toms which require to be interpreted: stimuli which need to be
responded to in directed ways; material which, in however transformed a
shape, is the only ultimate constituent of future moral conduct and
character.

Then, secondly, our ethical principles need to be stated in
psychological terms because the child supplies us with the only means or
instruments by which to realize moral ideals. The subject-matter of the
curriculum, however important, however judiciously selected, is empty of
conclusive moral content until it is made over into terms of the
individual's own activities, habits, and desires. We must know what
history, geography, and mathematics mean in psychological terms, that
is, as modes of personal experiencing, before we can get out of them
their moral potentialities.

The psychological side of education sums itself up, of course, in a
consideration of character. It is a commonplace to say that the
development of character is the end of all school work. The difficulty
lies in the execution of the idea. And an underlying difficulty in this
execution is the lack of a clear conception of what character means.
This may seem an extreme statement. If so, the idea may be conveyed by
saying that we generally conceive of character simply in terms of
results; we have no clear conception of it in psychological terms--that
is, as a process, as working or dynamic. We know what character means in
terms of the actions which proceed from it, but we have not a definite
conception of it on its inner side, as a system of working forces.

(1) Force, efficiency in execution, or overt action, is one necessary
constituent of character. In our moral books and lectures we may lay the
stress upon good intentions, etc. But we know practically that the kind
of character we hope to build up through our education is one that not
only has good intentions, but that insists upon carrying them out. Any
other character is wishy-washy; it is goody, not good. The individual
must have the power to stand up and count for something in the actual
conflicts of life. He must have initiative, insistence, persistence,
courage, and industry. He must, in a word, have all that goes under the
name "_force_ of character." Undoubtedly, individuals differ greatly in
their native endowment in this respect. None the less, each has a
certain primary equipment of impulse, of tendency forward, of innate
urgency to do. The problem of education on this side is t