t of school time, as having nothing
to do with character. On such a basis, moral education is inevitably
reduced to some kind of catechetical instruction, or lessons about
morals. Lessons "about morals" signify as matter of course lessons
in what other people think about virtues and duties. It amounts to
something only in the degree in which pupils happen to be already
animated by a sympathetic and dignified regard for the sentiments of
others. Without such a regard, it has no more influence on character
than information about the mountains of Asia; with a servile regard, it
increases dependence upon others, and throws upon those in authority the
responsibility for conduct. As a matter of fact, direct instruction in
morals has been effective only in social groups where it was a part of
the authoritative control of the many by the few. Not the teaching as
such but the reinforcement of it by the whole regime of which it was
an incident made it effective. To attempt to get similar results from
lessons about morals in a democratic society is to rely upon sentimental
magic.

At the other end of the scale stands the Socratic-Platonic teaching
which identifies knowledge and virtue--which holds that no man does evil
knowingly but only because of ignorance of the good. This doctrine is
commonly attacked on the ground that nothing is more common than for a
man to know the good and yet do the bad: not knowledge, but habituation
or practice, and motive are what is required. Aristotle, in fact, at
once attacked the Platonic teaching on the ground that moral virtue is
like an art, such as medicine; the experienced practitioner is better
than a man who has theoretical knowledge but no practical experience of
disease and remedies. The issue turns, however, upon what is meant by
knowledge. Aristotle's objection ignored the gist of Plato's teaching to
the effect that man could not attain a theoretical insight into the
good except as he had passed through years of practical habituation and
strenuous discipline. Knowledge of the good was not a thing to be got
either from books or from others, but was achieved through a prolonged
education. It was the final and culminating grace of a mature experience
of life. Irrespective of Plato's position, it is easy to perceive that
the term knowledge is used to denote things as far apart as intimate
and vital personal realization,--a conviction gained and tested in
experience,--and a second-handed, la