gs, thinking only on the highest
spirit,
Hoping and desiring nothing, so fight, free from all pain." Bh. G.
III 30.
"Whose acts without any bias and dedicates all his activity to God
Will not be stained with evil [is therefore free from conflicts]
as the lotus leaf is not stained by the water." V 10.

The idea of the education of the will has, of course, been familiar for a
long time to ethical writers, even if it has at times been lost sight of.

Aristotle is convinced that morality arises from custom and convention.
"As we learn swimming only in water, and music by practice on an
instrument, so we become righteous by righteous action and moderate and
courageous by appropriate acts. From uniform actions enduring habits are
formed, and without a rational activity no one becomes good ... being good
is an act. Good is never by nature; we become good by a behavior
corresponding to a norm. We possess morality not by nature but against
nature. We have the disposition to attain it ... we must completely win it
by habit. As Plato says, in agreement with this, the proper education
consists in being so led from youth upward, as to be glad and sorry about
the things over which we should be glad and sorry. But if by a course of
action in accordance with custom, a definite direction of the will has
been secured, then pleasure and pain are added to the actions that result
from the will and, as it were, as signs, that here a new nature is
established in man." (Jodl. Gesch. d. Eth., I, pp. 44 ff.) "The energy and
the proud confidence in human power with which Aristotle offers to man his
will and character formation as his own work, the emphasis with which he
has opposed to the quietistic 'velle non discitur' (we cannot educate
volition nor learn to will, as later pessimistic opinions have expressed
it axiomatically) with the real indispensability and at the same time the
possibility of the formation of the will; this contention is admirable and
quite characteristic of the methods of thought of ancient philosophy at
its height." (Jodl., l. c., p. 49.) [Velle non discitur has been
popularized by Schopenhauer.]

In Philo and the related philosophers there appears quite clearly the
thought that gained such wide acceptance later among the Christian
ascetics, that the highest development of moral strength was attainable
only through a long continued and gradually increasing exe