with the development 
 of events. It is an exercise of dramatic 
 imagination when the idea of a particular 
 event bodies itself forth in a series of more 
 or less concrete images of other events that 
 follow from it in the logic of natural con- 
 sequences. The minds of the masters of 
 history, drama, and romance work in this 
 way. The matter of history, for instance, is 
 thrown into the form of natural sequence : 
 on this side of it the process is logical, and 
 could be performed by the scientific or speci- 
 ally rational mind but little prone to bodying 
 forth its ideas in vivid imaginings. But the 
 master of the art of narration does so body 
 it forth : the events live and move for him 
 in images more or less vivid ; he sees and 
 hears and feels the events as they march 
 forward. So, under the pressure of im- 
 agination, he expresses himself in its terms, 
 thus reaching the imagination of others and 
 their reason through it. The merely rational 
 writer of history is very good in his way : 
 but every one will be aware of the difference 
 
INTELLECTUAL PROCESSES INVOLVED. 41 
 
 between his pen and the pen of a writer like 
 Macaulay whose touch appeals direct to the 
 graphic imagination.^ 
 
 Now it is evidently a means to moral 
 guidance that a proposed course of conduct 
 should suggest its series of probable objective 
 consequences both good and evil. There can, 
 of course, be too much of this, but there 
 is more likely to be too little. These con- 
 sequences may be suggested merely in the 
 logical degree, that is, not vividly, and this 
 is enough when the mind is already made 
 up to its course of action relative to such 
 consequences. For example, if I have settled 
 it with myself as an ascertained fact that 
 under certain circumstances pastry disagrees 
 with me, it is sufficient for me to think of 
 
 'As between writers of novels diflferences in imaging 
 power show themselves in various ways. The most notice- 
 able defect is the failure of some to make the moderately 
 well-endowed reader see the persons and scenes of the 
 story. They are described, but not seen from the descrip- 
 tion, and it may happen that the visual imagination of 
 the reader comes to be stirred rather by some side-issues 
 in the story, and that he sees the heroine or hero persistently 
 as different from the given description. In marshalling 
 the march of historical events the graphic touch makes all 
 the difference to the picturesqueness of the sequence. 
 
42 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 this coldly, and not to imagine my possible 
 sufferings, to secure abstention. But if my 
 mind were not so made up, a toucb of vivid 
 concrete imagination would be necessary to 
 produce the same effect, simply because the 
 image has practical force which the logical 
 idea has not. I take another example : Two 
 boys go out to sea in a boat ; a storm 
 threatens, and they are ignorant and un- 
 skilful in the management of the boat. They 
 are both equally aware of the probable con- 
 sequences of persistence in their course — 
 two consequences — (a) they will run great 
 risk of being drowned, (6) they will give a 
 great deal of trouble to the people on shore 
 who attempt to save them. But the imagin- 
 ative boy realizes all these possibilities as 
 the mere thinking boy does not ; they sting 
 him with real anticipation of result and 
 prompt to prudence. He feels, in imagina- 
 tion, the cold plunge when the waters engulf 
 them, the futile efforts to hold the boat, the 
 cruel slash of the waves, the wild attempts 
 to make way : he sees the crowd on the 
 
INTELLECTUAL PROCESSES INVOLVED. 43 
 
 beach, the gallant effort to rescue, the sor- 
 rowing group of relations and friends. But 
 he does not need to go so far as this : one 
 or two really bold images of consequent evU 
 are sufficiently deterrent. 
 
 More definitely ethical cases will easily 
 suggest themselves. I have said enough, 
 however, I hope, to show what is meant 
 by the claim that a certain due amount of 
 dramatic imagination is an element of moral 
 guidance, because it predisposes the mind 
 to trace and realize the consequences of 
 action. This realization tends to guide con- 
 duct from time to time in accordance with 
 the rational ideal of conduct, and leads to 
 the permanent establishment of that ideal in 
 the individual mind. 
 
 But it may be objected that there is 
 danger in an excess of this habit of mind, 
 as likely to produce fearfulness, over-prudence, 
 and other ills. This I at once admit, though 
 it should be qualified by pointing out that 
 such evils occur because the vividness of the 
 imagination is out of proportion to its logical 
 
44 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 grasp — ^not because there is too much in- 
 tensity strictly, but because there is too little 
 extensity ; and this leads to the further 
 practical observation, that the cultivation of 
 logical grasp is, of the two, more in the 
 hands of the teacher, and more likely to be 
 encouraged by deliberate training. 
 
 It behoves us, however, to remember the 
 existence of the over-imaginative child, to 
 learn how to detect him, and to modify our 
 procedure in his case. English children are 
 probably more likely to imagine too little 
 than to imagine too much : the undramatic 
 Teuton predominates over the dramatic Celt, 
 and, therefore, for English children on an 
 average, or treated en masse, the training of 
 the imagination for effects is an important 
 branch of education. All the more do we 
 need to be careful for the few scattered lambs 
 who have quite enough of it. The best 
 thing for them is to keep their thoughts, in 
 the logical sense, employed. 
 
 (2) We may distinguish the dramatic from 
 the sympathetic imagination, closely connected 
 
INTELLECTUAL PROCESSES INVOLVED. 45 
 
 as these two uses of imagination doubtless 
 are. The first is more directly under the 
 guidance of logical thought, bodying forth 
 a chain of consequences in vivid concrete 
 terms. The latter comes into play under 
 the stimulus of the sympathetic impulse to 
 interpret the mind of another. This may 
 be a very complex representative act, but 
 in its general character it is of the nature 
 of ordinary perception. The common object 
 perceived — say a cow browsing on the moun- 
 tain side — is in our perception of it a com- 
 plex representation founded on the eflfort to 
 interpret as signs a few sensory impressions. 
 Similarly, when the signs present to obser- 
 vation are those indicating another person's 
 state of mind, that state is perceived in the 
 effort of imagination to interpret the signs 
 by the production in the perceiving mind of 
 a like state. When this effort is successful, 
 the perception of one mind by its reflection 
 in another is a perception of peculiar signi- 
 ficance and intimacy, and well deserves the 
 wonder and admiration so commonly bestowed 
 
46 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 upon it. Some minds are more gifted in 
 this way than others, and all are limited 
 as to the kinds of states in others which 
 they can echo in themselves, so that even 
 to the most gifted some persons will be 
 unintelligible. All, however, can improve 
 such gift as they have, as will be seen 
 when we inquire into the conditions under 
 which this response of mind to mind takes 
 place. 
 
 In the normal case — the only one that 
 directly concerns us here — ^the movement of 
 imagination starts from the sympathetic im- 
 pulse. The hungry little child crying in the 
 street is not a mere sign of mental distress 
 to be interpreted intellectually. The self in 
 us is moved, by the signs of feeling, into 
 harmony with the feeling signified. At first 
 this fellow feeling may be very clumsy and 
 wide of the mark ; we are moved towards 
 what we take to be the other's feeling, but 
 we may mistake the signs of it as easily as 
 we mistake objects too far ofi" to be clearly 
 seen. The sympathy of some persons never 
 
INTELLECTUAL PROCESSES INVOLVED. 47 
 
 gets beyond this stage; they continue to 
 mistake. This is partly because of natural 
 slowness in accommodation of mind, so that, 
 having responded at first with such feeling 
 as came uppermost, they are not apt to 
 move from that position. It may also be 
 partly because of dulness in perception, so that 
 they do not feel called upon to tune their 
 feeling into the harmony of which it failed 
 at the first. And it may be that, though 
 naturally slow and dull, they could transcend 
 these limitations by taking more pains to 
 open their minds and correct their clumsy 
 impulse, till the response became adequate 
 to the feeling responded to. 
 
 Now the slowness with which the mind 
 throws out new feelings to meet the case 
 is correlative with slowness of imagination 
 in forging the images corresponding ; and the 
 process of correction by which, slowly or 
 swiftly, the one mind is tuned into har- 
 mony with another is largely, though not 
 wholly, an iutellectual process. The sympa- 
 thetic movement detains attention on the 
 
48 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 signs of the other person's state of mind, 
 and, at the same time, stimulates the ideas 
 of self-consciousness, till some ideal con- 
 struction is formed which fits all the signs 
 and carries the true response of feeling with 
 it. Thus, though sympathy belongs to the 
 sphere of feeling, it not only acts as a 
 stimulus to the imagination, directing it to 
 certain ends, but is itself made perfect by 
 the perfection with which imagination con- 
 structs out of the ideas of self-consciousness 
 the required representations of states of mind. 
 Thus we may speak of the sympathetic 
 imagination, and note that the conditions 
 favourable to it are : — (a) the sympathetic 
 impulse, (6) facility of imagination in general, 
 (c) richness, variety, and interest in self-con- 
 scious experience as the material of sympa- 
 thetic imagination. 
 
 To the sympathetic impulse as such we 
 will give further attention in another chapter. 
 We are here concerned with the intellectual 
 process of imagination — (&) and (c) — con- 
 nected with it, and to this must be added 
 
INTELLECTUAL PROCESSES INVOLVED. 49 
 
 the social tact which is readily observant of 
 expression in persons, and thus corrects 
 flightiness in social imagination. 
 
 When this social or sympathetic imagina- 
 tion is vigorous and true, the man goes on 
 his way from day to day with a habitual 
 other-consciousness as natural to him as his 
 consciousness of self or of the natural objects 
 about him. Conduct is largely controlled 
 by this actual presence in our minds of the 
 represented minds of others. The character- 
 istic case in morals is the imagination of 
 the consciousness of others as affected by 
 our present conduct. We come in late when 
 the household has gone to rest, and move 
 about silently, checked by the fancy that 
 some other person may be roused from sleep. 
 Or we are careful to be punctual at an 
 appointment, stimulated by the visual image 
 of a friend waiting drearily in the rain. An 
 imagined look of disappointment on a face 
 will set us to do inconvenient things without 
 any great occasion. And notice that the 
 force of the stimulus lies largely in the 
 
 D 
 
50 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 vividness of the imagination, to which vivid- 
 ness the personal sting of motive seems to 
 be proportional. 
 
 Many problems of conduct present them- 
 selves most aptly in these terms : How does 
 the act correspond to the feelings, the wishes, 
 the natural expectations of some other or 
 others ? As a sole guide to conduct, reliance 
 on other-consciousness would sadly fail, but 
 none the less does the imagination of it 
 take its place, side by side with the imagina- 
 tion of consequences generally, as factors in 
 the process by which a person is enabled 
 to construct his act in accordance with a 
 sound ideal of conduct. The dramatic imagin- 
 ation, with its long sight into the future, 
 acts, moreover, as a safe check on a social 
 imagination that may be short-sighted and 
 look to the immediate future only. 
 
 Let us pause for a moment to consider 
 the kind of person likely to result from the 
 play of moralizing factors so far considered. 
 It would be a person dominated by concrete 
 
INTELLECTUAL PROCESSES INVOLVED. 51 
 
 imaginings of good and evil results, by vivid 
 representations of other persons' desires, some- 
 times marvellously correct and to the purpose, 
 but sometimes exaggerated and wide of the 
 mark, and, above all, without a steadily 
 realized criterion of moral judgment to 
 enable distinction between mere fancy and 
 the imagination of truth. Jane Austen 
 delighted in drawing this bright and erring 
 character in her somewhat over-abstract but 
 very graphic way. The reader will be re- 
 minded in particular of Emma, her fancy 
 always busy with romantic schemes for 
 other persons' happiness, her sympathies for 
 ever engaged with feelings in others which 
 did not exist. And the reasonable Mr. 
 Knightley, with his sound judgment and 
 strong sense, is always ready to reprove and 
 to point out the defect. " She will never 
 submit to anything requiring patience and 
 industry and a subjection of the fancy to 
 the understanding." Emma, however, is 
 rather an example of unbridled fancy than 
 of fancy combined with strong, even if un- 
 
52 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 guided, sympathy. A quick perceiving sym- 
 pathy is in itself a guide, because it leads 
 fancy in definite ways having some rough 
 accordance with the actual condition of things. 
 Even sympathy, however, true though it may 
 be to the immediate circumstances as afiect- 
 ing others, will run riot and give confused 
 directions if not under the control of thought. 
 It is on the labour of thought that self- 
 consistency in imagination and conduct de- 
 pends. He who will not take the trouble 
 to think is like the double-minded man 
 described by the apostle, " unstable in all 
 his ways"; he is "like the surge of the sea 
 driven by the wind and tossed." 
 
 Imagination, dramatic and sympathetic, as 
 we have been considering it, does indeed 
 imply no small amount of real thinking at 
 its back. But enough thinking will hardly 
 be brought into play in ethical instruction 
 if distinct and separate attention is not given 
 to the function of thought as such. What- 
 ever the subject matter of the lesson may 
 be, the lesson is not a good one if it does 
 
INTELLECTUA L PROCESSES INVOL VED. 53 
 
 not bring the judgment of the learners into 
 play, and lead them to use the idea con- 
 veyed in it as one more brick in the erection 
 of a rational ideal of conduct destined to 
 dominate as a permanent purpose the whole 
 course of life. 
 
