=Plato’s Educational Aim.=—“He desired not to assist in storing the passive mind with the various sorts of knowledge most in request, as if the human soul were a mere repository or banqueting room, but to place it in such relations of circumstance as should gradually excite its vegetating and germinating powers to produce new fruits of thought, new conceptions and imaginations and ideas.” CHAPTER XII SOME UNCONSIDERED ASPECTS OF MORAL TRAINING =Three Foundation Principles.=—Three principles which underlie the educational thought of the Union,[10] and the furtherance of which some of us have deeply at heart, are:—(_a_) The recognition of authority as a fundamental principle, as universal and as inevitable in the moral world as is that of gravitation in the physical; (_b_) the recognition of the physical basis of habits and of the important part which the formation of habits plays in education; (_c_) the recognition of the vital character and inspiring power of ideas. =Authority, the Basis of Moral Teaching.=—First let us consider the principle of authority, which is the basis of moral as it is of religious teaching. ‘Ought’ is part of the verb ‘to owe,’ and that which we owe is a personal debt to a Lawgiver and Ruler, however men name the final authority. If they choose to speak of Buddha or Humanity, they do not escape from the sense of a moral authority. They know that that which they _ought_ is that which they _owe_ to do, a debt to some power or personality external to themselves. God has made us so that, however much we may be in the dark as to the divine Name, we can never for a minute escape from the sense of ‘Ought,’ the law, which becomes flesh-torturing and spirit-quelling in proportion as we are removed from the light of Revelation. To us, who know the name of God and have the revelation of the Scriptures, authority carries no vague terror. We know what is required of us, and that the requirements are never arbitrary, but necessary in the nature of things, both for the moral government of the world and to gratify the unquenchable desire of every human soul to rise into a higher state of being. Perhaps parents, great as they are and should be in the eyes of their children, should always keep well to the front the fact that their authority is derived.