194 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 
wisher and the educator with a feeling not far from despair ; and by the 
results of his own actions. Yet it is probably a fair summary of what may 
be inferred from common experience, that each individual has at any 
moment a certain balance or reserve of freedom, i.e. of power to act in 
the way which he recognises to be good—a balance or reserve which he 
can increase or diminish by every individual act, every exercise of will, so 
far as he is free. ‘Therein lies (as all moralists have seen) the importance 
- of each single action; for it is in the determination of single actions 
that increased freedom must be won. By constant action in one direc- 
tion, habits are formed which it is very difficult to break. By repeated 
choice of the higher as against the lower values, the choice of these 
becomes easier; freedom is increased. Accordingly, one purpose at 
least of education is to set what seem to be the higher values before the 
immature mind in such forms as it can understand, and to encourage the 
habit of choosing them. About most of these higher values there is 
really very little doubt, and in such forms as kindness, unselfishness, 
truthfulness, fair play, thoroughness, neatness and other elementary kinds 
of beauty, they are as accessible to young minds as to old. 
Further, the importance of discipline depends upon the fact that without 
it—without a certain external compulsion at times—the immature per- 
sonality may not discover that it has the freedom to choose something 
other (and, as it will afterwards recognise, something better) than that 
which immediately appeals to it. The youthful mind has, as Aristotle 
puts it, the power of rational deliberation and choice, but has it in an 
imperfectly developed form, and so the practice of it has to be artifici- 
ally stimulated by some more mature personality which has authority. 
Discipline, correction and guidance reveal the power of choice—of doing 
what you do not want to do; and in time self-discipline follows and 
freedom increases in proportion—freedom, that is, to pursue and realise 
ends or values deliberately chosen, because they are recognised as good. 
No one can possibly be less free than one who has always been allowed 
to do what he likes ; he will never have discovered that he can do anything 
else. To deprive the young, in the name, forsooth, of freedom, of all 
benefit from the experience of earlier generations—to put no values 
before them as good—-is not, in fact, to increase, but to restrict their free- 
dom by denying them the conditions of a fair choice. The young mind 
has neither the information nor the training to decide everything for 
itself. But it zs the object of education and of discipline that it may ulti- 
mately have these, and may do some things no longer because they are 
imposed by authority, but because they are recognised to be good, and 
other things, it may be, because the ideas suggested by authority have now 
been revised and modified by the growing reason. And if the discipline 
and guidance are accompanied so soon and so far as is possible, by reasons 
which will not only suggest why it is that such and such acts and habits 
are good and so cause the discipline to be willingly accepted, but will, 
above all, help to form the habit of reasoning and of considering what is 
good or bad, the result, so far from hampering freedom, will be to elicit 
and enhance it. 
There is no time this morning to discuss the many ways in which those 
