684 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



"dim religious light," having proved inadequate, suppose we try bible- 

 reading in rooms with bare walls, relieved only by maps and drawings 

 of animals. Commands and interdicts, uttered by a surpliced priest 

 to minds prepared by chant and organ-peal, not having been obeyed, 

 let us see whether they will be obeyed when mechanically repeated 

 in school-boy sing-song to a threadbare usher, amid the buzz of lesson- 

 learning and clatter of slates. No very hopeful proposals, one would 

 say ; proceeding, as they do, upon one or other of the beliefs, that a 

 moral precept will be effective in proportion as it is received without 

 emotional accompaniment, and that its effectiveness will increase in 

 proportion to the number of times it is repeated. Both these beliefs 

 are directly at variance with the results of psychological analysis and 

 of daily experience. Certainly, such influence as may be gained by 

 addressing moral truths to the intellect, is made greater if the ac- 

 companiments arouse an appropriate emotional excitement, as a re- 

 ligious service does ; while, conversely, there can be no more effectual 

 way of divesting such moral truths of their impressiveness, than as- 

 sociating them with the prosaic and vulgarizing sounds and sights 

 and smells coming from crowded children. And no less certain is it 

 that precepts, often heard and little regarded, lose by repetition the 

 small influence they bad. What do public-schools show us ? are 

 the boys rendered merciful to one another by listening to religious 

 injunctions every morning? "What do universities show us? have 

 perpetual chapels habitually made undergraduates behave better than 

 the average of young men ? "What do cathedral-towns show us ? 

 is there in them a moral tone above that of other towns, or must we 

 from the common saying, " the nearer the church," etc., infer a per- 

 vading impression to the contrary ? What do clergymen's sons show 

 us ? has constant insistance on right conduct made them conspicu- 

 ously superior, or do we not rather hear it whispered that something 

 like an opposite effect seems produced. Or, to take one more case, 

 what do religious newspapers show us ? is it that the precepts of 

 Christianity, more familiar to their writers than to other writers, are 

 more clearly to be traced in their articles, or has there not ever been 

 displayed a want of charity in their dealings with opponents, and is 

 it not still displayed ? Nowhere do we find that repetition of rules 

 of right, already known but disregarded, produces regard for them; 

 but we find that, contrariwise, it makes the regard for them less than 



before. 



The prevailing assumption is, indeed, as much disproved by analy- 

 sis as it is contradicted by familiar facts. Already we have seen that 

 the connection is between action and feeling ; and hence the corollary, 

 that only by a frequent passing of feeling into action is the tendency 

 to such action strengthened. Just as two ideas often repeated in a 

 Certain order become coherent in that order ; and just as muscular 

 motions, at first difficult to combine properly with one another and 



