What Is and What Might Be: A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in ParticularHolmes, Edmond
Philosophy
What Is and What Might Be: A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular
Holmes, Edmond
Education
into the vortex of its egoism the whole character of the child as he
ripens into the man. But growth, as such, is anti-egoistic just
because it is growth, because it is a movement towards a larger,
fuller, and freer life: and it is restricted, even more than
one-sided growth,--it is the apathy, the helplessness, the deadness
of soul that overtakes, first the child and then the man, when his
expansive instincts are systematically starved and thwarted,--which
is the chief cause of his incarceration in his petty self.
If three-fourths of the moral evil in the world are due to
malignant egoism, the source of the remaining fourth is, in a word,
_sensuality_. By sensuality I mean the undue or perverted development
of the desires and passions of the animal self,--the desire for
food and drink, the sexual desires, the desire for physical or
semi-physical excitement, the animal passion of anger, and the rest.
As an enemy of the soul, sensuality is less dangerous, because more
open and less insidious, than egoism. The egoist, who mistakes his
ordinary for his real self, may well lead a life of systematic
selfishness without in the least realising that he is living amiss.
But the animal self is never mistaken for the real self; and the
sensualist always has an uneasy feeling in the back of his mind that,
in indulging his animal desires and passions to excess, he is doing
wrong. This feeling may, indeed, die out when he "grows hard" in his
"viciousness"; but in the earlier stages of the sensual life it is
sure to "give pause"; and there are, I think, few persons who do not
feel that the sensual desires and passions are so remote from the
headquarters of human life, that in yielding to them beyond due
measure they are acting unworthily of their higher selves. At any
rate we may regard the temptations to sensual indulgence that lie in
our path as evil influences which are assailing us from without
rather than from within; and we may therefore liken them to the
blight, rust, mites, mildew, and other pests that assail hops,
fruit, wheat, and other growing plants.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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