Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/592

 578 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

In order to appreciate this Herculean task, it must be realized that we have committed young men who are as weak morally, intellectually, and physically as.years of evil association and its consequent disregard for law and established rights of others can make them. They are heirs of degeneracy of several gen- erations, with a total abhorrence of honest labor. They have been sent to the reformatory as, legally, first offenders, but court records do not always tell the previous deeds. It is from this class that the larger part of the inmates come. Habits of dis- honesty, slothfulness, and licentiousness, which are the distin- guishing characteristics of most men committed, follow them for a long period. In selecting manual training as an agent to assist these defectives, the deciding principle was that habit produces character, and that moral action arises from the choice between right and wrong doing, whether this be in work upon a plastic material under control of form and accurate predeter- mined measurements, or in the complex organism of the ego, and its relation to society at large.

The new education is everywhere recognizing the importance of the education of the will, and of leading the will to express itself in outward habits and customs. This was the theory of Aristotle, Froebel, and Pestalozzi. "We acquire the virtues by doing the acts," and when virtuous habits are sequenti- ally maintained, the will automatically directs in the paths of virtue.

Manual training, in its full development, stands for regularity of fixed purposes and orderly sequences. In this manual doing the doer has at his command the basis of true living, the full opportunity for observing cause and effect, and for regulating his habits of thought and expression from a knowledge of fixed principles. It has long been a known fact in educational circles that studious employment, under regulated methods, is the key- note to a liberal education. In fact, this is why for years pro- fessors have drilled on Greek and Latin verbs, and formulas'Jn mathematics ; but, while that served well, it is inadequate to a full and harmonious development.

The normal man requires intellectual, moral, religious, and