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EDUCATION, NEW AND OLD
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to me that he has left the great ethical law of habit, and the immense value of the pressure of immediate necessity, too much out of the account. We want, indeed, to train the young to make right choices, spontaneously, and with a generous love of duty. But none of us live under the sole influence of high ideals set at some remote distance from us. Day by day we choose to do our tasks because the hour for them has come, and the immediate pressure of the environment is upon us. Shall the physician go to his office when the hour comes? His patients are there in waiting. He is expected daily at the appointed hours,—and not merely eighty-four per cent. of these hours. Shall the clerk be at the store, or the book-keeper at his desk, when the hour for beginning business has arrived? He must be there: not because he will suffer physical torture if absent; nor yet because he will finally discover that much absence for many years has not, on the whole, been for his best interests. He must be there because he is living under a system which makes it for his immediate interest to be there; and, indeed, has been so trained under such a system that he scarcely contemplates the possibility of not being there. Under a system of education which kindly but firmly invites men to choose right, in view of consequences that fit close to their daily and hourly lives, the best character will be trained. It is most like the divine