will, in the stricter sense of the term. For a volition implies more than a cognition of an act to be performed, more than an emotion impelling to its performance. These are, indeed, as we have seen, not only important factors of voluntary action, they are its indispensable prerequisites: and woe to the man who cultivates energy of will without the guidance of reason or without the amenity of genial sentiment. For him force of character hardens into that unreasoning obstinacy in which

Stat pro ratione voluntas.

This is that inertia of brute stupidity, against which, we have Schiller's authority for saying, the gods themselves fight in vain. Still, however essential intelligence and feeling may be to will, they do not form an actual volition. It is true, the distinct cognition of an act implies a veritable re-presentation or re-production of it, not only in consciousness, but in a thrill through the muscular region which would be called into play if the act were really performed; and if the cognition is accompanied with emotional excitement, the muscular thrill will show an almost irresistible tendency to pass from a scarcely perceptible twitch into overt action. But the cognition and emotion. are not the overt action itself. At most they form the conscious state which is described by words expressive of desire. This state, with its nascent, but abortive muscular throb, has been happily described by Hobbes as "the small beginnings of action"; but it is not action completed. A real act of will implies an additional factor-the fiat which transforms into actual fact what was previously a mere thought of something to be done.

Now, it is precisely because all the preliminaries of intelligence and emotion may be realized, and yet life may stop short of this culminating act, that culture of will, in the strictest sense of the term, becomes such an important factor in education. The fact, that clear intelligence and delicate sensibility may thus be divorced from energy of will, is obtruded with startling distinctness in those extreme cases, not unknown in medical practice, in which the divorce implies a

morbid paralysis of human faculty. In such cases you may find a man, of at least average intelligence and refinement, conceiving clearly what is to be done, and feeling a strong desire to do it, yet utterly powerless to put forth the fiat of will, by which alone his desire can be carried into effect. Phenomena of this nature are fully described in special monographs like Ribot's Les Maladies de la Volonté, but they are subjects for the physician rather than for the educationist. They are noticed here merely for the purpose of bringing into vivid relief that crowning fact in human life, which transforms cognition and feeling into an act of will.

It is evident, that, in training decision of character, there are two activities to which it should be directed. The first decides upon the aims of life; the second, upon the means by which these are to be secured.

1. The first requisite of a firm will is an unalterable decision with regard to the object that is to be willed. Of course here intelligence must be called into play in selecting between conflicting alternatives of conduct, and a great deal of fickleness is due to imperfect intelligence failing to see clearly the preponderance of reasons in favor of one course. But, as explained at the outset, intelligence is not a passive state, but a voluntary activity of mind; and therefore a wavering purpose arises, perhaps most frequently from the energy of intelligence never being directed by any earnest effort of will to the practical settlement of the question at issue. Evidently, however, there are men who can, and do exercise their intelligence upon such questions, but without coming to any vital decision. They can never make up their minds, but remain in idle suspense between the rival claims of different courses, for all practical purposes paralyzed in reality as Buridanus fancied an ass would be if placed between two equally attractive bundles of hay. In such cases activity never gets beyond an occasional coquetting with different plans, when the necessities of life force some sort of decision for the moment. For the education of the will, therefore, it is of prime importance, not only to analyze the reasons in favor of different courses, but,

after analysis, and even in spite of speculative doubts, to form a settled determination with regard to the course which is to be practically carried out. Whenever intelligence decides upon a course, the force of the emotional nature may be called to confirm the decision; and it is for this purpose that various artifices have been devised, such as vows, pledges, official oaths, which bind men to their decisions by powerful motives. Any irrevocable act in life, by which a die is cast, a Rubicon crossed, is of value. Such an act becomes, in some cases, an insuperable, in all a formidable obstacle to prevent the agent from looking back after he has put his hand to the plow.

