we owe to this silent and
patient laborer. Yet we think that we can deal with our higher and more
complex human nature without giving it any study at all. We hit down
directly on its moral inequalities, without giving a thought to what has
caused the imperfection, when constantly, as in the sheet of metal which
has to be straightened, the moral disorder has to be met, not directly,
but indirectly--not at the point of the disorder itself, but of its
often unsuspected cause. Purity, like health, like happiness, like so
many of the higher aims of our life, has to be attained altruistically.
Seek them too directly, and they elude our grasp. Like the oarsman, we
have often to turn our back upon our destination in order to arrive at
our end.

Do not, therefore, think impatiently that I am putting you off with
vague theories when you want practical suggestions, if I ask you first
to give some patient thought to the causes of the disorder which seems
to mark the side of our human nature on which the very existence of the
race depends, and which cannot, therefore, be evil in itself. To me the
problem presented was almost paralyzing. It seemed as if Nature, in her
anxiety to secure the continuance of the species, had taken no account
whatever of the moral law, but had so overloaded the strength of passion
as not only to secure the defeat of the moral law, but even of her own
ends, by producing the sterility which results from vicious indulgence.
It was not till I met with two wonderful sermons on "The Kingdom of
God," by that great master of "divine philosophy," Dr. James Martineau,
that I first got a clue to the moral difficulty and to that fuller
understanding of our human nature which is so essential to all who have
the training and moulding of the young. And, therefore, I ask you to let
me enter at some length into this teaching, which will not only give us
light for our own guidance, but enable us to grasp the right principles
on which we have to act in the moral training of the coming
generation.[6]

Now, in trying to think out the laws of our own being, we are met at
the very outset by the great crux in the moral world: What is the true
relation of the material to the spiritual,--of the body, with its
instincts and appetites, to the moral personality, with its conscience
and will? On the one hand, seeing the fatal proneness of man to obey his
appetites and run into terrible excesses, ascetics in all ages and of
all cree