486 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
accident than by design does not help the fact that the school has thereby lost much of the character-forming power that originally gave it a claim on society. It has become less an instrument of social control than an aid to individual success. Not that intel- lectual education is without a moral value.
By giving men a clearer view of their true interests it contributes largely to the proper regulation of life ; by opening a wide range of new and healthy interests it diverts them from much vice ; by increasing their capacity for fighting the battle of life it takes away many temptations, though it undoubt- edly creates and strenghtens some ; and it seldom fails to implant in the character serious elements of discipline and self-control.'
But this is not enough. Something more massive is needed as a breakwater against vice and crime and that moral decay which is worse than either. In India, Japan, France, Italy, Switzerland, the United States, Canada, and Australia there are complaints that the school is not doing all it might do. In view of the decay of faith and the inexorable eviction of religious teaching from the school the cry goes up for a secular civic and moral education that shall effectively minister to peace and order.
Just what shape this new education will take no one can say. Some things, however, are certain. It will not be merely one more branch of study like ethics or civics. It will not be an intellectual system with bad metaphysics instead of theology as its corner-stone. It will not consist in the droning of moral abstractions. It will begin early. It will give great scope to the personal influence of the teacher. It will be realistic, and its starting-point will be the facts of personal and social life. It will form moral prepossessions rather than intellectual preju- dices. It will strive "to store up moral power in good habits." It will seek not so much to fix certain principles by authority as to directly suggest actions and feelings and modes of viewing conduct.
In this attempt there will be, at first, much to call forth laughter — or tears. Only few teachers have the gift of personal influence ; the rest must learn with awkwardness and stumbling. In time character-forming will be understood and taught to the teaching
■ Lecky, Democracy and Liberty, Vol. II, p. 63.
