o face the disagreeable and endure
the painful.

The starting-point of education is thus silently changing. Perhaps the
extent of the change is best shown by the old Catholic ascetic training.
Its supreme object was to discipline and strengthen the will: to
accustom men habitually to repudiate the pleasurable and accept the
painful; to mortify the most natural tastes and affections; to narrow
and weaken the empire of the desires; to make men wholly independent of
outward circumstances; to preach self-renunciation as itself an end.

Men will always differ about the merits of this system. In my own
opinion it is difficult to believe that in the period of Catholic
ascendency the moral standard was, on the whole and in its broad lines,
higher than our own. The repression of the sensual instincts was the
central fact in ascetic morals; but, even tested by this test, it is at
least very doubtful whether it did not fail. The withdrawal from secular
society of the best men did much to restrict the influences for good,
and the habit of aiming at an unnatural ideal was not favourable to
common, everyday, domestic virtue. The history of sacerdotal and
monastic celibacy abundantly shows how much vice that might easily have
been avoided grew out of the adoption of an unnatural standard, and how
often it led in those who had attained it to grave distortions of
character. Affections and impulses which were denied their healthy and
natural vent either became wholly atrophied or took other and morbid
forms, and the hard, cruel, self-righteous fanatic, equally ready to
endure or to inflict suffering, was a not unnatural result. But
whatever may have been its failures and its exaggerations, Catholic
asceticism was at least a great school for disciplining and
strengthening the will, and the strength and discipline of the will form
one of the first elements of virtue and of happiness.

In the grave and noble type of character which prevailed in English and
American life during the seventeenth century, the strength of will was
conspicuously apparent. Life was harder, simpler, more serious, and less
desultory than at present, and strong convictions shaped and fortified
the character. 'It was an age,' says a great American writer, 'when what
we call talent had far less consideration than now, but the massive
materials which produce stability and dignity of character a great deal
more. The people possessed by hereditary right the quality of r