 An ideal of conduct is a highly complex 
 practical idea summing up all the ideas of 
 conduct already acquired in particular cases. 
 If these ideas contradict each other, either 
 one blots out the others simply, or the whole 
 in which they are comprehended is shaken 
 to its fall : some propping up or reconstruc- 
 tion is necessary, the characteristic of which 
 is that it must secure freedom from contra- 
 diction in the new whole. An idea containing 
 glaring contradictions breaks at once : an idea 
 containing feeble contradictions that occasion- 
 ally suggest themselves is in perpetual flux. 
 The idea is not in equilibrium unless its 
 contradictions are either settled or expelled : 
 then it is at peace with itself and stands. 
 But it is always liable to disturbance from 
 without by the advent of new ideas claiming 
 
54 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 a place in it, and their admission may break 
 up the idea or may be the occasion of fresh 
 reconstructions. A stable idea is one that is 
 sure to reconstruct itself after disturbance, 
 and obviously that must be because it abeady 
 contains so much truth that it cannot be 
 essentially changed by any further discoveries. 
 A rational ideal of conduct is one stable 
 in this sense : it does not contain all practical 
 wisdom, and may contain some error, but the 
 wisdom prevails so much over the error that 
 all future access of wisdom will not destroy 
 the whole but develop it. Such access of 
 wisdom comes by the activity of intellect 
 already considered, acting in contact with ex- 
 perience and opinion. Error also comes that 
 way, but the stable idea — stable because 
 mostly true — easily expels error. No possible 
 access of error can be so large as to upset 
 an ideal of life which is firmly rooted in 
 everlasting principles of reason. Such access of 
 error will cause particular errors in conduct 
 only till found out as error by its incon- 
 sistency with that ideal to which the will has 
 
INTELLECTUAL PROCESSES INVOLVED. 55 
 
 attached itself. In an interval of sophistica- 
 tion the man whose conscience is in general 
 broad-based and true may lose his bearings 
 for a time, like mariners in a fog, but he 
 will soon recover his course by recurring to 
 the sure chart and compass within him. And 
 just as error is easily expelled, being an alien 
 substance, so is the new wisdom which is 
 cognate to the established ideal as easily 
 received. Thus the rational ideal grows 
 steadily towards completion : it has, like the 
 mariner's use of chart and compass, a unity 
 throughout time, as well as the unity of its 
 present self-consistency at any time. 
 
 For instance, compare the moral future of 
 two children, one of whom has been trained 
 throughout to form his life in accordance 
 with the universal principles of "justice, 
 mercy, and truth," while the other has been 
 guided through childhood by considerations 
 of aesthetic fitness, good form, and conven- 
 tional propriety. The difierence is made by 
 appealing, on all occasions of appeal, to a 
 different range of motives in the two cases. 
 
56 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 The one child grows up to view his life in 
 all particulars with a steady regard to the 
 reasonable claims of others, and to the main- 
 tenance of his own personality in the strict 
 consistency of reason. Against principles of 
 life so universal in their application, impulse 
 may fight and win, but error has no chance. 
 The man so built is not tempted, for instance, 
 by specious arguments showing that pleasure 
 is man's natural end and each one's pleasure 
 for himself. On the contrary, the tempter 
 who appeals to his intellect almost certainly 
 loses him by wakening the ideal of rational 
 life. His temptation comes rather in the 
 day when thought is torpid and impulse 
 strong. 
 
 But the other child has no clear view of 
 universal principles — no firm grip on them 
 as principles of life. He is governed by an 
 ideal of good taste, and the ideal may be 
 very complete in its way and effective too 
 for good so long as it is not disturbed by 
 new ideas. The man is trained to be a 
 " gentleman " well balanced in his instincts, 
 
INTELLECTUAL PROCESSES INVOLVED. 57 
 
 polished in his manner, and agreeable in the 
 aesthetic sense to other persons. The appeal 
 to motives for conduct in him has proceeded 
 on this aesthetic plane. He is a charming 
 person, and may live a life well ordered and 
 beneficent. Balance, and polish, and an eye 
 to the fitness of things, are all good — even 
 very good — and moral training should take 
 account of them. But they do not form a 
 sound ideal of life : all their maxims are of 
 pa/rticular application ; exceptions may be 
 made to them, and therefore they may be 
 attacked. Matters of taste are in their nature 
 liable to be disputed. Thus, on a moral ideal 
 rooted solely in good taste, occasional error 
 is sure to make profound and destructive im- 
 pressions. Thus, when the man goes wrong 
 under the lead of impulse, it is more likely 
 than not that he will, by argument, bring 
 his ideal of life down to his real level. And 
 under social influence, or low-toned literature, 
 or contact with moral scepticism in any shape, 
 such an ideal is likely enough to break up as 
 a moral ideal altogether, even in the absence 
 
58 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 of strong impulsive temptations. Thus it 
 exemplifies the quality of instability. 
 
 The stable moral ideal is stable because, 
 although perhaps including several non- 
 essential or contingent elements, it is for 
 the most part based on universal truth. 
 Thus it is for the most part in agreement 
 with any total ideal of conduct that the 
 human mind is capable of forming. It 
 disagrees with many ideas on the subject — 
 might even disagree with the majority, each 
 in its isolation voting "No." Truth may 
 never have a majority in her favour, because 
 every error cries out against her. But she 
 is the diverging point of all error none the 
 less. The many errors distribute themselves 
 about the one truth, and mark her place 
 as the centre of their cluster. 
 
 Experience of life, and the imagination of 
 such experience, supply the means for the 
 development of new partial ideas in the 
 total ideal of conduct ; but the constant 
 exercise of reflection and judgment is neces- 
 sary, in order that the means should serve 
 
INTELLECTUAL PROCESSES INVOLVED. 59 
 
 the end, and any permanent result be thus 
 secured. Moral instruction, therefore, includes 
 training to regular thought on the subject 
 matter of conduct. Each learner in his 
 sphere — in his degree — should be a moral 
 philosopher, judging about cases of conduct, 
 enlarging, establishing, his ideas of right. 
 
 Our reflections on the conditions of stability 
 in the moral ideal will have brought to light 
 an important educational precaution, the 
 neglect of which is doubtless the cause of 
 much moral ruin in later life. In any 
 particular mind the stability of the ideal 
 of conduct depends on its general conformity 
 to the sum of the partial moral ideas 
 likely to be suggested later. If then the 
 ideal centres in a set of ideas of conduct 
 likely to be contradicted in later life, so 
 that these overbalance the more certain and 
 indisputable part of its content, there is 
 danger that the ideal as a whole may be 
 overset for a time and even permanently 
 shaken. It is unstable, and every blast of 
 counter-doctrine wiU drive it farther from 
 
60 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 its moorings, because controvertible doctrine 
 prevails in it over incontrovertible truth. 
 This happens when persons have been taught 
 to attach more importance to conventional 
 non-essentials than to the broad require- 
 ments of charity, self-denial, and truth. 
 
 A similar result shows itself in an even 
 more striking light as affecting the religious 
 idea. Quite apart from the particular de- 
 velopment of religious thought in which a 
 man is brought up, the religious idea is 
 stable in one, unstable in another. And why? 
 Simply because the one has so learned the 
 idea as to attach all its significance to the 
 not easily shaken essentials, while the other 
 has perhaps centred himself in the Scotch- 
 ness of Scotch sabbaths or something equally 
 inviting debate. 
 
 Good moral teaching presupposes in the 
 teacher a rational ideal of conduct in his 
 own mind — ^not by any means necessarily 
 the, complete rational ideal, but a rational 
 ideal, one that begins at the right end so 
 as to secure perfect stability. The teacher 
 
INTELLECTUAL PROCESSES INVOLVED. 61 
 
 moreover must be able to teacb — that is, to 
 secure the exercise of imagination and 
 thought in the ways that have been de- 
 scribed — so that appreciation of conduct 
 and aspiration for character may be present 
 in the consideration of every particular case, 
 while reflection surely and steadily gathers 
 up the moral of every incident, to incorporate 
 it into the ideal of conduct that dominates 
 all good life. 
 
 This ideal, whether rational or irrational, 
 complete or incomplete, is known to us under 
 the name of conscience, controlling by encour- 
 agement or discouragement all our individual 
 ideas of action. In the conscientious mind 
 it is ever present — ready to permit or to 
 forbid — as a permanent condition which all 
 actions must satisfy. There are two ways 
 in which conscience may fail, and good 
 education should prevent either of these 
 failures. It may fail to be present when 
 required, and it may fail to dominate other 
 motives even when present. 
 
 A habit of due deliberation in act is the 
 
62 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 preventive of the first evil — an obviously 
 effective one. We may deliberate too much, 
 and we ought not to deliberate always, but 
 to deliberate in doubtful cases is well. Im- 
 pulse acts at once, conscience generally, 
 though not always, takes time; for impulsive 
 moral motives must be distinguished from 
 conscience as a whole although they pertain 
 to it. 
 
 The second evil is prevented by a habit 
 of never-failing obedience. A breach of habit 
 is much more than the negative evil of loss 
 of exercise : it is the foundation of a positive 
 habit of breach. Such a thing as a breach 
 with conscience ought to seem impossible to 
 the well-trained mind. The realization of its 
 possibility weakens resistance to temptation 
 for the future. 
 
CHAPTEE II. 
 
 THE MOEALIZING INSTINCTS DEVELOPED 
 BY THE STUDY OF MORALITY. 
 
 We have seen how the activity of the 
 learner's intellect is involved in any successful 
 course of moral instruction. By such instruc- 
 tion he is trained to employ his powers of 
 reason and imagination on every problem of 
 life and conduct. Thus his moral conscious- 
 ness is developed on the intellectual side. 
 He comes to see his life as a consistent whole, 
 harmonious with the lives of all his fellows, 
 in so far as he and they do set their pur- 
 poses on the ends that ought to be realized. 
 But in good instruction of all kinds, and 
 in moral instruction more especially, there is 
 at least as much training of the instinctive 
 as of the conscious self. Not that a line 
 
64 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 can be drawn between these two branches of 
 training, for in every movement of the mind 
 towards its object there is an instinctive, as 
 well as a conscious or ideal, source of energy. 
 The ideal source we can explain in the reasons 
 we give for the act, but it may well be that 
 the energy of the movement chiefly depends 
 on some instinct that hides itself in the 
 silence of unconsciousness. These silent in- 
 stincts are only known in their effects : they 
 predetermine the flow of feeling, the direction 
 of attention ; and thus the train of ideas 
 being biassed by them more or less, the 
 whole mental life is subjected to an inner 
 shaping force of which consciousness gives no 
 direct account. Such shaping instincts make 
 up, in the first instance, the original character 
 — be it of "original sin" or of original 
 righteousness. By directing the attention 
 they determine even the course of our 
 thought, and move us, moreover, to outbursts 
 of feeling and action in which thought plays 
 a vanishing part. 
 
 But the shaping instincts can themselves 
 
MORALIZING INSTINCTS DEVELOPED. 65 
 
 be shaped : the development of character in 
 adaptation to circumstances, or to the ideal 
 of character, is such a shaping. It is this 
 second kind of shaping that concerns us in 
 direct moral instruction. Although the train 
 of ideas is biassed by the original instincts, 
 the ideas once present have an independent 
 and powerful efficiency : they gather force by 
 drawing in the whole intellectual reaction, 
 and express themselves in conduct even as 
 against strong opposing instincts. This is 
 what we call self-control ; and by practice 
 in doing what we see rather than what we 
 are impelled to do, a habit of self-control is 
 formed, so strong that at last the opposing 
 instincts cease to make their opposition felt, 
 and in the long run the group of them is 
 changed — old instincts have withered, new 
 instincts grown up. Thus the fiery-tempered 
 boy becomes by his self-discipline the gentle 
 natured man.^ And note that in his exer- 
 cise of self-control he helps himself by 
 
 ' George Macdonald's story, The Marquis of Lossie, finely 
 illustrates this change. 
 
66 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 calling largely on his sympathetic impulses 
 and his intellectual perception of justice. 
 
 Self-discipline, this re-shaping of the in- 
 stinctive self, has to be worked out in actual 
 life. None the less is it true, however, that 
 if it be true se^-discipline it takes its rise 
 in moral ideals firmly grasped. The source 
 of the new life is the new thought — the 
 "Word of life" — the ideal of a better self 
 which, when clearly seen and steadfastly 
 applied, is not too strongly described by 
 the New Testament as a new birth. Hence 
 it is the function of moral instruction to 
 initiate, and re-initiate, and continually stimu- 
 late the discipline of self, into accordance 
 with the moral ideal. 
 
