Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/91

 EXTENT, DEGREE, AND UNITY IN SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 75 to ethical reflexion with which popular preachers and their public are content. To a few points not all by any means important points the attention is directed and thereby the will attached. These appear in consciousness as conscience, and being attended to, enter as constituents into the sum total of will co-operating with or modifying the instincts according to their force. But the will takes on no mandate from reason as a whole, and for the most part the current of thought flows on quite smoothly, with very little influence on the conduct of life. This presents a spectacle as strange to the practical idealist as the practical idealist's every-day experience of motive ideas and intelligible instincts is to the unconscious and therefore non-rational soul, or rather to the unpractical reason accustomed to turn back on itself. The development of ethical thought must tend on the whole to melt down the wall of separation between instinct and reason to produce practical idealists but it seems quite possible to think a whole system of ethics clearly and certainly to think little bits of moral doctrine without being moved out of the speculative into th'e practical atti- tude. There might therefore be ready accessibility to ideas intellectually with no influence of these on life. This defect of practicality in ideas of practical import seems to some persons quite natural, to others almost unin- telligible, and so the practical and the speculative idealist may be as the poles apart in conduct. A primordial difference in character may be suggested as cause, namely, the magnitude and instinctive direction of the subjective energy. Low subjective energy is unfavourable to any sur- plus of voluntary energy for conduct over and above the expenditure in attention to ideas. And given considerable energy it may tend originally to divide itself in any propor- tion between activity in thought and in deed. One may think so hard on virtue as to be incapable of the effort it requires. Or one may waste in feeling. Education cannot increase the store of subjective energy, though fresh air, good food, and exercise may ; but education can alter the habitual distribution from any extreme to a satisfactory mean ratio. As Aristotle taught us long ago, virtue each virtue may become a habit or secondary instinct by constant and unremitting practice. Thus the general habit of practical reasonableness can be acquired by the practice of carrying out all practical ideas whatever they may be. Facilities of time and opportunity should be given to children from an early age to make easy little plans and carry them out, and throughout the utmost care should be