from
yielding to a given impulse. Rousseau was quite right in insisting on
practical experience of consequences as the only secure foundation for
self-acting habit; he was fatally wrong in mutilating this experience
by the exclusion from it of the effects of perceiving, resisting,
accepting, ignoring, all will and authority from without. The great,
and in many respects so admirable, school of Rousseauite
philanthropists, have always been feeble on this side, alike in the
treatment of the young by their instructors, and the treatment of
social offenders by a government.

Again, consider the large group of excellent qualities which are
associated with affectionate respect for a more fully informed
authority. In a world where necessity stands for so much, it is no
inconsiderable gain to have learnt the lesson of docility on easy
terms in our earliest days. If in another sense the will of each
individual is all-powerful over his own destinies, it is best that
this idea of firm purpose and a settled energy that will not be
denied, should grow up in the young soul in connection with a riper
wisdom and an ampler experience than its own; for then, when the time
for independent action comes, the force of the association will
continue. Finally, although none can be vicariously wise, none sage by
proxy, nor any pay for the probation of another, yet is it not a
puerile wastefulness to send forth the young all bare to the ordeal,
while the armour of old experience and tempered judgment hangs idle on
the wall? Surely it is thus by accumulation of instruction from
generation to generation, that the area of right conduct in the world
is extended. Such instruction must with youth be conveyed by military
word of command as often as by philosophical persuasion of its worth.
Nor is the atmosphere of command other than bracing, even to those who
are commanded. If education is to be mainly conducted by force of
example, it is a dreadful thing that the child is ever to have before
its eyes as living type and practical exemplar the pale figure of
parents without passions, and without a will as to the conduct of
those who are dependent on them. Even a slight excess of anger,
impatience, and the spirit of command, would be less demoralising to
the impressionable character than the constant sight of a man
artificially impassive. Rousseau is perpetually calling upon men to
try to lay aside their masks; yet the model instructor whom he has
creat