positive in character and raises the members of the social order to the level of the requirements made upon them. Admitted within the circle of moral institutions, the individual has to advance from a lower stage, in which his duties are limited, to a higher, in which they are fuller. This is that individual progress included within each definite moral ideal without reference to any change in the ideal itself. It is plainest in the ordinary education of children, where the moral ideal operates upon the young mind through the authority of the parent or teacher. The period of infancy once past, the child enters as a member into the moral order and has its duties, though the demands made upon it are very restricted. But what is sufficient for the child is not sufficient for the grown man, in whose case the process is not so much one of discipline and instruction as of self-education. The grown man who has abandoned a bad life and is bent on reform is a child in respect of his having to begin at the beginning, but he is different from the child because of his power of independent observation and judgment, acquired through his experience. This is, however, not the general case of self-education, which is that of a man learning the range of his powers by experience of life, and again, as he passes his prime, learning to adapt himself to the limitations of his declining years. The process is one and the same in character in all cases, though, whereas in the education of the young the centre of authority is without, in the adult it is shifted to within. All individual progress may therefore properly be grouped under the name of education. I will first shortly describe it as a psychological process, and afterwards return to discuss its moral character and its connection with the change of moral ideals.

21. Psychologically the process of education may be represented as a gradual modification of the inclinations. into congruity with moral ideas. It takes effect with cumulative force; every repetition of an action moulds

the inclination in the given direction, and at the same time by modifying it prepares it for a further advance. Hence there is a double movement-one towards strengthening the tendency to good conduct, the other towards a refinement of the conduct itself; and the different parts of the process are of course effected separately or in combination according to the judgment of the educator, or to that of the person who is educating himself. The need of refinement of conduct arises because some advance has already been made in it; new circumstances arise as the life of the child or the individual proceeds, which call for a modification of previous actions, where a repetition of the same act would be a mere hardening of the character. Something of the following sort appears to happen in the person's mind. A natural inclination arises, and it is brought into contact with the idea of something to be done, which requires that the feeling be modified before it is allowed to pass into action, this idea being supplied either by the educator or the person himself. When the inclination occurs again under similar circumstances, it more easily falls into the condition which is necessary for its use in conduct. New circumstances may require the inclination so moulded to be again transformed. It is in this way that the moral sentiments arise and acquire increasing sensitiveness.

22. This history presents itself under two forms-a negative and positive. The inclination may be confronted and opposed by the moral idea. In the child the will of the parent takes the place of the moral conscious idea, and his authority is sufficient to make it effective. In the grown man we have the struggle between his natural prompting and the idea of the right conduct. But this opposition is not always repeated, and in some natures it is unnecessary; for after a time the natural inclinations. acquire a tendency in the forward direction of right conduct, moving, it is to be remembered, towards a course. of conduct which, for the most part, has been found by

mankind, through experience, to be most suitable. Moreover, in many cases there is a predisposition towards that development of will which makes up morality: natural affection, for instance, disposes the child to follow the wishes of its parents; and in the case of the ordinary full-grown man, carrying on the process begun in childhood, the moralised inclinations have acquired enough momentum to carry him through new difficulties without. strain. In the case supposed of a person reforming, the sentiments have often become enough reconstituted, at the time his reformation began, to produce the same effect. Whatever, then, the method, the result is that the natural inclinations become at the moment of their appearance spontaneously adjusted to the rest of the person's character. They both recur naturally in a more moralised form, and when they do not, they are at once. tempered and checked by the rest of the character, so as to become available for moral action.

23. Two remarks may be added. The process of refinement of conduct and of sentiments is sometimes described as a growth in the purity of motive. But after previous discussion it will be plain that such a growth is included under the refinement of conduct. If I learn to do a thing with a purer motive, I have really learnt to do a different kind of action.1 And in the next place, it is to be observed that the sentiments are not simultaneous in their production, for not only do they appear in modified forms according to occasions which call them forth, but sometimes entirely unsuspected ones appear. New elements of character are evoked to suit enlarged requirements of action, partly, I suppose, through the pressure of the character as already developed on the latent conditions upon which all character is based. A new and even slight circumstance may so dislocate the proportions in which sentiments exist in a man's mind, as to begin for him a new moral history and 1 See above, Book I. ch. ii. pp. 45-6, and pp. 51-2.

a changed character. And this may happen not only in so-called conversions from a bad life, but in the course of a good life. This evoking of new elements of character, and the changes which thus occur, seem largely responsible for the idea of that mysterious power of freedom which attaches to human action; and partly on such phenomena as these reposes the habit we have of attributing to the mind some unaccountable agency, utterly unlike anything else in the world. The feeling of spontaneity which accompanies the process helps out this illusion. There is, however, as has been before observed, nothing in these facts which is essentially different from the most ordinary experiences of our volition; they are the natural development of character, and there is no greater freedom involved in them than belongs to every act of choice.

24. One form in which the individual or subjective progress occurs, though it has been mentioned before, is important enough to be specially described: the progress of a man who is compelled, in order to keep himself good, to subdue a strong rebellious passion. Such a man, as we have seen, is not the less good for his struggles, though we regard him as so far less fortunate than the man whose passions either never were very strong, or have easily been reduced into natural and spontaneous conformity with the law. Some persons even would think him better, or at any rate more meritorious. The progress in this case is towards greater ease of action; he has formed a habit of right action in those cases no less than the ordinary man, only each time the act requires self-compulsion. Whereas in the ordinary man, say the ordinary temperate man, the desire for drink naturally falls into line with the other sentiments; with him, before he can do right, his inclination has to be opposed by the suitable moral idea, backed by the rest of his moral sentiments. By this continual process he may come in the end to render his good habit a matter of less

pain and struggle, but he does not thereby advance in goodness, but in perfection. What morality requires is that the moral sentiment should predominate; with him. it predominates through a victory. Doubtless such predominance is only possible through the moral momentum of the rest of his character; for a man exposed on many sides of his nature to anti-moral inclinations could hardly endure the trial. And indeed we often ascribe good actions at a new or unforeseen crisis to the weight of good habits already acquired.

25. Returning from this psychological history, let us inquire into the meaning of education for morality. The ordinary education of children is a method by which they are placed in possession of their heritage of moral capabilities. They are born into a society of men whose system of conduct represents the results hitherto achieved in the effort after the greater perfection of human character, and arrived at by them and their ancestors through a long course of moral experience. This order exists, and the child, though he becomes a member of it as soon as he is capable of making moral distinctions, is only an imperfect member. Education, accordingly, presents itself under a double aspect. It has, in the first place, to put the new member of society in possession of the present moral achievement-to make him, in fact, a capable citizen. But in the next place, it has to make him an independent individual, so to penetrate him with this moral order that it shall appear in him as his spontaneous character, modified to suit his particular condition, and endowed with that plasticity which arises only from full and free possession of moral capacities.

This independence is not something anterior to education, but is actually secured by it. Accordingly, it is impossible to agree with that sceptical or cynical doctrine which treats education as an institution designed by society for protection against the new generation, who might otherwise break the fabric down. That doctrine