Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/378

364 effects of use and disuse were not inheritable, tow little would such knowledge immediately affect the enacting of laws, the making of marriages, the teaching of morality, the giving of alms! Between old ideas and action the connection is strong; between new ideas and action the connection is weak.

There are two truths, forming part of the inoperative knowledge of the educational world, to which I would here call attention. The first is, that the children of civilized persons possess in a marked degree the characteristics of savages; the second, that as human beings grow old they lose mental, moral, and physical plasticity. And when we consider the facts that children possess much of the nature of savages, that savage natures prompt savage acts, that the frequent performance of savage acts tends to produce savage habits, and that age tends to fix habits by producing rigidity, the difficulty and the need of forming social characters in those of plastic age become apparent. How to supplant savage instincts by social instincts—how to produce moral natures—is the problem which educators of all kinds are called upon to solve. I do not mean to imply that educators can produce moral natures in the sense of manufacturing them, but that they can assist their growth. By imparting ethical knowledge to the young we may realize moral minds, but unfortunately moral minds do not necessitate moral natures. Civilized minds may coexist with savage natures. As the value of any knowledge is in proportion to its beneficial effect on conduct, the knowledge of what constitutes good conduct is certainly of much value, and ethics deserves a more prominent place in our schools than it now occupies. But the doing of what is good does not necessarily follow the knowing of what is good. Good deeds depend much more on the possession of social natures than on the possession of minds stored with ethical knowledge.

The obligation which children are under of obeying parents lapses when they become self-supporting. The obligation to conform to certain social laws never lapses. These laws are binding on adults and children alike. The obligation which pupils are under of observing the rules of the schools which they attend also lapses when school days are over. Obedience to parents and teachers is temporary; obedience to social laws is permanent. Yet disobedience to parents and teachers as such often meets with much severer punishment than infraction of a social law! Nay, even worse than this is true; infractions of social law are countenanced where needless college rules are strictly enforced.

When on a crowded sidewalk two pedestrians accidentally jostle each other, there usually follow mutual apologies. "The right of personal integrity," which Spencer deduces as a corollary