State-Education Self-Defeating

Excerpt from State-Education Self-Defeating: A Chapter From Social Statics, or the Conditions Essential to Human Happiness Specified, and the First of Them Developed Meanwhile it may he remarked, that whatever moral be be effected by education, must be effected by an education which is emotional rather than preceptive. If, in place of making a child understand that this thing is right and the other wrong, you make it feel that they are so, - if you make virtue loved and vice loathed, if you arouse a noble desire, and make torpid an inferior one, - ii you bring into life a previously dormant sentiment, - if you cause a sympathetic impulse to get the better of one that 1s selfish, - if, ia short, you produce a state of mind, to which proper behaviour 18 natural, spontaneous, instinctive, you do some good. But no drilling in catechisms, no teaching of moral codes, can effect this. Only by repeatedly awakening the appropriate emotions can character he changed. Mere ideas received by the intellect, meeting no. Response from within - having no roots there - are quite imperative upon conduct, and are quickly forgotten upon entering into life. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.