 Our study of the intellectual processes 
 involved in the learner's response to the 
 teaching of morality will suffice to show all 
 that is involved in the building up of the 
 moral ideal as such. But the efficiency of 
 the ideal for the self-discipline required in- 
 volves other conditions than those of its 
 own richness and energy intellectually con- 
 
MORALIZING INSTINCTS DEVELOPED. 67 
 
 sidered ; although it must be remembered that 
 an idea into which is outpoured all those 
 powers of thought and imagination already 
 considered is an idea strong with the force 
 thus gathered to express itself in life. One 
 mind differs, however, greatly from another 
 in respect of the practical efl&ciency of its 
 ideas. This may be, in the main, a difference 
 either in imagination or in elasticity of 
 instinct. And so, whereas it may be suffi- 
 cient with one to secure that the right idea 
 has been acquired, another will require the 
 assistance of auxiliary instincts supporting 
 it. Thus, to refer once more to the pas- 
 sionate-tempered boy, the idea of reasonable 
 conduct may not be strong enough or quick 
 enough to check the outburst by itself, in 
 which case the auxiliary instinct of immediate 
 sympathy is the obvious desideratum. Sup- 
 pose the first blow draws blood, the sympa- 
 thetic impulse may spring out instantly ; and 
 even before the blow takes place this may, 
 with imagination of hurt, avert it. 
 
 The instincts that are in general service- 
 
68 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 able to the moral ideal may be called the 
 moralizing instincts. They divide themselves 
 into two groups— the personal and the social. 
 The latter, which centre in the sympathetic 
 impulse, are the more obvious in their use- 
 fulness, but as their development turns much 
 on that of the personal group we will consider 
 the latter first. 
 
 The most c^emoralizing instincts are some 
 of those that have regard to self. These 
 are — a most important and, within due limits, 
 necessary group — all that make for the plea- 
 sures that may be used either (a) to excess, 
 or (&) to the hurt of others. In a well- 
 balanced character there is set over against 
 these, with the eflfect to limit them, not 
 only reason, but instincts that control them 
 silently. Excess of every kind excites dis- 
 gust in a well-constituted person : either the 
 appetites are themselves limited, or a con- 
 trolling instinct directed to this end of 
 moderation holds the reins. No doubt, the 
 mere physical appetites have this natural 
 limitation in healthy physical natures ; but 
 
MORALIZING INSTINCTS DEVELOPED. 69 
 
 the effect of moderation is produced over so 
 vast a range of desires so far removed from 
 our primitive wants, that a general instinct 
 forbidding loss of balance and restoring self- 
 possession is forcibly suggested. This is the 
 instinct by which is maintained the normal 
 humanity of the man — that due proportion 
 and harmony of function which is threatened 
 by particular exaggerations of every kind. 
 When drawn by any such, the rest of his 
 nature asserts itself in opposition to maintain 
 the whole. The experience, I imagine, is a 
 tolerably familiar one — that sense of strong 
 though vague protest in us somewhere against 
 our own even harmless extremes. The waters 
 of consciousness are troubled by the stirrings 
 of some instinct, which let us call the instinct 
 bo self-possession. This is a moralizing in- 
 stinct : we appeal to it, as well as to reason, 
 when we reprove a child for having "for- 
 gotten himself" In moral instruction it is 
 appealed to frequently, in every appeal to 
 the sense of dignified self-assertion that backs 
 the moral idea of a well-balanced self In a 
 
70 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 hundred ways may be said what Shakespeare 
 finely says : 
 
 " To thine own self be true, 
 And it will follow as the night the day 
 Thou canst not then be false to any man." 
 
 Against the excess of all natural desire 
 there is the reaction of this healthy instinct 
 to preserve the balance of self. Primarily it 
 sets itself against any strong disturbance, 
 and is not always a moralizing force. But 
 it is capable of fine uses for good, to keep 
 life in close touch with the moral idea of 
 a self living fitly. When such an idea of 
 self is established, this self-possessing instinct 
 shows itself as a fixed tendency to preserve 
 the idea. This is stimulated in every 
 thought of self-respect, in every act of self- 
 control, in every reflection of self-reproach, 
 in every resolve to be the moral self. 
 
 Good moral teaching will aim at the de- 
 velopment of this instinct by well-chosen 
 appeals to the ideas that stimulate it, whether 
 unmixed ideas of morality or not : heroic 
 tales of endurance, abstinence, of the essential 
 
MORALIZING INSTINCTS DEVELOPED. 71 
 
 wealth that consists in the fewness of wants, 
 of human dignity as bound up with inde- 
 pendence of circumstances — all teaching and 
 preaching that appeals to the human soul to 
 make itself strong — tend to draw out into 
 constant practice the self-possessing instinct. 
 
 But moral teaching does more than this. 
 It aims at the development of all this strength 
 in a soul based on the moral ideal. And so 
 the appeal should be associated throughout 
 with the idea of the better self asserting 
 itself as the self, to possess and rule for good 
 all vagrant impulse and desire. Endurance, 
 abstinence, self-control, dignity, become more 
 truly noble in the nobility of their end. 
 
 The conclusion, however, on which it speci- 
 ally behoves us at this point to dwell is that 
 in the moral lessons careful account shall be 
 taken of the natural instinct to be or to do 
 something having a wholeness and indi- 
 viduality of its own. There are repressive 
 requirements in the moral ideal, but let us 
 take care that we draw out the positive forces 
 of the child's half-developed personality to 
 
72 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 deal with them. Something more than pure 
 intellectual discipline is involved in the intel- 
 lectual teaching of self-control. 
 
 The impulse to he some kind of person is 
 capable of use as a moralizing impulse, though 
 it may be badly directed. In good moral 
 instruction it is, not only directed, but drawn 
 out. The impulse to do — to achieve some 
 end chosen by self — is a moralizing instinct 
 also, and calls for the same sympathetic treat- 
 ment. Of the intellectual impulse to know, 
 the like remark may be made — has been 
 made already. 
 
 Over against all these impulses of human 
 life — of life as human — stand the host of 
 those impulses which subserve the manifold 
 desire to have. In their effects there is this 
 marked contrast between desires to he and 
 desires to have, that the former, in general, 
 aim at a result by which the world is made 
 more desirable for others, whereas the latter 
 seek a share in goods, the share of which 
 for others is thereby diminished. Hence it 
 is to the undue exercise of these acquisitive 
 
MORALIZING INSTINCTS DEVELOPED. 73 
 
 desires that the vice of selfishness attaches. 
 When the interests of another are not 
 threatened or neglected there is no selfish- 
 ness. It is not selfish, therefore, to desire 
 much virtue and knowledge, but it is selfish 
 to desire the lion's share of land and houses 
 and material goods. 
 
 And this brings us back to the division 
 we made in the subject of demoralizing in- 
 stincts at the outset. Any instinct may be 
 demoralizing which makes for the pleasures 
 that may be used to the hurt of others. 
 These form a large and immensely powerful 
 group under the general ill-sounding name 
 of Selfishness. Against these what instinct 
 shall we rely upon to do battle for morality. 
 
 No part of the subject is more familiar 
 than this part. A ready ally is found in 
 the impulse of sympathy by which one man's 
 state of mind is moved into unison with that 
 of another. The importance of the develop- 
 ment of sympathy, as a factor in moral 
 education generally, has already been discussed 
 at sufficient length. Here we need only 
 
74 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 dwell on its stimulation and direction in 
 connection with the subject matter of the 
 moral lesson. For instance, in a lesson where 
 there is a story of tyrannical conduct, the 
 child's mind goes out in revolt against the 
 unmanliness of the tyrant's character, and 
 also moves in a glow of sympathy with those 
 whom he hurts. 
 
 In the course of moral lessons, sympathy 
 is cultivated in relation to the imagination 
 of other persons and their feelings. We 
 have already seen how the value of the 
 sympathetic impulse largely depends on the 
 perfection of the imaginative skill which it 
 is able to enlist in its service. It will be 
 obvious, therefore, that the cultivation jointly 
 of imagination and sympathy, which is so 
 marked a feature of story telling to a moral 
 end, is conducive in a high degree to moral 
 culture. In real life, the sympathetic impulse, 
 started by some familiar signs of weal or woe, 
 takes the lead, and the imagination is stimu- 
 lated to a progressive eflfort of interpretation. 
 In a story or a lesson this order of develop- 
 
MORALIZING INSTINCTS DEVELOPED. 75 
 
 ment is reversed. In real life the danger 
 is that imagination will not do its work, 
 and sympathy fail in the perfection of its 
 fit. In the story there is a very real danger 
 that the real sympathetic impulse should 
 not be stirred at all, in defect of that 
 real presence of feeling which is its normal 
 source. This is a danger to morality, because 
 the habit of coldly imagining the mind of 
 another, without any movement to repel or 
 adopt it, contains capacities for cruelty which 
 are obvious enough. There is need for care, 
 therefore, in the reading of literature which 
 stimulates greatly the social imagination, 
 especially when the sympathy normally con- 
 sequent on its stimulus is of the painful sort. 
 Sympathy with pain is exhausting, even 
 that modified sympathy which co-exists with 
 the consciousness that the persons aflfected 
 are all imaginary. It is the person of most 
 active sympathy who turns from the tragic 
 to the comic page ; and we may be sure 
 that the person who chooses to fill his 
 imagination with the stuff that " penny 
 
76 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 dreadfuls" and the agony columns of the 
 newspapers are made of, suflfers no sympa- 
 thetic response in self-consciousness to the 
 pains of which he reads. In the common 
 case of a taste for the literature of horror, 
 it is likely that the activity of imagination 
 is occupied almost entirely with the external 
 facts — that the minds of the unhappy actors 
 in the drama are not imagined at all. But 
 undoubtedly there are cases in which the 
 mind of the sufferer is imagined, though as a 
 thing apart from self, evoking no response. 
 Then we have cruelty, even if the suffering 
 be only that of a hobgoblin in a fairy tale. 
 
 I would suggest, therefore, that the moral 
 lesson should aim at evoking the sympa- 
 thetic response whenever it appeals to the 
 imagination with respect to the life of other 
 persons. This is generally evoked by taking 
 care that the minds of those concerned are 
 included in the effort of imagination ; thus 
 the emotional nature will be roused as part 
 and parcel with the intellectual reaction. 
 Much more than this we cannot well do in 
 
MORALIZING INSTINCTS DEVELOPED. 77 
 
 the actual lesson, but we can remove im- 
 pediments to the natural flow of feeling, and 
 the stimulus of our own warmth will warm 
 the colder souls to a quicker response. More- 
 over, something can be done to shake the 
 self-centring of the over-self-centred con- 
 sciousness, which is the chief drag on the 
 natural out-goings of like to like in the 
 emotional imitativeness of sympathy. All 
 social life does this, and even in the nursery 
 education of the little child there is abundant 
 opportunity for the development of emotional 
 interests outside self. 
 
 But if there be excess in the demand 
 made on our sympathies — especially the pain- 
 ful sympathies — emotional exhaustion must 
 be the consequence, accompanied probably 
 by a self-defending effort to shut oneself off 
 from the inordinate demand. This effort 
 may be made in three different ways. We 
 may shut our eyes altogether to the ills that 
 distress us. In this spirit we pass over the 
 columns in the daily paper headed " Indian 
 Famine " or " Turkish Atrocities." Or we 
 
78 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 may go so far as to take in the situation 
 logically — possibly with the view of deciding 
 on the practical course that ought to be 
 taken — and strictly restrain the imagination 
 from giving it concrete form. Or, not im- 
 posing this restriction, we may give the 
 matter our intellectual attention, may even 
 realize the feeling of it to those directly 
 concerned, and yet harden ourselves within 
 ourselves, and thus not sympathize. Any of 
 these methods of defence may be made 
 habitual. They all, but especially the last, 
 savour of callousness. 
 
 Thus there is evil in a course of moral 
 lessons which overworks the sympathies. 
 More especially the teacher should be sparing 
 of pain. The more stimulating kind of sym- 
 pathy should be preferred, such as that 
 called upon in tales of heroism and loyal 
 service in which there is a continual outflow 
 of good deeds with increase of happiness 
 from the hero's activity. When the deed of 
 tragic heroism is used — and it ought to be 
 used sometimes — it should have a sublime 
 
MORALIZING INSTINCTS DEVELOPED. 79 
 
 goodness sufficient to raise the mind rightly- 
 above considerations of pleasure and pain. 
 
 The sympathies should not be overworked, 
 and least of all by way of exercise in moral 
 lessons. Let care be taken also that their 
 development does not terminate in mere 
 sentiment. The achievement of some prac- 
 tical result by which things are improved 
 should be the end of every sympathetic out- 
 burst. " Go thou and do likewise," — this 
 should be the unspoken moral of every lesson. 
 
 A true story of an Irish drummer-boy in Elizabethan 
 times is told by Mr. Standish O'Grady, which so well 
 illustrates the interaction of imagination, sympathy, and 
 moral purpose, that I venture to quote it here. The 
 drummer-boy marched with the army of the Queen under 
 the Lord Deputy and Captain Thomas Lee, whose purpose 
 it was to seize, in the dead of night, the fortress of a 
 certain chieftain Clan-Eanal, otherwise called the Raven. 
 The conversation between the leaders revealing their pur- 
 pose is overheard by the drummer-boy marching near, who 
 drops his drumsticks in the shock of his dismay. 
 
