Education and Innervation. 6 1 



to refrain from doing, and this is exhibited in children of even 

 the tenderest years. This faculty may be spoken of as the plan 

 of activity in the individual, for without such a faculty or plan 

 he would be the creature of external influences. But it may 

 be that there is a specific aim towards which this plan is 

 directed. As soon as, or whenever suitable, external influences 

 excite those sensorial or intellectual aptitudes which direct this 

 plan, there is immediately a corresponding action on the part 

 of the individual. For instance, if the end of activity be 

 patriotism, and the necessary exciting influences be at work, 

 there will be produced the boldness and indomitable energy 

 of the soldier, or the sagacity and controlling force of the 

 commander ; or, if it be the pursuit of science, there will be 

 developed the patience and the careful observation of the 

 student ; or, if it be artistic pursuits, there will be called into 

 active energy all the qualities which produce the painter or 

 musician. So it was by setting before the enslaved and almost 

 hopeless Israelites the ideas of independence and freedom, that 

 Moses, by his extraordinary genius and commanding influence, 

 laid the foundations of the Jewish nationality, and this, too, 

 before they had actually acquired the promised territory, and 

 it was a similar influence that produced a Clive, a Wellington, 

 or a Bonaparte. To a like cause may be traced the develop- 

 ment of a Mozart or a Beethoven, of a Sidney Cooper or a 

 Frederick Leighton. 



Education of whatever kind has for its proximate end the 

 preparation of the individual for the duties of life, but the 

 business of moral education is to show that the consequences of 

 an act, whether right or wrong, must be reaped by the indi- 

 vidual. If a child touches the hot bars of the grate a burn is 

 the consequence, or if it pricks itself with a needle or puts its 

 hand upon a nettle pain follows, and if either act is committed 

 again the same result is observed ; hence the act is avoided. 

 These phenomona can hardly be called punishments, but they 

 are simply the beneficent checks to actions which are essentially 

 at variance with bodily welfare — the unavoidable consequences 



