402 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



contrast with the slow growth of the pleasures typified under the 

 foregoing head. A signal illustration of explosiveness is furnished 

 by laughter, which has both its original causes, and also its factitious 

 or borrowed stimulants. This is an instance where the severity of 

 the agitation provokes self-control, and where advancing years con- 

 tract rather than enlarge the sphere. As the expression of dispar- 

 aging and scornful emotions, its cultivation has the facility of the 

 generic passion of malevolence. We may refer, next, to the explosive 

 emotion of grief, which is in itself seductive, and, if uncontrolled, 

 adds to its primary urgency the force of a habit all too readily ac- 

 quired. There is, moreovei', in connection with the tender emotion, 

 an explosive mode of genuine affection, of which the only defect is its 

 being too strong to last : it prompts to a degree of momentary ardor 

 that is compatible with a relapse into coldness and neglect. This, 

 too, will spontaneously extend itself, and will exemijlify the growth 

 of emotional association with undesirable rapidity. 



What has now been said is but a summary and representation of 

 familiar emotional facts. Familiar also is the remark that explosive- 

 ness is the weakness of early life, and is surmounted to a great de- 

 gree by the lapse of time and the strengthening of the energies. The 

 encounter with others in every-day life begets restraint and control ; 

 and one's own prudential reflections stimulate a further repression of 

 the original outbursts, by which also their growth into habits is re- 

 tarded. In so far as they are repressed by influence from without, 

 and counter-habits established, as a part of moral education, I have 

 elsewhere stated what I consider the two main conditions of such a 

 result a powerful initiative, and an unbroken series of conquests. 

 When these conditions are exemplified through all the emotions in 

 detail, the specialties of the difierent genera fear, anger, love, and 

 the rest are sufficiently obvious. 



III. The chief interest always centres in those associations that, 

 from their bearing on right and wrong condi;ct, receive the name 

 " Moral." The class just described have this bearing in a very direct 

 form ; while the first class indirectly subserves moral ends. But 

 when we approach the subject with an express view to moral culture, 

 we must cross the field of emotional association in general by a new 

 track. 



The newly-appointed professors of the theory of education are per- 

 haps not yet fully aware that, when they venture upon the troubled 

 arena of moral education, they will not be able to evade the long- 

 standing question. What is the moral faculty ? A very short argu- 

 ment will prove the point. Moral improvement is obviously a 

 strengthening of this so-called moral faculty, or conscience increas- 

 ing its might (in Butler's phrase) to the level of its right. But in 

 order to strengthen an energy we must know what it is : if it is a sim- 

 ple, we must define it in its simplicity ; if it is a compound, we must 



