228 The Morality of Nature 



In modern life the present condition of moral teaching, in 

 persisting alliance with religious precepts; produces a tran- 

 sient and deplorable weakness. Control in morality is then 

 inconsistent with religious liberty and is unacceptable. Pub- 

 lic education of the non-religious character which is found 

 acceptable, is step by step denuded of the old morality, and 

 administered with no substitute. Thus we see one of the 

 necessary links in the chain of progress removed. The link 

 which connects inherited capacity for right action in modern 

 activity by a due training of that capacity is done away with. 

 And this occurs at a time when public education is so es- 

 teemed that private and parental training are restrained and 

 neglected. Such obliteration of moral teaching can only re- 

 sult in a loss of social cohesion. The human instinct and 

 reason, and even conscience itself, operate most effectively 

 when the lineal and racial life build upward continuously, 

 and this lack of continuity is seriously injurious at the 

 present time. In moral education, progress must be made 

 by energies arising in the sphere of personal conscience, free 

 from coercion, and this kind of progress can be aroused only 

 by education. 



These considerations, with others commonly known and 

 equally strong, show that the modern conception of demo- 

 cratic gvernment as it has grown in the minds of free people, 

 does not successfully cover the field relating to moral educa- 

 tion and control. Although the paternal governments which 

 are being replaced, were all more or less linked with duties or 

 assumptions of that kind ; political progress thus withdraws 

 this moral aid from many individuals who need it, and al- 

 though all this is done in the effort and with the effect of 



