3o6 NATURE AND MAX. 



applied to the working of the self-acting points. The moral con 

 sciousness of mankind protests against such an identification. 



So, again, I am unable to attach any definite import to such 

 words as cyK/mreta, crux^poo-wr/, continent ia ^ or temperantia, to see 

 any meaning in the ancient proverb that &quot; he that is slow to anger 

 &quot; is better than the mighty, and he that ruleth his spirit than he 

 &quot;that taketh a city,&quot; or to feel any admiration for the hero who 

 &quot; has gained that greatest of all victories, the victory over himself,&quot; 

 if the course of action results from no other agency than either 

 physical or mental automatism, and no independent power be put 

 forth by the Ego in determining it. And if I felt obliged to accept 

 that doctrine as scientific truth, I should look to its honest and 

 consistent application to the training of the young as the greatest 

 of social calamities. For I can imagine nothing more paralyzing 

 to every virtuous effort, more withering to every noble aspiration, 

 than that our children should be brought up in the belief that their 

 characters are entirely formed for them by &quot;heredity&quot; and 

 &quot;environments,&quot; that they must do whatever their respective 

 characters impel them to do ; that they have no other power of 

 resisting temptations to evil, than such as may spontaneously arise 

 from the knowledge they have acquired of what they ought or 

 ought riot to do ; that if this motive proves too weak, they can do 

 nothing of themselves to intensify and strengthen it ; that the notion 

 of &quot;summoning their resolution,&quot; or &quot;bracing themselves for the 

 conflict,&quot; is altogether a delusion ; that, in fine, they are in the 

 position of a man who is floating down-stream in a boat without 

 oars, towards a dangerous cataract, and can only be rescued by 

 the interposition of some Deus ex macJiina. How the perception 

 of this, as the logical outcome of the doctrine of automatism, 

 weighed &quot; like an incubus &quot; upon the spirit of John Stuart Mill, 

 when he first fully awoke to it, he has himself told us in his 

 Autobiography (p. 169). &quot; I felt,&quot; he says, &quot;as if I was scientifically 

 &quot; proved to be the helpless slave of antecedent circumstances ; as 

 &quot;if my character and that of all others had been formed for us by 

 &quot; agencies beyond our control, and was wholly out of our own 

 &quot; power.&quot; And it is not a little curious that, while continuing to 

 advocate as scientific truth the determination of human conduct 

 by the formed character of each individual, and while excluding 



