In this moral confusion, where man "loses sight of God," as in hell, what strong spirit is stimulated to develop all his precious activities and cultivate his own heart? All are lost, the strong as well as the weak; few indeed are those who possess an individual instinct capable of saving them, who do not succumb to the temptations of prizes, threats of punishment, to the continual suggestions of emulation and of fraudulent rivalry, and who come out with their powers still intact and their hearts pure, sensible of the great facts of humanity. Those who pass through the ordeal untouched by its empty glories and persecutions, and set forth on the path of a productive life which attains to beauty and goodness by internal energy and is susceptible to truth--these are they whom we hail as men of genius, as benefactors of the human race. * * * * * When we come to analyze good and evil positively, we feel that in _reality_ much of the "evil" we theoretically deplore in individuals may be resolved into external causes. The depravity of the masses resolves itself into the combined effects of pauperism and drunkenness; crime into degeneration; the faults of children and scholars arise from the darkness of prejudice. But as these causes are not absolute and immutable, but are related to transitory states which may be altered, the ancient philosophic conception of evil resolves itself partially into so many social questions and actions. To give work and combat the drink habit--this it is which contributes largely to morality by removing so many causes of evil. To undertake the regeneration and education of the degenerate, is to combat crime, and therefore to promote morality. Thus, if in schools the dense darkness of prejudice is the cause of innumerable moral ills, to reform the school by the help of natural principles will be the first step towards its moralization. It is in this direction, then, that we must face the great question, not by analytical examination of the system of prizes and punishments, of the principle of emulation, of the most opportune and practical manner of inculcating moral principles, nor by the creation of new decalogues. That which we have hitherto regarded so lightly as a didactic problem is, on the contrary, a great and veritable social question.