MENTAL SCIENCE AND SOCIOLOGY. 685 



with guiding perceptions, become by practice facile, and at length au- 

 tomatic ; so the recurring production of any conduct by its prompting 

 emotion makes that conduct relatively easy. Not by precept, though 

 heard daily ; not by example, unless it is followed ; but only by action, 

 often caused by the related feeling, can a moral habit be formed. And 

 yet this truth, which Mental Science clearly teaches, and which is in 

 harmony with familiar sayings, is a truth wholly ignored in current 

 educational fanaticisms. 



There is ignored, too, the correlative truth ; and ignoring it threat- 

 ens results still nioi-e disastrous. While we see an expectation of ben- 

 efits which the means used cannot achieve, we see no consciousness of 

 injuries which will be entailed by these means. As usually happens 

 with those absorbed in the eager pursuit of some good by govern- 

 mental action, there is a blindness to the evil reaction on the natures 

 of citizens. Already the natures of citizens have suffered from kin- 

 dred reactions, due to actions set up centuries ago ; and now the mis- 

 chievous effects are to be increased by further such reactions. 



The English people are complained of as improvident. Very few 

 of them lay by in anticipation of times when work is slack ; and the 

 general testimony is that higher wages commonly result only in more 

 extravagant living or in drinking to greater excess. As we saw a 

 while since, they neglect opportunities of becoming shareholders in 

 the companies they are engaged under ; and those who are most anx- 

 ious for their welfare despair on finding how little they do to raise 

 themselves when they have the means. This tendency to seize imme- 

 diate gratification regardless of future penalty is commented on as 

 characteristic of the English people ; and, contrasts between them and 

 their Continental neighbors having been drawn, surprise is expressed 

 that such contrasts should exist. Improvidence is spoken of as an in- 

 explicable trait of the race no regard being paid to the fact that 

 races with which it is compared are allied in blood. The people of 

 Norway are economical and extremely prudent. The Danes, too, are 

 thrifty ; and Defoe, commenting on the extravagance of his countrymen, 

 says that a Dutchman gets rich on wages out of which an Englishman 

 but just lives. So, too, if we take the modern Germans. Alike by 

 the complaints of the Americans, that the Germans are ousting them 

 from their own businesses by working hard and living cheaply, and by 

 the success here of German traders and the preference shown for Ger- 

 man waiters, we are taught that in other divisions of the Teutonic race 

 there is nothing like this lack of self-control. Nor can we ascribe to 

 such portion of Norman blood as exists among us this peculiar trait : de- 

 scendants of the Normans in France are industrious and saving. Why, 

 then, should the English people be improvident ? If we seek explana- 

 tion in their remote lineage, we find none ; but, if we seek it in the 

 social conditions to which they have been subject, we find a sufficient 



