EDUCATION AND SELECTION. 353 



of hasty and confused reasons, on the mass of which we are lifted 

 up and borne off. On the other hand, there are feelings under all 

 our ideas which breed even under the cooling cinders of abstrac- 

 tions. The mind itself has a force, because it arouses all the 

 feelings which it summarizes. Thus the simple words " honor " 

 and " duty " resound through our consciousness in infinite echoes, 

 giving rise to legions of images. 



We talk of dead formulas, but they are few. The idea and the 

 word are formulas of possible actions and of feelings ready to pass 

 into acts ; they are " verbs." Every feeling, every impulse that 

 comes to the point of formulating itself into a kind of fiat, ac- 

 quires by that fact a new and in some sort creative force. It 

 finds itself cleared up, denned, specified, and squared with the rest, 

 and thus directed. It is this that renders formulas relating to 

 actions po^v erf ul for good or evil. A child has a vague tempta- 

 tion, an inclination he can not account for. Pronounce the for- 

 mula to him, change the blind impulse into a clear idea, and you 

 give him a new suggestion, which will, perhaps, cause him to fall 

 on the side to which he is inclining. On the other hand, there are 

 formulas and generous suggestions that need only to be pro- 

 nounced to carry entire masses. It sometimes falls to the man of 

 genius to translate the aspirations of his epoch into ideas; he 

 pronounces the word and a whole people follow. Great moral, 

 religious, and social revolutions occur when feelings, long re- 

 strained or hardly recognized, come to be formulated into ideas or 

 words. The way is then opened, the object is revealed with the 

 means, selection takes place, and all the desires are turned at once 

 in the same direction, like a torrent that finds a point where pas- 

 sage is possible. 



Conduct depends, therefore, to a large extent on the circle of 

 the ideas which one has received under the influence of experi- 

 ence, social relations, and aesthetic and intellectual cultivation. 

 Every man possesses at the bottom a collection of general notions 

 and maxims which becomes the source of his resolutions and 

 actions, because the aggregate is fused into a sentiment and a 

 habit. The tendency to translate everything into maxims is 

 manifested even in children, because the maxim is a generaliza- 

 tion that satisfies the thought. If, then, the circle of ideas proves 

 incomplete at any important point, if false notions or immoral 

 maxims insinuate themselves, we are condemned to incurable 

 weakness or to vice, like a nation whose code contains bad funda- 

 mental laws. 



The mental faculties, like the physical faculties, develop in the 

 individual into a relation of reciprocal action ; but mental activity 

 is more dependent than the other. If you have false ideas on a 

 point of fact or reasoning, it is possible for me in a little while to 



TOL. XXIII. 24 



