misdemeanours, is to estimate fairly the gravity of the offence, so long as it is spoken of in the abstract, and to fix its place correctly in the scale of demerit; while, at the same time, the individual culprit is allowed the benefit of all the circumstances which can be honestly urged in extenuation. When the master seems to take pleasure in dwelling on these, the punishment he does inflict will appear to be extorted from him, as it really is, by the demands of justice, and will create no feeling in the breast either of the sufferer or the spectator which is not friendly to virtue. Precept thus enforced by example is the most impressive of all moral lessons. "But so regularly did the dread of corporal chastisement increase in proportion to its mildness and rarity, that, during the latter half of my rectorship, it was entirely discontinued; partly, and chiefly, in consequence of the manifest improvement in the morality of the boys; partly, because the feeling of honour had become so nice as to make it too severe an infliction for any school offence that could be committed. The solemnity and the lecture were still continued when occasion offered. Among the various substitutes for corporal punishment, I have made no mention of one which was and is in very common use that of turning a boy down in his class, often by ten or twenty places at a time, in consequence, not of the better saying of those below him, but by the fat of the master. To him this mode of deterring and punishing recommends itself by the tempting facility of applying it. It is generally used in cases of talking or trifling in the class-room, or being late. For the former it is admissible, if preceded by a demand for the next word, or an order to repeat the clause last construed. As to being late, a fault to which boys are so liable, that it must be sharply dealt with, it was checked not by loss of place, but more effectually by stationing the the general censor outside the door, to collect the names of the late as they arrived, and note them for a pona, to be delivered next morning. Forfeiture of place, for such offences, is both unjust and inexpedient." From Professor Pillans' Contributions to the Cause of Education, p. 340. MORAL INSTRUCTION. Initiatory stage-Direct moral teaching and suggestive moral teaching- Moral instruction, as distinguished from the moral training which Discipline affords, means the inculcation of moral duties in a preceptive form. It is a kind of colloquial preaching on the part of the teacher, the more colloquial the better. Initiatory Stage. When the mind is sufficiently matured to apprehend a principle of conduct, to adopt it, and to give it effect by the power of a sustained purpose, preceptive teaching is of unquestionable value. In proportion, however, to the weakness of the power of exerting a continuous and conscious effort of will, in other words, in proportion to the youth of the pupil, precept is, at the time of its inculcation, inefficacious. The moral principle if not the moral sentiment of the very young is most effectually reached through the moral habit, and the moral habit can be formed only by ordering the child to do certain things in a certain way, giving him the help of the example of his teacher and fellows while doing them, and taking means to make sure that they are done. But this, as we have seen, is to discipline. Discipline signifies the enforcing of the doing of the moral law by means of motives, which motives are supported by rewards and punish ments. I have said that by the doing of moral acts alone, in other words, by means of discipline, moral sentiments and principles thoroughly enter into the mind of a child as intelligible and living guides of conduct. The form of words is, however, by no means altogether useless. To throw into a preceptive form the moral acts which the teacher is continually insisting on is of value, as subsidiary to the practice of them. Precept serves as a guide and a standard of measure to the child, the significance of which gradually dawns on him. Especially after reward for right-doing, or punishment for wrong-doing, a gently-urged precept will be dropt into a prepared soil and will take root. There are two kinds of preceptive teaching- the Suggestive and the Direct. The suggestive is the more efficacious, because it is associated with a concrete example. In the doing of right acts, the child is presumed to be supported by the example of his teacher and fellows. By sharing the moral life exhibited daily in the school he gradually becomes a constituent part of it: it is the example of those around him that points both the moral and the way. This is true of the indirect moral instruction of discipline it is equally necessary that the direct moral instruction of the school, in so far as it is conveyed by books or conversation, should be in the earlier years as much as possible the instruction which the example of others gives, that is to say, the instruction of biography, fable, and anecdote. The lessons of fair play and peaceableness, for example, almost defy abstract pre ceptive teaching in the case of the very young, but enter vividly and graphically into the mind through the story of the two boys and the nut, which ends in the arbiter eating the kernel and liberally dispensing half a shell to each of the little disputants. Next to seeing a good example before us is imagining that we see it, and this we do when we read or hear of it. Direct Precept, if less important than the Suggestive, has yet a useful part to play. It is true that all moral precepts are laws of conduct generalized from particular acts and their consequences, and therefore that to demand of a child that he shall strain his intellect to grasp fully a moral generalization is to demand an impossibility. Even such seemingly simple generalizations, as "To steal is wrong," "All must be just in their dealings;" "Generosity is a duty," "Truthfulness must be observed," and so forth, although committed to memory and produced when required, are understood by the child only in so far as they are illustrated by particular acts coming within his personal cognisance. If the teacher says, "Do not take your neighbour's pencil as I saw you do this morning, for that is to steal, and to steal is wrong," he is intelligible. A certain number of acts thus from time to time become known to the child as stealing, from which he infers the wickedness of other acts which have a common characteristic with them, and in this way he extends his moral knowledge with his moral experience, until at last there flashes upon him in its full force and meaning the generalized precept, "Thou shalt not steal." This is the process by which the understanding of moral principles is reached by the growing mind. But, true as this is, the moral generalization is not wholly valueless to the child, although not fully intelligible, at the time of its being imparted. He himself is, by the very instincts of his nature and the necessities of his external condition, groping his way to some such general statement of duty which will bring harmony into the chaos of his moral life by bringing law. To furnish him at the outset of his journey in search of duty with the conclusion to which the wisdom of the past has come, is like giving the young builder a plan of the house we require him to build. It is only a semblance, but it facilitates and expedites the attainment of the reality. The theory of education, which, so far from regarding direct preceptive teaching as a help, considers it to be an overlaying and overburdening of the child's mind, and which would lead him on in his moral perceptions step by step, and, at a certain moment of his development, and not till then, give the generalized truth which, if earlier given, would be in its full scope unintelligible, is, I suspect, shallow, sentimental, and impracticable. Even if a teacher had full control over the first sixteen years of his pupil's life, and were carefully to macadamize and bridge his path in accordance with this theory, he might, perhaps, reach the end which he proposed to himself, but M |