2. But the selection of an end is fruitless, if the means for its attainment are not adopted; and here there is room for a second form of indecision. For there are men who, while recognizing with clear intelligence the superiority and even the obligation of a particular course, remain satisfied with a merely sentimental recognition of the fact. In truth, most men, whatever may be their general strength of character, leave themselves at times the victims of this idle musing over work to be done at some more convenient season; and few reach middle age without finding the track of memory strewn with wrecks of plans which might easily have been carried out by a prompt resolve at the proper moment and by stability of purpose during hours that have been otherwise frittered away. Not infrequently the whole life may thus become an irreparable failure, when a man continues, year after year, toying with pretty ideals which, in a vague sort of way, he intends to realize, but in regard to which he never forms any effective volition. Johnson said truly that the limbo in which such abortive lives find themselves at last, is paved with good intentions.

Now it is obvious that both these forms of indecision in character can be avoided, not by merely letting the will develop itself under any haphazard influences to which it may be subjected, but by adopting, in our educational methods, a specific discipline for its training. You do not learn a science

by merely picking up such facts as may drop on the path of common experience, nor do you learn an art by the occasional clumsy attempts to practice it, which may be forced upon you by the necessities of life. In both cases it is always assumed, as a matter of course, that a special education is absolutely indispensable, and yet this simple fact is to a large extent ignored in our educational systems, so far as regards any provision for training the will. It is true the whole life of a wellconducted school does incidentally involve some invaluable discipline in voluntary control. The regular routine, its punctual observance, the staid behavior within school, the exaction of tasks that are not always agreeable-all this tends to introduce a rational order into the licentious chaos of a young life; and it is in view of this fact as well as for the loss of intellectual instruction that a teacher is very properly regarded as a failure, if he is not a good disciplinarian as well as a good scholar.

But, however valuable the systematic arrangements in the external life of a school may be for developing orderly habits. in the internal life of the pupils, it wants the peculiar element that is required for educating the will. Its regulations are imposed by an external authority, and they are obeyed mainly from the conviction that they will be enforced. To a large extent, therefore, positive work is done under the impulse of an external constraint, while the child refrains from natural ebullitions of feeling under the impulse of external restraint. This is illustrated by the disorder which inevitably breaks out in a class whenever it is discovered that the teacher is without the requisite tact for maintaining discipline, and by the explosion of riot which commonly accompanies the dismissal of a school. What is wanted, therefore, is a discipline which the individual imposes upon himself-a discipline in which he forces himself at times to do what is painful or to abstain from what is pleasant, not because the painful act is obligatory in itself, or because the pleasure is in itself wrong, but simply for the purpose of cultivating strength of will.

But not only are our educational methods defective in fail

ing to provide any such discipline for the education of the will, the whole temper of our age seems to be represented in this defect. In the great industrial communities, especially of Protestant Christendom, rational άounσ15 has disappeared almost as completely as asceticism. The elaborate system of fasts and penances in the Catholic Church was, in its essential spirit, an admirable discipline for the will. It cannot be denied that the system became corrupted with gross abuses; but without questioning the general gain to the moral life of the world by the protest of the Reformers against those abuses, it may be feared that Protestantism has thrown away a valuable instrument of moral training by abolishing those old penances and fasts without providing any adequate substitute. The corruptions of the medieval system arose mainly from its publicity, which gave an undue value to the overt action without reference to its spiritual intent. Such publicity ran strangely in the face of explicit warnings which had been uttered by the Great Teacher himself. In the light of those warnings it is obvious that the value of all such disciplines for the training of the will must depend on their internal character. They must avoid unnecessary publicity; they must be conducted so as not to be seen of men. But any human being, who quietly and unostentatiously resolves to deny himself an allowable pleasure, or subject himself to a hardship that is not absolutely obligatory, in order that he may school his will into habits of self-control, is drawing upon the universal fountain of spiritual power, and assuredly he shall have his reward.

MCGILL UNIVERSITY,

J. CLARK MURRAY.

MONTREAL, CANADA.