 "The drummer-boy drummed about as well as before 
 that overheard conversation about the Raven had shaken 
 the drumsticks from his hand. The sub-conscious musical 
 soul in him enabled him to do that ; but his thoughts were 
 not in the music. Something then said caused to pass 
 before him an irregular dioramic succession of mental scenes 
 and pictures. For him, as he whirred with his little drum- 
 sticks, or rat-at-at-ated, memory and imagination on blank 
 
80 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 nothing for canvas, and with the rapidity of lightning, 
 flung pictures by the hundred. 
 
 " Here is one for a sample : it passed before him like a 
 flash, but passed many times. A long table, a very long 
 table, spread for supper, redolent of supper, steaming with 
 supper, and he very willing to sup. Vessels of silver, of 
 gold too — for it was some gala night — shone in the light 
 of many candles. Rows of happy faces were there, and 
 one face eminent above all. There were candles in candle- 
 sticks of branching silver, or plain brass, or even fixed in 
 jars and bottles. All the splendovxr was a good way off 
 from him. He was at the wrong end of the long table, 
 but he was there. At his end was no snow-white linen, 
 and the cups and platters were only of ash or wild apple ; 
 but of good food there was plenty, and of ale, too, for such 
 as were not children. It was the supper table of a great 
 lord. The boy was at one end, and the great lord at the 
 other ; he was at one end and the Raven at the other. 
 He was not kin to this great lord, whom he called Clan- 
 Ranal, and to whom he was too young to do service. He 
 knew no mother, and hardly remembered his father ; he 
 had been slain, they told him, ' when Clan-Ranal brake 
 the battle on the Lord Deputy and all the Queen's host.' 
 " Again, in imagination, the drummer-boy sat in Clan- 
 Ranal's glowing hall while the storm raged without and 
 shook the clay-and-timber sides of that rude palace. There 
 sat the swarthy chief, beaming goodwill and hospitality 
 upon all. His smiles, and the flash of his kind eyes illumi- 
 nated the hall from end to end, and made the food sweeter 
 and the ale stronger. He was only a robber chief, but oh, 
 so great ! so glorious ! in the child's eyes. His ' queen ' 
 was at his right hand, and around him his mighty men 
 of valour, famous names, sung by many bards, names that 
 struck terror afar through the lowlands. To the boy they 
 were not quite earthly ; he thought of them with the super- 
 natural heroes of old time. He did not know that his 
 'king' was a robber, or, if he did, thought that robbery 
 was but another name for celerity, boldness, and every form 
 of warlike excellence, as in such primitive Homeric days 
 
MORALIZING INSTINCTS DEVELOPED. 81 
 
 it mostly is. To others, the Raven and his mighty men 
 were sons of death and perdition ; but their rapine sustained 
 him, and in their dubious glory he rejoiced. A fair child's 
 face, too, mingled always in these scenes and pictures, which 
 chased each other across the mind of the drummer. He 
 saw her, in short green kirtle and coat of cloth -of -gold, 
 step down from the king's side at an assembly, bearing 
 to him, the small but distinguished hurler of toy spears, 
 the prize of excellence (it was only a clasp knife ; he had 
 it still), and saw her sweet smile as she said, 'Thou wilt 
 do some great deed one day, O Raymond, Fitz Raymond, 
 Fitz Pierce.' All the gay, bright happy life of his child- 
 hood, so happy because it held so much love, came and went 
 in flashes before his gazing eyes ; and now he drummed on 
 the army which was to quench in blood, in horrors un- 
 speakable and unthinkable, the light of that happy home 
 where he had once been so happy himself. Tears ran down 
 the <lruramer's face, unseen, for the night had now come. 
 Then a thought, a purpose, flashed swiftly, like a meteor, 
 acioss his mind, and came again less transiently, and then 
 came to stay, fixed, clear, and determinate ; a, purpose like 
 a star. He drummed better after that, and spoke as stoutly 
 as his fellows about the glorious achievement which was 
 to be performed that night, and about his share of the 
 plunder. Yet his thoughts were not plunderous but heroic. 
 He, Raymond, son of Raymond, son of Pierce, son of, 
 &c., &c., would do a great deed that night. Some pride 
 of birth may have mingled with the lad's purpose, for he 
 was of a sept broken and scattered indeed, but once famous 
 — the Fitz-Eustaces. He knew his genealogical line hy 
 heart. If there was a drummer at one end of it, there 
 was an Earl at the other.'' 
 
 "Then cautiously the Lord Deputy's army began to 
 descend from the heights. Silence was enjoined on all, 
 not to be broken on pain of death. Each subaltern was 
 responsible for the behaviour of his own file ; he had strict 
 orders to keep his men together, and prevent straying on 
 any pretext. As they drew nearer the scaling ladders were 
 
 F 
 
82 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 unpacked. The little city as yet gave no sign of alarm ; 
 net a cock crowed or dog barked. No watch had been set, 
 or, if there had been, he slept. All within, man and beast, 
 seemed plunged in profound slumber. Some strong detach- 
 ments now separated from the main body, and moved 
 through the trees to the right and the left. Their object 
 was to surround the city, and cut off all retreat. There 
 was another gate at the rear, opening upon a wooden bridge, 
 which spanned a considerable stream. There were only two 
 gates to the city, that in front, at which the main body 
 was assembled, and the rear gate, whither the detachments 
 were now tending. They never got there. At one moment 
 there was silence, broken only by the murmuring of the 
 stream or the occasional crackling of some trodden twig ; at 
 the next, the silence rang with the sharp, clear roll of a 
 kettle-drum, the detonations so rapid that they seemed 
 one continuous noise : 
 
 ' Oh, listen, for the vale profound 
 Is overflowing with the sound.' 
 
 "As suddenly as that drum had sounded, so abruptly it 
 ceased ; someone struck the drummer-boy to the earth 
 senseless, perhaps lifeless. But he had done his work. The 
 roll of a kettle-drum can no more be recalled than the 
 spoken word. The city, so sound asleep one minute past, 
 was now awake and alive in every fibre." — The Bog of Stars : 
 by Standish OGroidy. 
 
 So the chieftain and his household were saved, but forfeit 
 was made of the drummer-boy's life. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING. 
 
 Whatever the subject matter may be, the 
 work of the teacher is in nine cases out 
 of ten not done by directly enforcing the 
 ideas he has in mind. To say what one 
 has to say is so obvious a way of com- 
 municating information that if it be a wrong 
 way the caution against relying upon it is 
 doubly necessary. That it is not always a 
 successful way every teacher by sad experi- 
 ence knows. It is only the brilliantly 
 teachable few — the very very few — who take 
 in, even temporarily, all the ideas that 
 are poured out upon them. The teacher is 
 therefore bound to inquire (1) what are the 
 conditions fulfilled when a new idea is taken 
 
84 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 in, and (2) in what ways may the fulfilment 
 of the conditions fail. 
 
 The first condition is that in some 
 way or another it should arrest the 
 attention. Attention is the first condition 
 that the teacher has to secure, and there 
 are many ways of securing it. The charm 
 of personality — what the Americans call 
 magnetism — is one way. Some persons are 
 so delightful to look at, to hear, to watch, 
 that they are always listened to, whatever 
 they say. The ideas they express are at 
 least attended to in the sense, and if not 
 by the intellect, that is because they are 
 not intelligible : sensory attention has been 
 secured, but something equally essential is 
 lacking. Now it is not possible to turn 
 oneself into a person with this indefinable 
 charm : it is a quality apt to be lost even 
 by being reflected on. Those who have it 
 tend to lose it, if they become conscious 
 of their grace. But it is worth while to 
 consider its nature, so far as to be able to 
 avoid the external qualities that war against 
 
PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING. 85 
 
 it — qualities that repel the attention of eye 
 and ear. "Who wins the eye wins all," as 
 the proverb says, and the same may be 
 said of him who wins the ear. Hence the 
 efficacy of attractive appearance, not neces- 
 sarily beautiful, in face and figure and even 
 dress, of graceful gesture, of musical voice, 
 of eloquent speech, of all that engages and 
 satisfies the higher senses and aesthetic 
 feeling generally. Every improvement in 
 these respects that the teacher can make 
 in himself the better will be his grip on 
 the sensory attention. But for some subtle 
 reason it appears that beauty and appro- 
 priateness of movement and voice are 
 infinitely more eflfective than mere good 
 looks. The charm that gets a speaker 
 listened to lies somewhere in these dynamic 
 qualities. The positively disagreeable there- 
 fore in voice and movement should be cured, 
 and the rest had best be left to nature. 
 The art of good speech, however, i.e. clear 
 enunciation, true voice 'production, and good 
 literary style can be freely cultivated : these 
 
86 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 all tend to the right end — ^the arrest of 
 attention. 
 
 There are ways in which the unsuccessful 
 teacher contrives to repel this external but 
 necessary attention. Affectation or its ap- 
 pearance, self-consciousness, over-emphasis, 
 and all that is strained or laboured in 
 manner, look, or speech — ^these repel, and 
 much really good work may fail wholly of 
 its effect in consequence. Oddities of most 
 kinds first arrest attention, and then, when 
 mere curiosity is satisfied, interest fails, 
 and, finally, reaction sets in. There are, 
 alas ! people to whom one cannot listen. 
 
 The first, but only the first, step is secured 
 when attention under aesthetic motives is 
 arrested. A mere external attention is all 
 that mere external attractivenes can per- 
 manently secure, if indeed it can secure 
 even that as a permanence. A charming 
 woman is sometimes watched and listened 
 to with pleasure by one who takes no heed 
 whatever of the ideas she expresses. 
 
 Attention that is not founded on an 
 
PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING. 87 
 
 intelligent interest in the subject matter has 
 no permanence and little or no disciplinary 
 worth. The teacher's first business is to 
 secure this intelligent interest. He may 
 have to lead up to it by a suitable prepar- 
 ation beforehand, or he may secure it by a 
 sudden happy stroke. But for his choice 
 of methods everything depends on the 
 nature of the learner. The average disposi- 
 tion of the class should be his cue. Two 
 cases of the modes in which interest 
 originates may be broadly distinguished. 
 
 1. The most general case is that interest 
 does not arise with respect to a perfectly 
 new and unknown idea. The mind of the 
 emptiest-headed learner is not a perfect blank. 
 He busies himself with some ideas, be they 
 ever so poor intellectually, or low in the 
 moral order. Now, in defect of a highly- 
 organized self-consciousness such as cannot 
 be expected to exist in every one, it is 
 rather in our particular ideas than in our 
 minds as a whole that interest is excited. 
 A lively idea on which the mind dwells 
 
88 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 pretty often is easily aroused when sug- 
 gestions bearing on it are either heard or 
 read. It sustains and expands itself by 
 entertaining these suggestions, and ultimately 
 they are accepted or rejected according as 
 they can or cannot be incorporated with 
 the rest of the mental content. But what- 
 ever the final result in the workshop of 
 thought, the first stage of interest depends 
 on the fitness of the suggested idea to 
 sustain and develop a thought already there. 
 In practice it comes to this. Take any 
 average group of young learners, and you 
 will find that, for more than half the class, 
 attention droops and interest flags unless 
 you contrive so to deal with your subject 
 as to be generally talking about something 
 of which they are, or have been, thinking. 
 
 In moral instruction it is peculiarly easy 
 to apply this truth. It is so easy and natural 
 to found a lesson on some familiar incident 
 which is in itself provocative of the children's 
 thought — such as an unkind saying behind 
 one's back — or to start the moral reflection 
 
PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING. 89 
 
 arising out of some inspiring romance by- 
 bringing it to bear on everyday problems 
 which have interest for all normal minds. 
 Many children spend much unobtrusive 
 thinking on questions of right and wrong 
 that puzzle them. If the subject matter of 
 a lesson meets such a question, then indeed 
 is interest sure. 
 
 This cannot happen as often as it should 
 if the children are not freely invited to 
 take their part in determining the subject 
 matter. Only the child himself knows about 
 what he would take most interest in 
 learning more, and the teacher leads best who 
 follows with most skill, and yet to his own 
 end, the lead of the child's mind. Freedom 
 of inquiry is essential if interest is to be 
 generally sustained. But this, of course, 
 must not be allowed to degenerate into a 
 Babel of disconnected questions. All learners 
 cannot be expected to play the second part 
 in dialogue so perfectly as Glaucon in the 
 dialogues of Plato. 
 
 2. There are learners, however, who are 
 
90 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 not SO dependent on their particular old 
 ideas for their interest in new ones. Some, 
 like the Athenians of old, love always to 
 hear, as well as to tell, some new thing. 
 These are the essentially docile, about whom 
 on this score no pains need be taken. Their 
 intellectual vigour is so out of proportion 
 to the occupations which claim it that they 
 are ready to throw themselves into the 
 appreciation of all presented ideas. This 
 passion for miscellaneous appropriation de- 
 creases, it is true, as intellectual vigour 
 finds more occupation in the ideas already 
 present, but, to compensate this source of 
 loss in docility, there is the gain due to 
 increased range of intellectual interests as 
 ideas increase. 
 
