680 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



gratifications without stint ; but, in the absence of that consciousness 

 of future ills which is constituted by the ideas of pains, distinct or 

 vague, the passing desire is not opposed effectually. The truth that 

 recklessness brings distress, fully acknowledged though it may be, re- 

 mains inoperative. The mere cognition does not affect conduct con- 

 duct is affected only when the cognition passes out of that intellectual 

 form in which the idea of distress is little more than verbal, into a form 

 in which this term of the proposition is developed into a vivid imagi- 

 nation of distress a mass of painful feeling. It is thus with conduct 

 of every kind. See this group of persons clustered at the river-side. 

 A boat has upset, and some one is in danger of drowning. The fact, 

 that, in the absence of aid, the youth in the water will shortly die, is 

 known to them all. That by swimming to his assistance his life may 

 be saved, is a proposition denied by none of them. The duty of help- 

 ing fellow-creatures who are in difficulties, they have been taught all 

 their lives ; and they will severally admit that running a risk to pre- 

 vent a death is praiseworthy. Nevertheless, though sundry of them 

 can swim, they do nothing beyond shouting for assistance or giving 

 advice. But now here comes one who, tearing off* his coat, plunges in 

 to the rescue. In what does he differ from the others ? Not in knowl- 

 edge. Their cognitions are equally clear with his. They know as 

 well as he does that death is impending, and know, too, how it 

 may be prevented. In him, however, these cognitions arouse certain 

 correlative emotions more strongly than they are aroused in the 

 rest. Groups of feelings are excited in all ; but, whereas in the 

 others the deterrent feelings of fear, etc., preponderate, in him 

 there is a surplus of the feelings excited by sympathy, joined, it 

 may be, with others not of so high a kind. In each case, however, 

 the behavior is not determined by knowledge, but by emotion. Ob- 

 viously, change in the actions of these passive spectators is not to be 

 effected by making their cognitions clearer, but by making their higher 

 feelings stronger. 



Have we not here, then, a cardinal psychological truth, to which 

 any rational system of human discipline must conform ? Is it not mani- 

 fest that a legislation which ignores it and tacitly assumes its opposite 

 will inevitablv fail ? Yet much of our legislation does this : and we 

 are at present, legislature and nation together, eagerly pushing for- 

 ward schemes which proceed on the postulate that conduct is deter- 

 mined not by feelings, but by cognitions. 



For what else is the assumption underlying this anxious urging-on 

 of organizations for teaching ? What is the root-notion common to 

 Secularists and Denominationalists, but the notion that spread of 

 knowledge is the one thing needful for bettering behavior ? Having 

 both swallowed certain statistical fallacies, there has grown up in them 

 the belief that State-education will check ill-doing. In newspapers, 



