other. Thus its conduct becomes consistent, instead of being at the mercy of everything it happens to see and every thought or mental image that occurs to it. The possibility of rational conduct depends on the control of impulse. The child has been burnt when it has gone too near the fire, in obedience to its impulse to satisfy its curiosity. Later on, the same impulse to investigate the gleaming, glowing thing will recur. The child may be swayed by this impulse again, but it will also be moved by the impulse to avoid the thing that has previously given it pain. It may repress the former impulse simply because its dread of being burnt is stronger than its curiosity. In this case one impulse has overcome the other. But the child cannot be said to control its impulses until it knows what the fire is, and why it should not approach too close to it. If it knows this, it is able to reflect, in a rudimentary way, and to dismiss the impulse to explore the fire, not because it has been over-mastered by a stronger impulse, but because it has been controlled by reason.
Thus one of the conditions of controlling impulse is knowledge. The animals are at the mercy of their impulses because they have no knowledge. But man can "look before and after"; he can deliberate on his impulses and reflect whether the actions to which they impel will be valuable to his life as a whole. Thus even the every-day knowledge that the child is acquiring in school and elsewhere is fitting him more and more to reflect on his impulses and thus to restrain those that tend to unworthy ends.
