SELF-REGARDING MOTIVES. 413 show genuine anxiety for the interests of our pupils, we shall be listened to with attention; our chief danger is, that we look further ahead than their vision can follow us. To paint a picture of future consequences that shall be neither extravagant nor unintelligible is the standing difficulty. At an early age insurmountable, it diminishes with years, but always puts the utmost strain upon the tact of the teacher; nor are there many good models provided as aids. The intermediate class of motives-neither purely self-regarding, nor purely heroic-are the social likings and affections, including compassion and pity. The cravings for affection undergo considerable changes in the critical periods of mental growth. At first, dependence inclines to the loving mood; then comes the age of vigorous impulses and self-sufficiency, when the lust of power carried to domination and cruelty is rampant, -as in the flower of boyhood. Very little is now gained by appeals to love, affection, and pity; the moment chosen must be very opportune to give a chance of success. Possibly this is the age when the higher altruistic or heroic motives may be used. Yet it is in the employment of these higher appeals that cautious reserve is most wanted. There is in every human breast a certain response to the trumpet call of heroic self-sacrifice; but it should be kept for special occasions, and not wasted. The quantity of it that ever turns to action is very small in the mass of minds; the earth is salted by the heroism of the few. There is a mixed sentiment, containing a spice of the heroic, with a large element of the egotistic, that can be successfully appealed to in counterworking the baser forms of egotism. This is the sentiment of Honour and Personal Dignity, which is cherished by social position, and may be found in all but the most worthless. To stigmatize conduct as low, debasing, degrading, shameful, dishonourable, unworthy, is a very powerful weapon, at all times; and it is the appeal found most telling in the unruly years of youth. The temperance orators have not discovered a stronger buttress to their cause than this. It would be advantageous to every teacher to be able to wield this topic of address with skill and delicacy, care being taken to husband it for great emergencies. 4. Much as Plato has been criticized for his severe judgment on Poets, the fact remains that, taken as moral teachers, they are given to exaggeration. They are artists first, and moralists next; and art, aiming at the agreeable, is adverse to imposing restraints or self-denial. When the sphere of Poetry is extended, as it ought to be, to include Romance, we feel at once the force of the observation. The poet expresses, as no one else can, whatever is grand, sublime, noble, in conduct, and is thus an aid in the stimulus to the heroic. But the safer basis for the teacher is History; Pericles, Timoleon, King Alfred, John Hampden, Grace Darling, can be depicted in the colours of sobriety and truth without detriment to their inspiring example. The heroes of romance and poetry are most frequently impossible combinations. A poet is either very sanguine and holds out delusive hopes, or else cynical, and distorts the legitimate expectations of the human mind. In Romance, the personages are sure to be over-rewarded for any good they do. A poet that would lend his genius to the vocation of moral teaching, would endeavour to be true to life, and yet MUTUALITY IN SERVICES. 415 colour it with a gentle halo of the attractive and agreeable; and such would be the kind of composition that the instructor of youth would desiderate to assist him in his work. We do not quarrel with our laureate for his lines in the Ode to the Duke of Wellington— Not once or twice in our fair island story, The path of duty was the way to glory—, but we know that the glory of the Duke of Wellington demanded many other conditions than duty; and that very few, in any age, come to glory, however well they do their duty. A teacher might make a safe and sober lesson out of the Duke's career, without altogether ignoring his great personal endowments and his advantages of fortune. 5. The vast theme of Mutuality in services, good offices, and affection, is inexhaustible. The purpose of self-devotion or self-sacrifice in one man is not to pander to the self-seeking of other men, but to make them enter into the relationship of mutual giving and receiving, in which human beings find their greatest happiness. One-sided devotion is temporary and provisional; if it does not bring the fruit of reciprocation, it naturally ceases. So great, nevertheless, is the realized blessing of genuine mutuality, that we should go great lengths to attain it. The most salient example of the principle of mutuality is courtesy, or mutual kindness in small things. People can be educated thus far with comparative ease. To go the length of bearing one another's heavier burdens is a much rarer achievement. Yet there is very little substantial virtue without this. The difficulty lies in commencing; we feel so little assured that we are not throwing away our sacrifices. The average man cannot afford to be generous when all around him are selfish. In inculcating, as the teacher must, the duty of working for others, he should not throw overboard the reciprocity of services, as the crowning of the work. This alone keeps his pace steady, under the incitements of highly wrought ideals of self-devotion; it is the reward that is neither illusory, nor infinitely remote. 6. Humanity, in the shape of forbearance in the first place, and of active help under extreme need in the next, is the best worn topic of the lessons to the young. The tales accommodated to this end are numerous and happily told; and the iterations of it during the earliest years cannot be without fruit. Like everything else, it suffers by being ill-timed or overdone; but if a teacher is instrumental in making any moral impression at all, it should be this. True, the effect produced on tender years will be submerged in the un-tender years that follow them, but it will ultimately re-appear. It is well that the youngest should begin to feel revulsion against cruelty, oppression, intolerance; against the horrors of slavery and the brutality of despotism; and not least, against the abuse of power over the lower animals. 7. The virtue of Truth-telling calls for a special remark. The telling of a lie is an act so explicit and distinct, that it can be brought home to the offender beyond all possibility of evasion. There is, however, a defect of treatment when lying is regarded as vice standing on its own independent foundation. In point of fact, there is always a power behind that needs also to be EXAMPLE OF ANIMALS WEAK. 417 grappled with. A lie is told to gain a purpose-to evade a penalty or secure an advantage; and we should trace it back to its groundwork in these primary forms of selfishness, and deal more with them than with their formal instrument. The admonition or the punishment can be made much more appropriate when the instigating motive is before us. A lie to escape a tyrant's rod, is not the same as lying to snatch an unfair advantage; and the mode of treatment should vary with the motive. It is only such as are fairly and kindly dealt with that grow up truth-speaking; in them, lies are without palliation or excuse: with others, telling the truth under all circumstances is moral grandeur, and, when commended as an example, should be set forth as heroic. 8. It may bring these desultory remarks to a point. to advert more particularly to some of the common miscarriages in well-meant moral teaching. There are a good many commonplaces of moral suasion that do not bear a scrutiny; that are either sophistical in principle, or nugatory in operation. A few examples will suffice. A common lesson with children is drawn from the example of animals, especially as an incitement to industry. The bee and the ant are supposed to put to the blush the idle among human beings. As an agreeable exercise of the fancy, such comparisons could be tolerated; but there is no suitability or relevance in likening subjects so widely removed as human beings and insects. There is no record of anyone being made industrious really by the example of the bee; it may be reasonably doubted whether any animal was ever adopted as a model of any virtue, or as a beacon against any vice. Such allusions |