 It is a problem for the teacher how to 
 make the most of such general docility as 
 he finds. It is at this point that all his 
 rhetorical arts come into play, all the arts 
 that concern the composition and presenta- 
 tion of the subject matter so that it may 
 be as interesting generally as it can be made 
 
PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING. 91 
 
 to be. The requisites might be summed up 
 under the heads of close reasoning, transpar- 
 ence of expression, and literary beauty. A 
 well-sustained thought, clearly expressed in 
 language that goes home to the intellect, 
 is always attractive, and for many minds is 
 more attractive than anything else. But 
 add the charm of literary composition, 
 elegance of form, and the variety in unity 
 of well-arranged and aptly-illustrated subject 
 matter, and the thought becomes irresistible 
 if it be also intelligible : rational interest is 
 sustained by the aesthetic motive. 
 
 For ethical lessons, these reflections point 
 to the use of a good story, beautifully told, 
 as the foundation of the lesson. If the 
 teacher can tell the story well, so much 
 the better ; if not, it can be read. But 
 for little children the actual telling counts 
 for so much that some literary beauty can 
 be fitly sacrificed for its sake. The moral 
 purport of the story should be sooner or 
 later made quite clear, and this is best 
 done Socratically by a discussion with the 
 
92 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 class, each member bringing to bear upon 
 it his experience and his inquiry for further 
 light. But this leads to consideration of 
 the stimulus to imagination which, in addi- 
 tion to the arrest of interest, all good 
 teaching implies. 
 
 The good story may be listened to with 
 attention, and the whole of the ethical lesson 
 very much enjoyed, and it may yet fail to 
 have the use intended if the mind of the 
 child himself does not work upon it thought- 
 fully. As has been already indicated, many 
 minds have a marked disinclination to 
 attend, unless the ideas presented are wanted 
 by them for further exercise of their own 
 intellectual activity. In so far, therefore, 
 as the lesson is calculated to gain their 
 attention, it also secures the exercise on it 
 of their imagination and thought. And this 
 give^ rise to the interesting and very con- 
 soling reflection, that it is better to interest 
 a class by making its members all think, 
 than to interest it by one's own rhetorical 
 arts and skill. Great orators are often less 
 
PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING. 93 
 
 permanently effective than would seem at 
 first sight. It is not by the charm and 
 impressiveness of one great speech that 
 reforms are won, but by the stimulus to 
 general thought which all great thinkers 
 and good speakers at all times exercise. 
 And this I call a consoling reflection, not 
 because it is so easy to stimulate the imagin- 
 ation and thought of others, but because it 
 is more possible, and more agreeable to the 
 simplicity of human nature, to improve 
 our gifts in this respect than to aim at 
 the powers of effective oratory. No other 
 expert is so little made and so much born 
 to his vocation as the orator ; and we are 
 in our generation so aware of this fact 
 that we scorn perhaps too much those 
 rhetorical arts which it is our business to 
 attain. The main art of the teacher, how- 
 ever, lies not in impressing the attention, 
 but in stimulating the intellect. 
 
 The problem in every lesson is how to 
 drive the idea home so that the maximum 
 of the intellectual work is done by the 
 
94 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 class, that is, by each member individually. 
 Each child is to be sent home with an 
 idea, and his own mind working on that 
 idea. If this does not occur, ideas in a 
 sense may be impressed, but they are barren ; 
 and barrenness in a moral idea is a positive 
 evil. Of a learner so taught it may be 
 said, as some French writer says of women 
 generally, that their ideas are stuck in their 
 minds like pins in a pincushion. They do 
 not form parts of a connected intellectual 
 whole. There is not, therefore, any organic 
 vitality in them, and so they are inopera- 
 tive in regulating the scheme of life to 
 noble ends. Many learners are so taught, 
 and in other than moral subjects : the result 
 is that their knowledge is no real part of 
 themselves. It is impressed from without, 
 not grafted on the living stock of freely 
 springing thought. 
 
 To the extent required for this end, the 
 teacher has to learn the very hard lesson 
 of self-effacement. A managing, fluent- 
 tongued, clear-headed teacher is often the 
 
PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING. 95 
 
 worst teacher of all. He supplies all the 
 ideas, does all the thinking, gets his set 
 lessons well learned, and keeps his class in 
 immaculate order. But his touch is like that 
 of a dead hand. Intellectual life withers 
 at his breath : initiative is checked, growth 
 made impossible, except for the few who 
 have vigour enough to rebel. 
 
 Now, it is not the positive energy and 
 strength of such a teacher that is at fault, 
 but their misapplication : these fine qualities 
 are used to subordinate and check the minds 
 of others, instead of being used more ten- 
 derly and thoughtfully, but no less vigor- 
 ously, to stimulate these. It is never the 
 positive qualities that are amiss, but the 
 lack of some others that regulate properly 
 their application. The naturally good teacher 
 is vigorous and sympathetic. To such a 
 one it is delightful to use his vigour in 
 the increase of the mental life of another ; 
 and most persons are sympathetic enough 
 to feel this if they give themselves a chance. 
 The sympathetic thrill due to the sense of 
 
96 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 a dull mind quickening to life under one's 
 touch is a pleasure of life not to be despised. 
 A subject of such intimate human interest 
 as ethics does not present serious difficulties 
 in this respect. Stimulus is not difficult 
 if its negative condition of not doing the 
 learner's work for him be understood. 
 
 Imagination and thought are both stimu- 
 lated when attention is secured in the way 
 first described, by attaching the new idea 
 to the original mental content for which it 
 has a natural interest. The more perfect way 
 of doing this — but it is not generally quite 
 possible — is to make the learner choose the 
 subject of his lesson. An approximation 
 can be made to this, at least in the early 
 stages where it is most desirable. The 
 members of the class may be asked, either 
 in rotation, or by some form of agreement 
 among themselves, or by the teacher's selec- 
 tion of those who require most stimulus, 
 to decide on the subject of the next lesson. 
 " What shall we talk about next time ? " 
 The answer may be given in a great variety 
 
PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING. 97 
 
 of ways — some particular incident, some 
 moral quality, and so on. I cannot guess 
 beforehand what form the inquiry might 
 take. Some consensus of desire having 
 been obtained, it becomes the teacher's 
 business to find more material for the 
 lesson in the interval, and to prepare a 
 line of development in thinking out of the 
 subject through which the learners are to 
 make their way. 
 
 Under these circumstances, the imagination 
 of at least those children who were interested 
 in the choice of the subject will be very 
 ready to work on any new, but cognate, ideas 
 that either the teacher or their class-fellows 
 may bring up. Two results are required, 
 and it is easy to miss either. The learners 
 have to imagine concrete developments of the 
 subject — instances of courage for example — 
 with all their essential detail and consequences. 
 One child supplies such a case from experi- 
 ence, or the teacher does, and the others , 
 imagine it, opportunity in some measure being 
 given to them to keep their imagination 
 
98 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 ahead of the narration and to forestall it, as 
 one does in reading an interesting story. 
 Judgment and reasoning are of course here 
 involved, but it may be only as giving a 
 lead to imagination and not as contributing 
 to the proper work of thought. 
 
 But without this the lesson would be far 
 from complete. One good thought is worth 
 a hundred good fancies, so far as the per- 
 manent value of the lesson goes. The 
 images of the fancy possess the mind one 
 after another, and it is therefore possible 
 for them to be inconsistent with each 
 other. Courage may attract to-day, fear 
 completely engross to-morrow. The image 
 of the suffering poor may possess me one 
 hour, the image of some pleasure project for 
 myself the next. Under the control of the 
 one image I am urged to give, but under 
 the influence of the other I selfishly keep. 
 Obviously a life under the influence of 
 successive images has no unity ; and the 
 psychological characteristic of the moral life 
 is that the idea of it is the idea that brings. 
 
PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING. 99 
 
 or tends to bring, all practical ideas into 
 unity. If, therefore, imagination be not con- 
 trolled by the unity of thought, life is left 
 equally open to the influence of all attractive 
 fancies, whether good or bad. 
 
 It follows that there is a positive root of 
 evil in any moral instruction that appeals 
 merely to the imagination and has no stimulus 
 for thought. This is perhaps the most 
 common sin of the popular preacher. The 
 result is a highly trained fancy very sus- 
 ceptible to all stimuli, and a character dan- 
 gerously open to influences because quite 
 without the habit of idealizing its impressions 
 to the extent of bringing them into unity 
 with one another. Such a person is incon- 
 sistent, unreliable, and, if trial comes in 
 attractive guise, is sure to succumb. In 
 common parlance we say, " He had good 
 impulses, fine susceptibilities, but no prin- 
 ciple." 
 
 If the idea of evil was intellectually as 
 self-consistent as the idea of good, moral 
 salvation by reason would not be possible; 
 
100 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 but, SO far is this from being the case, that 
 it is obviously out of place to speak of the 
 idea of evil at all : evil is in its nature 
 plural, a whole of parts that strive with each 
 other, and, in the mind, as in the world, 
 strive more as evil increases. 
 
 It is not too much to say that all good 
 teaching, which stimulates and trains to 
 thought, is in its nature moral training. 
 And so involved with sentiment and fancy 
 is moral subject-matter, that it would not be 
 well to depend for the whole of our training 
 to moral reason on the thinking that can 
 be got out of a moral lesson. But, with this 
 word by the way for the ethical value of 
 some discipline in a stiff intellectual subject, 
 I return to the position that training to 
 thought on the particular subject should be 
 got out of every moral lesson itself. 
 
 The moral at the end of the tale is an 
 idea or thought, so are the beautiful reflec- 
 tions scattered up and down, in the speech 
 of the heroes and the self-communings of 
 the author. If these ideas be impressed. 
 
PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING. 101 
 
 they should be used as food for more thought 
 on the child's own part. And, as before, 
 the surest way to get his mind to work is 
 to let Mm take the initiative in drawing 
 rational conclusions so far as possible. At 
 least he can be called on to supply the 
 moral always, (since it comes at the end of 
 the tale), and to be active in the discussion 
 of principles to which every lesson should 
 lead up. It is not true that children shrink 
 from moralizing on their stories. Some do 
 shrink from being told the moral in a 
 pompous manner, but none shrink from 
 drawing it for themselves. In this way they 
 not only increase their store of moral ideas, 
 but they train themselves for further increase 
 from every story they read and from every 
 event that occurs. As the lessons progress, 
 the ideas increase and are brought into 
 relation to each other, as parts of a scheme 
 of conduct and character ; and, this being 
 done by their own thinking, the habit is 
 ever more and more confirmed of looking at 
 every event as having some moral bearings, 
 
102 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 some significance as to the righteousness of 
 the conduct it calls for and implies. 
 
 Every good lesson culminates in this labour 
 of thought which is performed separately as 
 well as jointly by all members of the class. 
 In this, however, the teacher has a power of 
 determining beforehand — not only the end 
 but — the course of development to the end, 
 since, though all imagine differently, all, if 
 they think correctly, think alike. Dealing 
 with such subject-matter, some allowance 
 must, indeed, be made for limitations of ex- 
 perience and for immaturity of power ; but 
 the unity, at the worst, predominates over 
 the variety, and allows of a steady general 
 march to the establishment of the ethical 
 principle intended at first. To this end the 
 teacher, at the last, takes definitely the com- 
 mand. There may be cases, however, in 
 which it is wiser to leave matters in the end 
 somewhat vague, when more thought is 
 seen to be necessary. 
 
 Some considerations still remain. Philo- 
 sophers and ordinary people alike have always 
 
PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING. 103 
 
 doubted the truth of the view attributed to 
 Socrates, that it is impossible for a man to 
 have an idea of good conduct without acting 
 upon it. Yet there is a sense in which this 
 is true, a certain degree of vitality and energy 
 in the idea which necessarily makes it opera- 
 tive on life. Not all ideas, though held with 
 conviction, have this degree of life. Nor is 
 it hard to see in what the difference psycho- 
 logically consists. Activity of ideas is of two 
 kinds : (a) There is pure ideation, or the 
 activity of reason tending to wider generaliza- 
 tions and away from the concrete realization 
 of the idea in images, practical or other. 
 Ideas working ideationally keep their fringe of 
 images in strict abeyance, and only use these 
 for the purposes of thought. In a highly 
 abstracted thinking mood there is absence of 
 the train of images, and with that a sus- 
 pension of contact with the external world, 
 either to receive its impressions or to make 
 impressions by acting on it. Ideas so 
 working are not practical ; and if they so 
 work habitually, without emergence into 
 
104 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 imagination, they are not, as a rule, effective 
 on conduct, because they do not flash out 
 in images of acts to be done in the world. 
 
 Compare this with the activity of an idea 
 that does flash out into images all along the 
 line, while it is, or is not, being interwoven 
 into the texture of abstract thought. Such 
 an idea governs the images of fancy as they 
 arise, prevents their emergence in act if 
 contrary to it, and, through imagination, acts 
 directly on the external world. The Idea of 
 Good in Socrates' mind was no doubt of 
 this kind, and an idea prone to work in 
 this way is practical. 
 
 Now an idea of conduct ought to be prac- 
 tical, i.e. prone to influence conduct. Hence 
 it follows that the ideas inculcated in the 
 moral lessons must not be dealt with as 
 pure ideational matter, like mathematics or a 
 theory of chemical compounds. In avoiding 
 the Scylla of unbridled imagination, we must 
 steer clear of the Charybdis of mere abstract 
 moral philosophizing. Human nature falls 
 on this rock almost as naturally as on the 
 
PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING. 105 
 
 other : hence the cold-heartedness of the 
 moral pedant, the selfishness of the moral 
 prig. Imagination has indeed to be kept in 
 touch with reason, but reason must abut 
 no less continually on imagination. 
 
