INTRODUCTION 1. The plasticity, or educability, of the pupil is the fundamental postulate of pedagogics. The concept plasticity, or capacity for being moulded, extends far beyond the confines of pedagogics. It takes in even the primary components of matter. It has been traced as far as the elementary substances entering into the chemical changes of organic bodies. Signs of plasticity of will are found in the souls of the higher animals. Only man, however, exhibits plasticity of will in the direction of moral conduct. Had not the youthful mind the capacity to receive culture, education would be impossible. This educability of the young has rarely if ever been questioned in actual practice. Much philosophical strife, however, has raged about the various conceptions of =WILL=, and the consequent possibility of teaching virtue, or of training the moral character. The extremes have been _fatalism_, or the determination of conduct by means of forces lying entirely outside the power of the individual; and _absolute caprice of will_, or the determination of conduct entirely by the individual himself without regard to outside influences. The doctrine of fatalism makes moral education mechanical; that of volitional caprice makes it futile. Educational theory must therefore assume a middle ground, in which the self-activity of the individual and the moulding influence of education are both recognized. 2. Pedagogics as a science is based on ethics and psychology. The former points out the goal of education; the latter the way, the means, and the obstacles. This relationship involves the dependence of pedagogics on experience, inasmuch as ethics includes application to experience, while psychology has its starting-point, not in metaphysics alone, but in experience correctly interpreted by metaphysics. But an exclusively empirical knowledge of man will not suffice for pedagogics. It is the less adequate in any age the greater the instability of morals, customs, and opinions; for, as the new gains on the old, generalizations from former observations cease to hold true.