desire. But he is very apt to be enticed by the more immediate satisfaction which the trip to America offers.
§ 4. The Education of Desire. In order that the moral life may be harmonious, desires must be educated and trained.
(1) Desires should be selected. It is a great mistake to think that all desires should be restrained. Sometimes we are told that morality consists in suppressing our desires and being content to see the world that it is good. The Stoics tell us that we should acquiesce, with passive contentment, in any lot which fortune has seen fit to assign to us. Desires, they say, are mischievous, and they should be destroyed. But this is quite wrong. Every child has a myriad desires. They cannot all be satisfied, and it is not well that they should be. But these desires should not be suppressed wholesale. To suppress all desires is to close the safety-valve of character. Sooner or later, if healthy desires are repressed, a moral eruption will result.
Again, we sometimes speak of controlling desires as if, like Plato, we pictured them as unruly horses which need to be reined in. Impulses may have to be controlled in this way; but desires are not so isolated as impulses, and we control desires most effectively not by holding in those which are evil, but by strengthening those that are socially valuable and giving rein to them.
If the child's desires are good, then they should by all means be confirmed and encouraged. There is a natural selection among desires, but if the desires are left to themselves, the fittest will not
