Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

between man and wife. They should be agreed on their catchword in 'facts of religion,' or 'facts of science, or 'society, my dear'; for without such an agreement all intercourse is a painful strain upon the mind.... For there are differences which no habit nor affection can reconcile, and the Bohemian must not intermarry with the Pharisee. Imagine Consuelo as Mrs. Samuel Budgett, the wife of the successful merchant! The best of men and the best of women may sometimes live together all their lives, and, for want of some consent on fundamental questions, hold each other lost spirits to the end."

I (p. 147).

CHARACTER AND INTELLECT.

FROM the side of education and the training of the moral sentiment, Spencer has some excellent remarks in the spirit of the present passage: "Mere culture of the intellect (and education as usually conducted amounts to little more) is hardly at all operative upon conduct. Intellect is not a power but an instrument-not a thing which itself moves and works, but a thing which is moved and worked by forces behind it. To say that men are ruled by reason is as irrational as to say that men are ruled by their eyes. Reason is an eye-the eye through which the desires see their way to gratification. And educating it only makes it a better eye-gives it a vision more accurate and more comprehensive-does not at all alter the desires subserved by it. However far-seeing you make it, the passions will still determine the directions in which it shall be turned-the objects on which it shall dwell. Just those ends which the instincts or sentiments propose will the intellect be employed to accomplish; culture of it having done nothing but increase the ability to accomplish them. Probably some will urge that enlightening men enables them to discern the penalties which naturally attach to wrong-doing; and in a certain sense this is true. But it is only superficially true. Though they may learn that the grosser crimes commonly bring retribution in one shape or other, they will not learn that the subtler ones do.

Their sins will merely be made more Machiavellian. Did much knowledge and piercing intelligence suffice to make men good, then Bacon should have been honest and Napoleon should have been just. Where the character is defective, intellect, no matter how high, fails to regulate rightly, because predominant desires falsify its estimates. Nay, even a distinct foresight of evil consequences will not restrain when strong passions are at work. Whatever moral benefit can be effected by education must be effected by an education which is emotional rather than perceptive. If in making a child understand that this thing is right and the other is wrong, you make it feel that they are so-if you make virtue loved and vice loathed—if you arouse a noble desire, and make torpid an inferior one-if you bring into life a previously dormant sentiment—if you cause a sympathetic impulse to get the better of one that is selfish-if, in short, you produce a state of mind to which proper behaviour is natural, spontaneous, instinctive, you do some good. But no drilling in catechisms, no teaching of moral codes, can effect this. Only by repeatedly awakening the appropriate emotions can character be changed. Mere ideas received by the intellect, meeting no response from within-having no roots there-are quite inoperative upon conduct, and are quickly forgotten upon entering into life." Social Statics, p. 384 foll. (condensed).

[blocks in formation]

BAIN, Professor, 75.

Baldwin, Professor, on habit, 97 f.

', on friendship, 185.
on imitation, 186.

Beauty and good, 176.
Bentham, 193, 195.

Bosanquet, B., on the soul, 63.
on friendship, 179.

on philosophy as an element
in life, 151.

Burke, 137, 149, 312.
Butler, 90.

Browning, R., 93, 106, 113.

CARLYLE, 43, 180.
Carpenter, Edward, 185.
Character and opinion, 32.

and circumstances, 48, 312.
and intellect, 315.
Childhood, happiness of, 50, 225.
Christian Ethics, 47, 48, 95, 118,
161, 310.

City, the Greek, 2 f.

Conscience, 91.
Contemplation, 163.
Continence, 126 f., 263,

Courage, 72, 75, 103 f., 243, 248.
Cynics, 113, 161, 191.
Cyrenaics, 34.

DARWIN, 71.

Death, 247.

Desire, 67, 68.

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

LEISURE, 10, 45, 159, 167, 313.
Liberality, 243.
Life, 297.

MACKENZIE, Professor, on re-
flection, 69.
Magnanimity, 243.

Magnificence, 243..

Marriage, 181.

Materialism, 61.

Mean, the, 9, 87, 240 f., 312.
Merit, 76.

Mill, J. S., 79, 80, 184, 192, 193,
167 f., 310.

Modesty, 245.
Monasticism, 162.
Money, 36 f.

Moral Philosophy. See ETHICS.
Morris, William, 85, 114.
Motive and consequence, 78 f.

OPINION, 129, 134.

PERIPATETICS, 72
Pessimism, 54 f.

[blocks in formation]

Rousseau, 52, 98, 102, 149.
Ruskin, 38.

SELF and others, 23, 183 f.,

292 f.

[blocks in formation]

Speusippus, 191.

Spinoza, 96, 153, 169.
Standard, the, 93, 312.

State, the, 8, 24, 309, 310.
Stephen, Leslie, 77, 185.

Stevenson, R. L., 115, 312, 314.
Stoics, 2, 36, 161.

Stout, G. F., 102, 200.
Suicide, 252.

Syllogism, the practical, 133, 141,
142, 264.
Sympathy, 145.

TEMPERANCE, 103, 104, 116 f.,
242, 257 f.

Theoria. See CONTEMPLATION.
Theory and conduct, 32.
Thought and action, 69.
Time as element in happiness,

49, 221, 226.

[merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

THE END.

LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.

« AnteriorContinuar »