Moreover, the chief aim of education, of the moralization of character,
is to divest actions of their quality of reflectiveness or intention.
Our aim here is so to fashion character that it will unquestioningly and
instinctively place itself on the right side. This is a force that
operates on all individuals more or less, and from the cradle to the
grave. Family influences curb and fashion the egotism of the child until
there is an unconscious and often unreasoning adherence to the family
circle. Social influences continue the work and train the individual
into an instinctive harmony, more or less complete with the structure of
the society to which he belongs. The mere repetition of a particular
action involves the formation of a habit, and habit is meaningless in
the absence of a modified nerve structure which reacts in a special
manner. Persistence in right action, therefore, no matter how
consciously it may be performed in its initial stages, inevitably passes
over into unconscious or instinctive action. And let it be noted, too,
that it is only when this change has been brought about that a person
can be said to be a thoroughly moralized character. It is not the man
who does right after a long internal struggle that is most moral, but
the one with whom doing right is the most imperative of organic
necessities. We praise the man who does right after struggle, but
chiefly because of our admiration at the triumph of right over wrong, or
because his weakness cries for support, or because he has in him the
making of a more perfect character. But to place him as the superior of
one whose right doing is the efflorescence of his whole nature is to
misunderstand the ethical problem. And equally to confine morality to
merely voluntary or intentional action is to truncate the sphere of
morals to an extent that would meet with the approval of very few
writers on ethics. In brief, one may not merely say with Lessing,
"Determinism has nothing to fear from the side of morals," one may add
that it is only on the theory of Determinism that the moralization of
character becomes a rational possibility.
V.
PROFESSOR JAMES ON "THE DILEMMA OF DETERMINISM."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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