Manual training has recently been suggested as one of the means of
combating the criminal tendency in the young, and this suggestion is
being received with increasing favor. But until now the theory of manual
training has hardly begun to be worked out. The confidence which is
expressed in it is based, for the most part, on unclassified experience.
But experience without theory is altogether insufficient. Theory, it is
true, without experience is without feet to stand. But experience
without the guiding and directing help of theory is without eyes to see.
I shall now offer, in a somewhat tentative way, a few remarks intended
to be a contribution to the philosophy of manual training as applied to
the reformation of delinquent children. I shall confine myself, however,
to one type of criminality in children--a not uncommon type--that of
moral deterioration arising from weakness of the will.
In the first place, let us distinguish between feeling, desiring, and
willing. A person who is without food feels hunger. A person who, being
hungry, calls up in his mind images of food, will experience a desire. A
person who adopts means to obtain food performs an act of the will. A
Russian prisoner in Siberia who suffers from the restraints of
confinement is in a state of feeling. The same person, when he recalls
images of home and friends, is in a state of desire; but when he sets
about adopting the means to effect his escape, concerts signals with his
fellow-prisoners, undermines the walls of his dungeon, etc., he is
performing acts of the will. Permit me to call particular attention to
the fact that the will is characterized at its birth by the intellectual
factor which enters into it; for the calculation of means to ends is an
intellectual process, and every conscious act of volition involves such
a process. If the will is thus characterized at its birth, we can at
once anticipate the conclusion that any will will be strong in
proportion as the intellectual factor in it predominates. It was said by
one of the speakers that "an ounce of affection is better than a ton of
intellect." Give me a proper mixture of the two. Give me at least an
ounce of intellect together with an ounce of affection. There is great
danger lest we exaggerate the importance of the emotions for morality.
The opinion is widely entertained that good feeling, kind feeling,
loving feeling, is the whole of morality, or, at least, the essential
factor in it. But this opinion is surely erroneous. The will may be
compared to the power which propels a ship through the waves. Feeling is
the rudder. The intellect is the helmsman.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account