 So the moral principles established in each 
 lesson as ideas of conduct must be applied, 
 at the time and afterwards, in imaginings of 
 particular acts, and, best of all, outside the 
 school-room, in the real acts themselves. 
 Inside the school-room, however, the learners 
 can apply themselves to picture forth what 
 they would do under given circumstances. 
 This practice goes farther towards a training 
 to real conduct than is always admitted ; 
 though I admit at once that real conduct 
 to the same effect is quite necessary. 
 
 A certain amount of emotional accompani- 
 ment seems to be favourable to the imagina- 
 tive play of the central idea. Dry thought 
 rushes on from thought to thought. To feel 
 the charm of an idea is to pause over it, 
 and by this pause it is established and made 
 stationary for the time. But a thought is 
 
106 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 never idle : if not rushing on to weave itself 
 with other thoughts, it sustains itself in images 
 and acts. If not, it subsides. Thus the emo- 
 tional thrill, the pause in thought, the flashing 
 forth of appropriate images — all are aspects of 
 the same process. Imagination is nearer to 
 action than anything else but action itself, 
 and emotional pause favours imagination. 
 
 If these pauses are desirable, how are we 
 to bring them about. The first favouring 
 circumstance is the beauty of the thought 
 itself; and beauty occurs quite naturally in 
 a thought, since it is thought that brings 
 out its leading characteristic of variety in 
 unity. The perception of this unity is the 
 thought, and the emotional thrill and pause 
 follows more naturally than not, except in 
 exhausted conditions of nerve. Other persons 
 — teachers for example — must allow the 
 pause. It is not well to force it, or to try 
 and work it up ; but when several persons are 
 together at the critical moment, sympathy 
 accumulates the efiiect in each mind, and all 
 are more apt to feel. Beauty of language is a 
 
PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING. 107 
 
 great assistance, for every adjunct of beauty 
 predisposes to the emotional pause, and the 
 accompanying play of imagination. The 
 labour of the idea is indeed retarded, but 
 the emotional outburst in due measure is 
 amply justified by establishing working 
 images of the idea in character and in act. 
 Nevertheless, emotional outburst, like imagin- 
 ative play, must always be in due measure 
 only, so that neither sentiment nor fancy may 
 ever get the upper hand of reason, or in the 
 long run retard her steady forward march. 
 
 But at every stage on that forward march 
 the unity of reason naturally evokes anew 
 the sentiment of beauty, and, through the 
 pause of delight and the stimulus to imagin- 
 ation, life is once more brought into contact 
 with reason and reason with life. 
 
 Of such a nature are the moral lessons 
 that the best learners teach themselves in 
 the course of their experience and reading. 
 And this is the model for us, who venture, 
 in all humility, to guide the self-teachings of 
 youth. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE SUBJECT MATTER. VIETUOUS 
 CHARACTER 
 
 We come now to the consideration of a 
 question that has engaged the thought of all 
 good men, and the pens of all ethical writers 
 since the world began. But we have to con- 
 sider it from a point of view specially adapted 
 to the educational purpose we have in hand. 
 What is this rational ideal of conduct that 
 the child is to learn, and in what order of 
 development is it to present itself to him? 
 This is a double question, but with a single 
 answer. The rational ideal, intellectually 
 considered, includes its order of development, 
 and the accidental variations in it that will 
 certainly occur are expressions of idiosyncrasy 
 within that order. 
 
VIRTUOUS CHARACTER. 109 
 
 The principle of this order is the principle 
 of stability already discussed. The best order 
 is that which, from the first, secures stability 
 in the moral ideal. I do not say — ^far from 
 it — that the moral nature as a whole grows 
 necessarily in accordance with this order. 
 The moral nature is not simply an emanation 
 from the moral ideal. There may be much 
 goodness with little idea of its nature. And, 
 accordingly, moral education includes other 
 factors besides moral instruction. A sound 
 system of moral education is very wide and 
 spreads a net abroad for all. And a sound 
 system of training to moral thought is also 
 diverse, and takes much account of individual 
 habits of mind. But in the subject matter 
 itself — the complex idea of character and 
 conduct with which moral instruction deals — 
 there is, ceteris paribus, a best order for its 
 treatment, founded on consideration of the 
 conditions on which maximum stability 
 depends. A moral ideal uncontradicted at its 
 centre from first to last, through all its de- 
 veloping complications, is a guarantee of moral 
 
110 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 certainty and strength. The core of it should 
 be, if possible, such that neither experience, 
 nor attractive opinion, nor the imaginings of 
 romance will ever try to shake it. Tempta- 
 tions will assail it of course, but not the 
 temptations of thought, or of fancy as con- 
 trolled by thought. 
 
 The prime essentials of the moral ideal 
 are the virtues that in all ages have been 
 accounted such, the qualities that, in all 
 poetry and romance, have been extolled as 
 manly, dignified, and noble. The history of 
 the human mind itself tells us what is most 
 essential, and least assailable, in the idea of a 
 life worthy to be lived. To live well means 
 more to us than to our forefathers, but to 
 them it meant, as to us it means, at least to 
 live steadfastly — ^with dignity as becomes a 
 man, with unity of purpose and with steadi- 
 ness of aim. This is the irreducible minimum 
 in the conception of a hero. Life can be 
 lived confusedly, inconsistently, following the 
 discordant lead of the instincts and the 
 senses ; but life cannot so be thought as a 
 
VIRTUOUS CHARACTER. Ill 
 
 life worthy to be lived, or even permanently 
 as a life worth living. An idea without unity 
 falls to pieces, and is not an idea. Unity of 
 purpose, therefore, and steadiness of aim are 
 essential, not only to the idea of the good 
 life, but to the very idea of a life that satisfies 
 itself. And self-consciousness attaching itself 
 to this idea is the sense of manliness or 
 dignity. "This is my life, myself: this / 
 intend to carry through : by it 7 stand or 
 fall." 
 
 Here then is something more fundamental 
 than morality, which is nevertheless so implied 
 in all morality that character without it is 
 a mere wisp of straw. We may fairly call 
 this the natural ideal of life, since it is thus 
 that a man must conceive of his life, if he 
 conceives it at all in the strict sense as a 
 consistent whole. The more a man thinks 
 of his life the more must he think of it 
 thus, as marching forward consistently and 
 happily in pursuance of the ends he selects 
 as good. Whether his final aim be power, 
 or fame, or a dollar-pile, or social use, or 
 
112 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 domestic happiness, or a mixture of all these, 
 he necessarily thinks of himself as pursuing 
 it with steadiness and unity of aim. If he 
 imagines himself otherwise, which is likely 
 enough, it is either because he has not formed 
 for himself any definite ideal of life, or he 
 is aware, sooner or later, of the fact that 
 his fancy has led him from his purpose, and 
 he calls this weakness. The strong-willed 
 man combats such weakness. 
 
 Now I believe that this natural ideal is 
 more present in the minds of little children 
 than we commonly suppose. When it is pro- 
 minently present the child talks about what 
 he means to do with his life, and his elders 
 recognize the fact that this is a good sign. 
 It is the best of signs : it shows the mind 
 at work on an idea of life, and therefore 
 amenable to the influence of cognate ideas. 
 Too great definiteness, however, should not 
 be encouraged, or encouraged with care ; and 
 discrimination needs to be observed lest the 
 more backward in this matter of idealization 
 should be forced beyond their pace. Children 
 
VIRTUOUS CHARACTER. 113 
 
 help each other best in this way : a few with 
 ideals and purposes need little encouragement 
 to set the minds of the others to work, till 
 all have more or less caught the earnest tone. 
 The natural ideal is the natural core of 
 the moral ideal, and, if at its core, is the 
 best guarantee of its stability. The first 
 lesson to learn from fairy tales and fables and 
 stories of all kinds is that life has a purpose 
 which each worthy life-bearer carries out con- 
 sistently. This is the lesson which all heroic 
 literature carries on its face. The hero lives 
 to do something — to carry off the golden 
 apples from the garden of Hesperides, to 
 break through the circle of fire that sur- 
 rounds the heroine, to avenge the death 
 of his next of kin, to destroy the monster 
 that devastates the neighbourhood, to pay 
 the eric fine, or weregild, that the law has 
 decreed ; to guard the borders of his province 
 single-handed from a multitude — he lives to 
 do it, and he does it, or dies in seeking to 
 accomplish it, faithful unto death. Purpose 
 implies faithfulness to the purpose, and out 
 
 H 
 
114 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 of this core roll forth the heroic virtues 
 one by one. In doing his deed the hero 
 suffers loss and pain : even Jack the Giant 
 Killer had some difl&culties ; and in all the 
 best stories boldness and prowess are well 
 balanced by the necessity of self-denial and 
 fortitude. The allied virtues of patience, 
 faith, and hope reveal themselves when the 
 coming of success is delayed, and the highest 
 point of the ideal is reached in the char- 
 acter of the hero made perfect in weakness, 
 who, undaunted, when strength of body gives 
 way throws himself in strength of soul 
 and the humility of his finiteness on his 
 sense of an overruling power in things that 
 make for good. Here is the religious sense, 
 in whatever words we may choose to clothe 
 it, and at this point in the idea of life it 
 must emerge for the healthy development, 
 which is a mind-satisfying development, of 
 human thought. Let us pause to consider 
 this. The idea of life is not complete with- 
 out reference to the common fact of personal 
 failure in the pursuit of noble ends. How 
 
VIRTUOUS CHARACTER. 115 
 
 does this appear to the person who fails ? 
 How does it square with his idea of living 
 for the end which he dies to attain, but 
 does not attain ? The human mind must 
 have an answer to this question when its 
 pressure in experience, real or imagined, 
 reaches a certain point. There is no proof 
 for the answer, except the proof that is 
 implied in the question itself, and in the 
 idea of life for a worthy end that lies 
 behind it. But I do not think that a 
 course of moral instruction is complete which 
 does not, in some form or other, give the 
 answer as the consciousness of man has 
 given it from time immemorial. The creed 
 may be made a very short one ; it is 
 this : " We believe that whatever was really 
 good in the worthy man's aim will be 
 accomplished though he has not accom- 
 plished it ; and we believe that his life is 
 not wasted, but the good of it survives in 
 some way, even though he accomplished 
 nothing that we can see." This, in its most 
 abstract form, is that faith in God and Im- 
 
116 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 mortality whicli all the good old stories 
 express in some simple concrete language, 
 that, in my opinion, had better be left as 
 it is to carry its own assurance somehow 
 to the child's mind. But the teacher can 
 suggest the application of its ethical meaning 
 to common life, as a faith in the certain 
 realization of all good ends and the immortal 
 value of all good deeds. As regards the 
 treatment further of the subject of re- 
 ligion, which here abuts so definitely on 
 the subject of virtue, it depends so much 
 on the family traditions of the learners, that 
 I will not attempt to treat it generally here. 
 I will only add the obvious reflection, that 
 if the religious idea centres in these two 
 ideas so much the better for its stability 
 in after life. 
 
 I have referred to heroic literature as a 
 storehouse of material for lessons on the 
 moral ideal as we have so far considered 
 it. So far as I know, the best for this 
 purpose are the four antique literatures of 
 Europe — Greek, Koman, Celtic, and Norse. 
 
VIRTUOUS CHARACTER. 117 
 
 For the abstract idea of manly dignity, as 
 consisting in the doing of deeds, and un- 
 flinching purpose in the face of obstacles, 
 the Norse stories are most effective, and 
 should be freely used, though certainly not 
 exclusively for any length of time. The 
 religious pessimism which lies behind them, 
 and which nevertheless their heroism sur- 
 vives, supplies an additional nobUity which 
 should be noted, though, as too hard a 
 saying, not of course insisted on. The 
 other literatures have each a peculiar value 
 of its own, and Celtic literature in par- 
 ticular has largely determined the character 
 of mediaeval romance, and is the main 
 source of the chivalrous ideal. 
 
