n by asking your attention to
the moral trinity of the school. The demand is for social intelligence,
social power, and social interests. Our resources are (1) the life of
the school as a social institution in itself; (2) methods of learning
and of doing work; and (3) the school studies or curriculum. In so far
as the school represents, in its own spirit, a genuine community life;
in so far as what are called school discipline, government, order, etc.,
are the expressions of this inherent social spirit; in so far as the
methods used are those that appeal to the active and constructive
powers, permitting the child to give out and thus to serve; in so far as
the curriculum is so selected and organized as to provide the material
for affording the child a consciousness of the world in which he has to
play a part, and the demands he has to meet; so far as these ends are
met, the school is organized on an ethical basis. So far as general
principles are concerned, all the basic ethical requirements are met.
The rest remains between the individual teacher and the individual
child.

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT OF MORAL EDUCATION

V

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT OF MORAL EDUCATION

So far we have been considering the make-up of purposes and results that
constitute conduct--its "what." But conduct has a certain method and
spirit also--its "how." Conduct may be looked upon as expressing the
attitudes and dispositions of an _individual_, as well as realizing
social results and maintaining the social fabric. A consideration of
conduct as a mode of individual performance, personal doing, takes us
from the social to the psychological side of morals. In the first place,
all conduct springs ultimately and radically out of native instincts and
impulses. We must know what these instincts and impulses are, and what
they are at each particular stage of the child's development, in order
to know what to appeal to and what to build upon. Neglect of this
principle may give a mechanical imitation of moral conduct, but the
imitation will be ethically dead, because it is external and has its
centre without, not within, the individual. We must study the child, in
other words, to get our indications, our symptoms, our suggestions. The
more or less spontaneous acts of the child are not to be thought of as
setting moral forms to which the efforts of the educator must
conform--this would result simply in spoiling the child; but they are
symp