EDUCATION AS A SCIENCE. 403 



assign its elements, with a view to define them. The iinconventional 

 liandling of moral culture by Bentham and James Mill is strongly 

 illustrative of this part of the case. Mill's view of the moral sense 

 is the theory of thorough-going derivation ; and, in delineating the 

 process of moral education, he naturally follows out that view. He 

 takes the cardinal virtues piecemeal ; for example : " Temperance 

 bears a reference to pain and pleasure. The object is, to connect with 

 each pain and pleasure those trains of ideas which, according to the 

 order established among events, tend most effectually to increase the 

 sum of pleasures upon the whole, and diminish that of pains." The 

 advocates of a moral faculty would have a different way of inculcating 

 temperance which, however, I will not undertake to reproduce. 



It will not be denied, as a matter of fact, that tlie perennial mode 

 of insuring the moral conduct of mankind has been punishment and 

 reward pain and pleasure. This method has been found, generally 

 speaking, to answer the purpose ; it has reached the springs of action 

 of human beings of every hue. No special endowment has been needed 

 to make man dread the pains of the civil authority. Constituted as 

 we are to flee all sorts of pain, we are necessarily urged to avoid pain 

 when it comes as punishment. Education is not essential to tliis effect 

 any more than it is essential to our avoiding the pains of hunger, cold, 

 or fatigue. 



Those Avho demur to the existence of a special faculty, different 

 from all the other recognized constituents of mind feeling, will, or 

 intellect are not to be held as declaring that conscience is entirely a 

 matter of education ; for, without any education at all, man may be, 

 to all intents and purposes, moral. What is meant by the derivative 

 theory of conscience is, that everything that it includes is traceable 

 to some one or other of the leading factors of our nature : first of all to 

 will or volition, motived by pain and pleasure, and next to the social 

 and sympathetic impulses. The cooperation of these factoi's supplies 

 a nearly all-powerful impetus to right conduct, wherever there is the 

 external machinery of law and authority. Education, as a third fac- 

 tor, plays a part, no doubt, but we may overrate as well as imder- 

 rate its influence. I should not be far out in saying that seventy-five 

 per cent, of the average moral faculty is the rough and ready response 

 of the will to the constituted penalties and rewards of society. 



At the risk of embroiling the theory of education in a controversy 

 that would seem to be alien to it, I conceive it to be necessary to make 

 these broad statements, as a prelude to inquiring what are the emo- 

 tional and volitional associations that constitute the made-up or ac- 

 quired portion of our moral nature. That education is a considerable 

 factor is shown by the difference between the children that are neg- 

 lected and such as ai-e carefully tended ; a difference, however, that 

 means a good deal more than education. 



When the terrors of the law are once thoroughly understood, it 



