roach to
a man who had never learned to play whist: 'What an unhappy old age you
are preparing for yourself!'

I have already mentioned the differences that may be found in different
countries and ages, in the relative importance attached to external
circumstances and to dispositions of mind as means of happiness, and the
tendency in the more progressive nations to seek their happiness mainly
in improved circumstances. Another great line of distinction is between
education that acts specially upon the desires, and that which acts
specially upon the will. The great perfection of modern systems of
education is chiefly of the former kind. Its object is to make knowledge
and virtue attractive, and therefore an object of desire. It does so
partly by presenting them in the most alluring forms, partly by
connecting them as closely as possible with rewards. The great principle
of modern moral education is to multiply innocent and beneficent
interests, tastes, and ambitions. It is to make the path of virtue the
natural, the easy, the pleasing one; to form a social atmosphere
favourable to its development, making duty and interest as far as
possible coincident. Vicious pleasures are combated by the
multiplication of healthy ones, and by a clearer insight into the
consequences of each. An idle or inert character is stimulated by
holding up worthy objects of interest and ambition, and it is the aim
alike of the teacher and the legislator to make the grooves and channels
of life such as tend naturally and easily towards good. But the
education of the will--the power of breasting the current of the desires
and doing for long periods what is distasteful and painful--is much less
cultivated than in some periods of the past.

Many things contribute to this. The rush and hurry of modern existence
and the incalculable multitude and variety of fleeting impressions that
in the great centres of civilisation pass over the mind are very
unfavourable to concentration, and perhaps still more to the direct
cultivation of mental states. Amusements, and the appetite for
amusements, have greatly extended. Life has become more full. The long
leisures, the introspective habits, the _vita contemplativa_ so
conspicuous in the old Catholic discipline, grow very rare. Thoughts and
interests are more thrown on the external; and the comfort, the luxury,
the softness, the humanity of modern life, and especially of modern
education, make men less inclined t