"You, good woman, with the quick step and tidy
bonnet, what do you like?" "A swept hearth, and a clean tea-table; and
my husband opposite me, and a baby at my breast." Good, I know you
also. "You, little girl with the golden hair and the soft eyes, what
do you like?" "My canary, and a run among the wood hyacinths." "You,
little boy with the dirty hands, and the low forehead, what do you
like?" "A shy at the sparrows, and a game at pitch farthing." Good; we
know them all now. What more need we ask?

"Nay," perhaps you answer; "we need rather to ask what these people
and children do, than what they like. If they do right, it is no
matter that they like what is wrong; and if they _do_ wrong, it is no
matter that they like what is right. Doing is the great thing; and it
does not matter that the man likes drinking, so that he does not
drink; nor that the little girl likes to be kind to her canary, if she
will not learn her lessons; nor that the little boy likes throwing
stones at the sparrows, if he goes to the Sunday school." Indeed, for
a short time, and in a provisional sense, this is true. For if,
resolutely, people do what is right, in time they come to like doing
it. But they only are in a right moral state when they _have_ come to
like doing it; and as long as they don't like it, they are still in a
vicious state. The man is not in health of body who is always thinking
of the bottle in the cupboard, though he bravely bears his thirst; but
the man who heartily enjoys water in the morning, and wine in the
evening, each in its proper quantity and time. And the entire object
of true education is to make people not merely _do_ the right things,
but _enjoy_ the right things:--not merely industrious, but to love
industry--not merely learned, but to love knowledge--not merely pure,
but to love purity--not merely just, but to hunger and thirst after
justice.[203]

But you may answer or think, "Is the liking for outside
ornaments,--for pictures, or statues, or furniture, or
architecture,--a moral quality?" Yes, most surely, if a rightly set
liking. Taste for _any_ pictures or statues is not a moral quality,
but taste for good ones is. Only here again we have to define the word
"good." I don't mean by "good," clever--or learned--or difficult in
the doing. Take a picture by Teniers, of sots quarrelling over their
dice; it is an entirely clever picture; so clever that nothing in its
kind has ever been done equal to it; but it is