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216 failure. The development of character should be an all-round development, from the centre outwards.

In particular, it is no part of the task of moral education to train the child in that specialisation or particularisation of the virtues to which we have already referred. We have seen that the virtue of courage, for instance, appears in different forms in the soldier, the teacher, the sailor, the doctor, and the worker in the explosives factory. Now the child's courage will not be developed any the better, if he knows what specialised courage these vocations require. The child's concern is primarily with such courage as he needs and is called upon to display as a child. If he learns to bear himself with courage as a child, he will not be found wanting when he is called upon to display the particular variety of that virtue which is required by the vocation which he follows. Some schemes of moral education certainly leave upon the child the impression that the virtues are needed only in after-life. Nothing could be more pernicious. The possibility of sound moral education depends upon the presumption that if the foundations of character are well and truly laid during school life, by the habitual doing of virtuous actions in those departments of life which are open to the child, the character in after-life will naturally express itself in conduct which reveals these virtues in any situation in which it may find itself.

Hence it is important to note that ordinary school life affords real and great opportunities for training in the virtues. Courage is needed by the child at the beginning of its school life, courage to leave its home, whether for a few hours or for a whole term,