3o6 NATURE AND MAN. 



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 eyKpareta, crwippocrvvr], continentia, ox te/npet'anda, — to see 



any meaning in the ancient proverb that " he that is slow to anger 



" is better than the mighty, and he that ruleth his spirit than he 



"that taketh a city," — or to feel any admiration for the hero who 



" has gained that greatest of all victories, the victory over himself," 



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 behef that their 



characters are entirely formed for them by " heredity " and 



" environments ; " that they tnust 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 not to do ; that if this motive proves too weak, they can do 



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



of "summoning their resolution," or "bracing themselves for the 



conflict," 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 mac/iind. — How the perception 



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



weighed " like an incubus " upon the spirit of John Stuart Mill, 



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



Autobiography (p. 169). " I felt," he says, " as if I was scientifically 



" proved to be the helpless slave of antecedent circumstances ; as 



"if my character and that of all others had been formed for us by 



" agencies beyond our control, and was wholly out of our own 



" power." And it is not a little curious that, while continumg to 



advocate as scientific truth the determination of human conduct 



by the formed character of each individual, and while excluding 



