French moral teaching is too artificial. It has no point of contact with the actual life of the child. Now, if the teacher knows his children, he can make the moral lesson really touch their lives. The pupils should be made to realise that the moral lesson is concerned not with abstract distinctions, but with the actual task of "fighting the good fight," in which they are all engaged.
Moral education should seek to secure that the child not only knows what is right and what is wrong, but that he learns to love what is good and hate what is evil. In the struggle of the moral life we should not merely know what we fight for, but should love what we know.[1] Though we may agree that "evil is wrought by want of thought as well as by want of heart," yet it is also true that a man will never do his best in the moral struggle unless his heart is in the fight.
In order that moral principles may not remain simply facts known, but may become dynamic forces in conduct, moral education must, in addition to proceeding by way of instruction, make use of every means of actual moral training.
We have seen, in former chapters, how the instincts and impulses and desires of the child may be controlled and directed, how his emotions and sentiments may be developed and organised, how his will may be trained and his conscience enlightened. These aspects of moral education have already been
- ↑ Cf. Cromwell in his letter to Sir William Spring: "I had rather have a plain russet-coated Captain that knows what he fights for and loves what he knows, than that which you call a 'gentleman' and is nothing else. I honour a gentleman that is so indeed" (Carlyle: Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, i. 147).