 A-nd this leads us to our second stage, 
 which is marked in the history of the race 
 by the development of the heroic ideal into 
 the ideal of chivalry. Life for an object 
 is life idealized barely, but a worthy life is 
 for a worthy object. Life is worth living if 
 there is something to live for, but what is 
 the something that gives it most worth 1 
 
118 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 The answer to this question is a theory of 
 life, and to that, briefly indicated, we shall 
 come presently. But, first, we must consider 
 the materials which human nature itself 
 supplies for the construction of that theory. 
 Wliat ends do we live for as a matter 
 of fact ? We aim at the preservation and 
 increase of our own comfort and pleasure 
 in a great variety of ways ; we aim at 
 carrying out our own ideas of whatever 
 kind in the world. But we are not isolated 
 individuals : our pleasures are bound up in 
 a thousand ways with the pleasures and 
 pains of others, and our ideas are affected 
 by these and entangled with the ideas of 
 others. We grow up in a social world, 
 bound to it and to individuals in it by 
 lively and passionate affections ; our sympa- 
 thies make us conscious of others as they 
 are conscious of themselves, at least so far 
 as to mitigate very practically the solitari- 
 ness of our desires. There is no lack of 
 ends to be served in a world like this. 
 Human feeling twines itself round its objects 
 
VIRTUOUS CHARACTER. 119 
 
 of affection and makes their welfare part of 
 its natural end. Thus conies the distinction 
 between the self-seeker and him who prefers, 
 within some vague wide limits, the good 
 of others, or another. The latter is re- 
 cognized as good, and approved. Some 
 degree of consideration for others is required, 
 or the man, however heroic, is blamed. 
 The Norse stories again very aptly illustrate 
 as a side issue this failure, and some- 
 times the hero himself has to acquire the 
 gentler virtues in course of a painful ex- 
 perience. The finished hero in all literatures 
 has them more or less. It is in their 
 service that poetry and story first became 
 moralized. 
 
 One class of tales teaches by showing how 
 strength fails of loveliness and honour, when 
 kindly affections, good faith, and hospitality 
 are lacking. Another class sets forth these 
 virtues in all their attractiveness, enhancing 
 the effect perhaps by force of contrast with 
 the churl, the treaty breaker, the inhospit- 
 able, the cruel man, the braggart, the 
 
120 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 inconstant friend. The strong naan bears 
 himself gently, restrains his strength and 
 is kind ; he conceals his powers and is 
 modestly silent about himself; to strangers 
 he is hospitable, to friends and country 
 loyal, in enmity scrupulous to keep his 
 treaties, in love constant and self-devoted. 
 In all these ways the hero shows regard 
 for others, and his great deeds shape them- 
 selves in reference to those duties to others 
 which spring from his social character. 
 
 Celtic romance is a mine of concrete 
 illustrations bearing on this ideal. In Dr. 
 Joyce's collection of Celtic Romances, in Mr. 
 Standish O'Grady's Bardic History of Ireland, 
 and the charming little book by him called 
 Finn and his Friends, there is abundant 
 material. Besides the two great cycles of 
 Irish story, the Ossianic and the Tan-bo, 
 into which these books give us a glimpse, 
 there are several detached stories of great 
 beauty and use. There is also the more 
 familiar cycle of the Arthurian romance, 
 and its numerous adaptations in mediaeval 
 
VIRTUOUS CHARACTER. 121 
 
 tales of chivalry, the influence of which have 
 permeated literature down to our own time. 
 
 In the chivalrous ideal the earlier bar- 
 barian heroic ideal is absorbed. Be strong 
 of purpose it teaches, but gentle too, and 
 use your strength for the service of those 
 others who have a claim on you. Deal 
 fairly with your enemy as you would that 
 he should deal with you, and to those who 
 have injured you be as generous as you 
 can. 
 
 This last, however, is a counsel hard to the 
 primitive man and late to be learned. For- 
 giveness has, indeed, been accounted a weak- 
 ness and even a crime. In our day there 
 are still those who cry out on " want of 
 spirit" in persons who forgive slights and 
 injuries easily — there are those who think it 
 right to nurse their sense of wrong. For- 
 giveness, and the extension of charity to all 
 men, were the two great lessons taught by 
 Christianity to a Pagan world by no means 
 deficient in other elements of virtue ; but 
 our Pagan world has found them very hard 
 
122 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 to learn and is struggling against the lesson 
 still. This marks the third stage in the 
 development of the child's moral ideal — the 
 glow of universal friendliness, the grace of 
 a forgiving mind. "Bless them that curse 
 you, do good to them that hate you, and 
 pray for them that despitefuUy use you and 
 persecute you." 
 
 The gospel parables, the sermon on the 
 mount, the story of Jesus — ^the lessons of 
 meekness and charity can best be learned 
 from the sources whence they come. A mind 
 already awake to the conceptions of heroism 
 is prepared to appreciate the magnanimity of 
 the Christ-like character. " If thine enemy 
 hunger, give him meat." "If ye love those 
 that love you, what thank have ye ? " Here 
 then the New Testament becomes the main 
 source of ideas ; but other stories on which 
 these noble conceptions have been grafted 
 should also be used. In these days of books 
 for children there are many beautiful ren- 
 derings of old tales into which has been 
 infused a larger spirit of Christian charity 
 
VIRTUOUS CHARACTER. 123 
 
 than originally pertained to them. And even 
 in their most ancient guise many of the old 
 romances have been deeply tinged with 
 Christian feeling by the very conditions under 
 which they have been handed down to our 
 time. This is visibly true of the old Irish 
 stories which were carefully written down, 
 though apparently with much tender anti- 
 quarian sympathy, by the early monks, and 
 it is obviously true of the Arthurian romance 
 as we have it. The stories in the little book 
 of Mr. Standish O'Grady's, already mentioned, 
 are specially marked by the Christian 
 spirit of forgiveness and charity. The stories 
 in this case are modernized, but the same 
 lessons occur in many of the antique tales, 
 as, for instance, the meeting of the enemies 
 at the end of the voyage of Maildun. It is 
 wise, I think, to make the most of it when 
 it occurs in a context of this kind, because 
 readiness to forgive as 'part of the heroic 
 cha/racter so obviously implies a victory over 
 self which is all the nobler because the con- 
 quered self is not ignoble, that the conception 
 
124 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 is a peculiarly attractive one. It is the 
 finished conception of the Christian knight — 
 brave, resolute, and daring, gentle, modest, 
 affectionate, and true, with a charity that 
 knows no exceptions and a spirit to forgive 
 even unto seventy times seven. 
 
 These Christian virtues are so difficult that 
 no pains should be spared to secure that the 
 idea of them shall be really grafted on the 
 ideal of virtue in each child's mind as it 
 already exists. He should see it not as an 
 idea apart, but as part of the character he 
 already admires, — in heroes of story, or great 
 men, or whatever the bearers of the idea 
 may happen to be for him. Hence it is 
 necessary to bring home the lesson of the 
 New Testament story, that story in general 
 should be clothed in its conceptions. But 
 this, of course, must be done with the reserve 
 of art and skill, and the main stress of the 
 teaching at this point is best, I think, laid 
 on the Bible narrative itself. Moreover the 
 learners should see, at least in their more 
 advanced stage, the historical relation of the 
 
VIRTUOUS CHARACTER. 125 
 
 different parts of the ideal ; and the influence 
 of Christianity in softening and purifying the 
 noblest conceptions to which our Pagan fore- 
 fathers had attained should be traced and 
 understood. 
 
 Having so far attained to the conception 
 of a noble character wrought by perfect social 
 feeling to noble ends, what lack we yet ? Let 
 us pause to consider the difficulties that might 
 beset such a one as has been described, and 
 the additional armour that he requires to cope 
 with those difficulties. 
 
 In the first place he may fail — may prove 
 that, good as he is in purpose, he is not 
 resolutely good enough, or kind enough, to 
 fulfil the law of love. This failure comes 
 to us in three ways : either our strength fails, 
 or some natural instinct takes possession of 
 us and makes the right deed impossible, or 
 we are not good enough — the moral spring 
 of loving kindness is weak. Thus we do 
 wrong, sometimes knowing it at the time, 
 sometimes not till afterwards, and sometimes 
 obstinately ignoring it even then. Those who 
 
126 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 are happily circumstanced, and happily dis- 
 positioned, both in strength and kindness, 
 may long escape the fate of serious lapses ; 
 but none can be wholly spared who go out, 
 as they should, to fight the evil in the world. 
 The things alone that ought to be done and 
 are not done count for much. 
 
 Now what is the true man's attitude when 
 this happens to him. What idea shall we 
 train in our children as the right idea of 
 the wrongdoer relative to his deed. Nature 
 herself answers us from all times and in all 
 races : — he should be ashamed. He has broken 
 away from the rule of the ideal — has falsified 
 the prediction of his better self — has been 
 faithless to the duty owing to another. He 
 has sinned, and with the sin — the negation 
 of duty, responsibility, conscience — comes the 
 distinct personal realization of these. To feel 
 the whole weight of the little word " ought " 
 one must have experienced first the emphatic 
 " ought not." Those on whom duty sits 
 easily are those who have least idea of it. 
 It is the break with the ideal that makes 
 
VIRTUOUS CHARACTER. 127 
 
 the strength of the ideal felt. And in the 
 same way, if we turn to the subjective side 
 of the experience, it is the consciousness of 
 being, as the deed done bears witness, a 
 person other than one took oneself to be, 
 that brings into clear light conscience as the 
 ideal of character, felt in all its might when 
 roused by disobedience. 
 
 It would seem then that, if duty and con- 
 science are to be realized as all-powerful over 
 life — that is, if we are not to trust to mere 
 good disposition, which would be to deny 
 the value of moral instruction altogether — 
 the sense of sin, shame, and repentance on 
 wrong done, are essential parts of the moral 
 ideal itself. This lesson we find in all litera- 
 ture, though nowhere is it taught with the 
 same emphasis, intensity, and vigour as in 
 the Hebrew Scriptures. Still it is a difficult 
 lesson to teach or to learn well. It will not 
 be learned if it be taught prematurely, for 
 the sense of sin cannot precede the establish- 
 ment of the ideal sinned against, though it 
 does precede the full realization of the majesty 
 
128 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 of that ideal. And, again, it is difficult to 
 learn because it is more difficult to see tlie 
 beauty and fitness of shame and penitence 
 than to see the beauty of the positive virtues 
 themselves. Sackcloth and ashes are not in 
 their nature heroic as valour and chivalry are. 
 And, moreover, it is harder to own oneself 
 wrong than even to forgive an injury. 
 
 It is at this point that I begin to feel 
 the peculiar value of the Bible stories of the 
 Old Testament, and the aspects of the ideal 
 on which they lay stress. The modern world 
 has drawn from the Hebrew Scriptures its 
 uncompromising sense of duty as a personal 
 good, and still more of character as a white 
 robe of righteousness which it is terrible to 
 soil ; and, in doing so, it adds, as the Hebrews 
 added, the duty of repentance as a part of 
 its moral scheme— repentance in its twofold 
 aspect of personal humiliation and the repara- 
 tion, so far as possible, of wrong done. 
 
 Stories of real life are important here — 
 stories that come quite closely home. The 
 shame of the common lie, the shudder of 
 
VIRTUOUS CHARACTER. 129 
 
 self-contempt after unkind or foolish talk, 
 the open apology for harsh words said, and 
 all the little events of everyday wrong-doing 
 should be treated from time to time — and 
 not in all the lessons — as occasion serves, and 
 with a view to make each little wanderer, 
 in esse or in posse, take to himself the lesson 
 that he requires. 
 
 In another way these lessons on wrong- 
 doing are necessary, because so much petty 
 wrong is done for lack of thought, against 
 which provision might be made. The example 
 that strikes one most forcibly is the repetition 
 of a story reflecting discredit on somebody, 
 and the ready credulity that accepts all such. 
 It is by experience of wrong we learn how 
 necessary it is, as a part of charity, to stop 
 the harsh story when it reaches us until at 
 least we have ascertained that it is true. 
 Shame for the wrong done, in such and in 
 other ways, to-day is the one safeguard that 
 similar wrong will not be done to-morrow. 
 
 In the main, it may be said that the 
 instruction which cultivates a penitent spirit 
 
130 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 is required, because the man who never finds 
 occasion to repent is either like the Pharisee 
 who measured himself amiss, or is not in 
 earnest about the attainment of righteousness. 
 No one can escape penitence who has his 
 heart set on — not merely attracted by — the 
 ideal of a life spotless in word and deed and 
 thought, and who is at the same time a 
 faithful critic of his own shortcomings. Thus 
 that least attractive of all the virtues, a 
 humble contrite heart, is but the inverse of 
 that hunger and thirst for perfection which 
 is the very bond of all good. 
 
 As the mind unfolds, the ideal of perfection 
 slowly shapes itself in the child's mind, and 
 draws his will into unity with it. There is 
 a natural order in this development, and that 
 teaching is most successful which, though 
 without a doctrinaire artificiality, takes account 
 of this order, and gives opportunities accord- 
 ingly, in conversation, in reading, and in prac- 
 tice. First, admiration awakens for the hero 
 as daring, resolute, and brave ; secondly, this 
 admiration glows the more tenderly for him 
 
VIRTUOUS CHARACTER. 131 
 
 as using his power chivalrously and for noble 
 ends. Later, the ideal of Pagan chivalry leads 
 up to the fuller ideals of a self-devotion with- 
 out limit, a charity without flaw, a will set on 
 good, and a vigilant conscience swift to chide. 
 
CHAPTEK V. 
 
 SUBJECT MATTER CONTINUED. SOCIAL 
 MEMBEESHIP. 
 
 There is yet another theme that must detain 
 us further, although it has been touched 
 upon already. Our man of many virtues 
 will meet with difficulties other than those 
 of his moral limitations — coldness of heart 
 and want of will. He will very often not 
 know what he ought to do. This, like the 
 difficulty of moral limitations, can never be 
 quite surmounted. It stands in fact for the 
 natural limit of human wisdom. 
 
