TRAINING FOR CHARACTER. 765 



him to frank action and the free exercise of his faculties under 

 his own responsibility. It must not be forgotten that, while the 

 inhibition imposed upon him is a means, voluntary inhibition is 

 the end. The purpose is to initiate him into self-restraint and 

 self-government, and he can be prepared for it only by being ex- 

 ercised in it. 



Preyer is not quite clear in marking the distinction between 

 not wishing and wishing not. We define two distinct species of 

 inhibition ; one voluntary, and the other really willful. The first 

 takes place when a child under restraint and watch abstains 

 against his own inclination from doing what is prohibited for 

 example, when he stops crying when interrupted by a stranger, 

 or when in the garden he draws back from a trespass he is about 

 to make upon the turf at the sight of the watchman. There is in 

 those acts what may be called a simple non-wishing, for the thing 

 that counteracts the temptation is something outside of the 

 child's will. But when the child, free and alone, finds sponta- 

 neously in his own thoughts and feelings a counterpoise to his 

 temptations, there occurs an inhibition of a new kind, which is 

 not simply a non-will but a positive and meritorious will. Moral 

 education consists essentially in gradually substituting this kind 

 of inhibition for the other, the empire of reason for that of con- 

 straint. 



It does not really begin so long as we only guard, watch, and 

 prevent. Innocence thus obtained has only a provisional and 

 preparatory value with the child, and none with adults. Some 

 young people have been brought up in this way, under conditions 

 of complete surveillance, kept in leading-strings till they were 

 twenty years old. This is better than nothing, in so far as the 

 object is to prevent their making fools of themselves ; but their 

 parents are mistaken if they believe they have been well trained ; 

 they have not been trained at all. They are like the cat that 

 withholds its paw from the tempting dish as long as it sees the 

 stick, but which is secretly eager to get its chin in. 



That person alone is morally trained who can watch and con- 

 duct himself ; who, as Montaigne says, " has enough in his own 

 eyes to keep him in office." Education ought gradually to lead 

 children to this point, prudently risking a little, loading them 

 from the beginning with as few restraints as possible and loosen- 

 ing these little by little, making only reasonable demands and ex- 

 plaining the reasons for them as fast as they can be comprehended. 

 I do not hesitate to measure the value of an education according 

 to the degree in which it has sought to teach the child from the 

 cradle to help himself and govern himself to make men who 

 shall be characters. Translated for The Popular Science Monthly 

 from the Revue Scientifique. 



