DEVELOPMENT OF THE MORAL FACULTY. 29 



heart ; is free from the suspicion that has attached, and probably with 

 justice, to so many of the Mexican Presidents, of using his power, 

 through contracts and expenditures, to enrich himself illegitimately ; 

 and has appreciated the necessity and favored all efforts for establish- 

 ing and extending popular education. It is not, furthermore, to be 

 denied that many of the men associated with the present or recent 

 administrations of Mexico are of very high character and fine abili- 

 ties ; the recent representative of Mexico in the United States, Senor 

 Zamacona, and the present minister, Senor Romero, for example, 

 being the peers of the representatives of any of the governments of 

 the Old World. 



* 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE MOEAL FACULTY.* 



Br JAMES SULLY, M. A. " 



IT has been long disputed whether the moral faculty is innate and 

 instinctive, or whether it is the result of experience and education. 

 The probability is that it is partly the one and partly the other. The 

 child shows from an early period a disposition to submit to others' au- 

 thority, and this moral instinct may not improbably be the transmitted 

 result of the social experience and moral training of many generations 

 of ancestors. Yet, whatever the strength of the innate disposition, it 

 is indisputable that external influences and education have much to do 

 in determining the intensity and the special form of the moral senti- 

 ment. We have now to trace the successive phases of its development. 



A consciousness of moral obligation arises in the first instance by 

 help of the common childish experience of living under parental au- 

 thority at the outset. The child's repugnance to doing what is wrong 

 is mainly the egoistic feeling of dislike to or fear of punishment. By 

 the effect of the principle of association or "transference," dislike to 

 the consequences of certain actions might lead on to a certain measure 

 of dislike to the actions themselves. And such an effort would greatly 

 strengthen the innate disposition to submit to authority. 



When the forces of affection and sympathy come into play, this 

 crude germ of moral feeling would advance a stage. An affectionate 

 child, finding that disobedience and wrong-doing offend and distress 

 his mother or father, would shrink from these actions on this ground. 

 Not only so, the promptings of sympathy would lead the child to set 

 a value on what those whom he loves and esteems hold in reverence. 

 In this way love and reverence for the father lead on naturally to love 

 and reverence for the moral law which he represents, enforces, and in 

 a measure embodies. 



Even now, however, the love of right has not become a feeling for 



* From " Elements of Psychology, with Special Applications to the Art of Teaching." 

 In press of D. Appleton & Co. 