 It can, however, be minimized — and the 
 good man should so minimize it — by forming 
 some theory, sound so far as it goes, of social 
 welfare and the right relation of the indi- 
 vidual to his fellows in society. Social good 
 
SOCIAL MEMBERSHIP. 133 
 
 and social duty must be objects of study, at 
 least in intention, to all who mean to live 
 aright. For we may assume that the object 
 of righteous conduct in the world is social 
 good. Whether the sanction be conceived 
 from a religious, or from a secular, point of 
 view it directs us alike to the practical end 
 of goodwill to men. In the moral education 
 of children this end should, not be discussed, 
 but tacitly assumed. Thus it will early dawn 
 upon their consciousness that it is necessary 
 to understand the conditions of human welfare, 
 and the place of the individual in the whole. 
 For the little child it is enough that he 
 should understand the family and its duties. 
 Older children no doubt should begin to 
 study the wider social circles in a simple 
 way. But it is important to realize that the 
 essence of social theory can be learnt from 
 consideration of the family organization, sup- 
 posing always that the family is large enough 
 to illustrate the problem of divergent wills 
 and their conciliation. The experience of the 
 school organization is also of great value, and 
 
134 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 with reflection and observation on the family, 
 and on the school, the seeds of the doctrine 
 of true citizenship are not difl&cult to implant. 
 It can easily be made obvious to young people 
 that the law of the school exists for the 
 common welfare, and in a well-governed 
 family no other thought would be ever likely 
 to arise in the minds of its members. It is 
 curious how children — but girls more than 
 boys — get into the habit of talking and 
 thinking about "us" instead of "me." 
 
 It is not necessary for the present purpose 
 that I should do more than touch briefly on 
 the leading facts of social life and the prin- 
 ciples underlying social welfare. The first 
 obvious fact is that, of a number of persons 
 living together, each has a tendency to take 
 his own course — to do instinctively what he 
 elects to do. But, apart from sympathy and 
 reason, many persons have many ways, and 
 these ways are sure to clash, so that the 
 more each will tries to act freely the more 
 all the divergent wills interfere with each 
 other. Thus there is war and very little 
 
SOCIAL MEMBERSHIP. 135 
 
 liberty, a state of affairs not unknown either 
 in the nursery or in the drawing-room. 
 Quite young children become familiar with 
 this fact. It is part of moral instruction to 
 train them to reflect upon it, its consequences, 
 and their remedy. 
 
 Sympathy enables these divergent persons 
 to understand each other, and prompts to 
 ample concessions freely made. It is reason, 
 however, that shows the right direction and 
 limits of the concessions which ought to be 
 made. To the reasonable mind it is obvious 
 that of three little brothers or two l)rothers 
 and a sister, the good of one is just as im- 
 portant as that of another. It is reasonable, 
 therefore, to desire a system of things which 
 secures, in the first place, whatever is recog- 
 nized as good in common for them all, and, 
 in the second place, fair-play between the 
 three in other respects. We need not trouble 
 the child, even if we think it worth while 
 to trouble ourselves, with difficult questions 
 as to the ultimate meaning of justice and 
 fair-play. The simple, common-sense meaning 
 
136 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 is quite enough, viz. that the gain of one 
 in any respect should not be considered — 
 other things being equal — as more important 
 than the gain of another. But it will be 
 necessary to teach, as a part of fair-play, 
 that those who are strongest and best en- 
 dowed ought to claim less consideration than 
 those who are feeble. The system of things 
 which secures the good of all, and fair-play 
 to each, is the law of the social circle ; and 
 the reasonable child sees the benefit of law 
 to himself, as securing more real liberty for 
 him in the long run. Moreover, he sees, 
 unless blinded by selfishness, the benefit to 
 his companions also. The latter benefit he 
 values more the kindlier and more sympa- 
 thetic he is. 
 
 It cannot be expected, however, that the 
 child should understand all the regulations 
 which put a circle of order round his life ; nor, 
 indeed, does the average adult citizen under- 
 stand to the full the social mind that controls 
 him. The wise child and the wise man know 
 this, and think enough of others — and little 
 
SOCIAL MEMBERSHIP. 137 
 
 enough of themselves — to be loyally obedient. 
 This obedience is the auxiliary of reason, and 
 almost a part of reason, in securing the social 
 peace. It is in its essence at one with that 
 prime principle of morality, the recognition 
 of the moral law which should be obeyed. 
 Obedience, the crude primitive virtue as we 
 first met it, now reappears as marking the 
 true citizen's acceptance of the social will. 
 
 Perfectly reasonable people are the law to 
 themselves. All their wishes are consistent 
 with it, and they are its source in so far as 
 it is good. The imperfect reason in part 
 accepts the law, as its law, and for the rest 
 obeys. The unreasonable, however, are the 
 persons for whom the law exists as a system 
 of rules and discipline. If all were perfectly 
 reasonable there would be no need for the 
 formulae of such a system. The social will 
 has to decree formally what all must do, 
 because there are some who will not do it 
 otherwise. Thus it appears that in a well- 
 ordered society we are only unfree to the 
 extent that we are unreasonable. The reason- 
 
138 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 able man is the free man in so far as the 
 actual law of his society is a perfect law — 
 that is, a law which 'prevents unreasonable 
 persons from hindering the activity of those 
 that are reasonable. But by what practical 
 measures are they to be prevented? How, 
 in the nursery, is the mischievous Jack to 
 be prevented from breaking Dolly's toys ? 
 The children know that there are two ways. 
 Jack may be told that, under penalty of some 
 certain punishment, he is not to do this. 
 This is the method of criminal law, and 
 probably some criminal procedure, or at least 
 the possibility of it, is necessary in every 
 community of any size. By the other, and 
 higher, method the unreasonable Jack may be 
 persuaded to reason and consideration for 
 others. This is the more excellent way, and 
 in the family should be always what is 
 intended in the end. The state of that 
 nursery is bad indeed, where the naughty 
 children are only kept in order, not trained 
 to be eventually the source of order them- 
 selves. To the question who keeps order in 
 
SOCIAL MEMBERSHIP. 139 
 
 the family, the answer ought to be that it 
 is kept by all. 
 
 As in the nursery so in the world. The 
 rule of the strong hand is necessary if only 
 to enable the good citizen to go about his 
 business. But this is no more than half the 
 end proposed by a truly reasonable social will. 
 The other half is to win all citizens to reason. 
 Discipline, instruction, sympathy, persuasion, 
 co-operation, are all means to this end, and 
 they sufficiently define the attitude which 
 ought to be taken by the individual good 
 citizen towards those less advanced in social 
 reason. It is his duty to help in winning 
 them. The good little girl in the nursery 
 makes it part of her business to bring her 
 mischievous tyrannical brother to a gentler, 
 more sympathetic, frame of mind. And, 
 throughout life in all its relations, the duty 
 of those who are injured by another consists 
 in endeavouring to win that other to re- 
 pentance by any means that will serve. 
 The doctrine of forgiveness for injuries is a 
 puzzling one to children as well as to men ; 
 
140 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 but it is not so difficult to understand it 
 in this light, as a practical application of the 
 principle that a brother remains a brother 
 whether he offends or not, and that the 
 aim of the good brother quite natur- 
 ally is to persuade the other to a better 
 mind. In all this department of moral 
 teaching, the parallelism between the family, 
 the school, and the world cannot be too 
 carefully taught. 
 
 The relation of the good citizen to a law 
 which does not easily fit him requires some 
 consideration. Some laws exist to secure 
 order and protect the peaceable by punishing 
 ill-doers. This may lead to institutions which 
 are occasionally oppressive, or at least trouble- 
 some, even to the good. A good citizen's duty 
 in such case is to submit cheerfully, lest the 
 weaker brother should offend. If his mind 
 be fixed on the disciplinary benefit intended 
 to those who need it, he will not rebel against 
 an enactment unnecessary for himself There 
 is good occasion for this doctrine in the sixth 
 form of the school. 
 
SOCIAL MEMBERSHIP. 141 
 
 In every society that the world has ever 
 seen, the perfectly reasonable man has been 
 in advance of the law under which his 
 society is governed. It is sure to be inade- 
 quate to his view of what ought to be. It 
 may be oppressive to him because of those 
 enactments necessary for the discipline of 
 others, or it may be positively wrong — a 
 case which history amply illustrates. What 
 is the good man's attitude in this latter 
 case ? This is a question which has been 
 much discussed in the history of noncon- 
 formity. Probably it has been answered 
 with the maximum of clearness by the 
 Society of Friends, who have been placed 
 again and again in the position of inquiring 
 what are "the proper limits of obedience to 
 the law." It is obviously absurd to say 
 that disobedience is always wrong. It is 
 obviously absurd, on the other hand, to say 
 that we may disobey the law whenever we 
 differ from its prescriptions. The happy 
 mean was well struck by those who made it 
 a principle of their political existence that 
 
142 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 the law should always be obeyed except 
 for conscience sake. This leaves the decision 
 to the individual, it is true, but in such a 
 way as to demand from him the highest 
 exercise of responsible reflection before he 
 presumes to differ from the powers that 
 be. It should be noted too that such 
 decision is necessarily made in face of the 
 certainty that disobedience will bring suffer- 
 ing. Thus the Quaker rule was a wise rule 
 which has acted well ; although it does not 
 follow that it should be regarded as an 
 infallible first principle. Every case of dis- 
 obedience to law should be judged on its 
 own merits, and the lesson always clearly 
 taught that an act of disobedience carries 
 with it a tremendous responsibility which 
 should never be undertaken except with a 
 mind fully made up. 
 
 The same question comes up historically 
 in another form, in all cases of national 
 insurrection. The defence of the actual 
 rebel differs from that of the mere non- 
 juror. The former takes his stand, not 
 
SOCIAL MEMBERSHIP. 143 
 
 only on the grounds of dissenting conscience, 
 but also and more emphatically on the 
 fact that the common-sense of his com- 
 munity is against the established state of 
 things. This is a very strong position, 
 since the duty of loyalty to institutions is 
 grounded in the higher duty of loyalty to 
 the common-sense and will of the community, 
 or to superior persons claiming the rightful 
 authority of true superiority. When, there- 
 fore, the general conscience is opposed to 
 the established order, and recognizes no 
 superiority in the persons upholding it, the 
 higher duty, not only annuls, but opposes 
 the other, and rebellion may become a 
 sacred duty. 
 
 It is obvious too that a system of law 
 will be best obeyed when it rests clearly 
 on the will of the majority. Otherwise, 
 there will be a larger number against than 
 for it, and the condition must be one of 
 unstable equilibrium. But where the will 
 of the majority obtains there will be laws 
 which enable the social will to override the 
 
144 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 individual will for the benefit of the whole. 
 A majority is tyrannical that uses its power 
 for the benefit of the majority only. The 
 aim of all good law is for the benefit 
 of the whole. In the discussion of such 
 questions as those of local option and 
 compulsory purchase, this principle may be 
 abundantly illustrated. 
 
 These moral truths are taught most natur- 
 ally in the study of history, but their 
 application to everyday life should not be 
 neglected, and history, with its lessons in 
 high politics, will be better understood in 
 the light of the comparison. It should be 
 part, too, of the training of the young 
 citizen to study in detail the political 
 system under which he lives, and to apply 
 his habits of ethical observation and reflec- 
 tion to it. It is a good sign of the times 
 that a short course of lessons on the duties 
 of a citizen is frequently given in schools 
 to-day. 
 
 Such a course, however, should not be 
 undertaken too early. Side by side with it, 
 
SOCIAL MEMBERSHIP. 145 
 
 a short course of lessons on social and political 
 principles in general would be useful, summing 
 up and reducing to system the lessons on the 
 subject hitherto given unsystematically and 
 as occasion arose. To this might be added 
 a course on economics, leading the learner 
 into touch with the ideas of the industrial 
 world. During school years, not much need 
 be attempted for the full and detailed study 
 of these subjects. But the cultivation of an 
 interest in them and sympathy with the 
 ends they imply, cannot easily be over- 
 estimated. 
 
 The chief object to be secured is that the 
 young citizen shall thoroughly understand 
 the principle of order under which he lives. 
 Law exists, in the first place, for the pro- 
 tection of the perfectly reasonable citizen, 
 that he may not be interfered with in 
 carrying out his ends. In the second place, 
 the law of the land is intended, up to a 
 certain point, to promote the adoption of 
 reasonable ways by all citizens. The good 
 man, however, does not measure his duty 
 
146 TEACHING OF MORALITY. 
 
 by the requirements of the law. He owes 
 more to his fellow-citizens, and will strive 
 for the common welfare more than the law 
 requires. 
 
 The course of lessons on the theory of 
 social membership is not the least important 
 part of moral instruction ; for the end pro- 
 posed in moral education is to train up, 
 not only persons who respect themselves 
 and feel with their neighbours, but citizens 
 who honour the social order and accept the 
 responsibility of making it all that it ought 
 to be. 
 
 OLABROW : PRINTED AT TIIK UNIVEKSITY PEESS BY ROBERT lIArLKHOeK AKD TO. 
 
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