The power of strong volition becomes caprice, he does not
learn the habit of obedience, and thus valuable directive power is
lost to the world.
"The lowest classes of society," says Dr. Harris, "are the lowest,
not because there is any organized conspiracy to keep them down, but
because they are lacking in directive power." The jails, the prisons,
the reformatories, are filled with men who are there because they were
weak, more than because they were evil. If the right discipline in
home and school had been given them, they would never have become the
charge of the nation. Thus we waste force constantly, force of mind
and of spirit sufficient to move mountains, because we do not insist
that every child shall exercise his "inherited right," which is, "that
he be taught to obey."
It is a grave subject, this of will-training, the gravest perhaps that
we can consider, and its deepest waters lie far below the sounding of
my plummet. Some of the principles, however, on which it rests are as
firmly fixed as the bed of the ocean, which remains changeless though
the waves continually shift above:--
1.
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