sciousness; but inhibition was inexorable as a resistless material
force.

It is in the education of the will by means of free exercises wherein
the impulses balance the inhibitions that the cure of such subjects
might be found, provided such a cure could be undertaken at the age
when the will is in process of formation.

* * * * *

Such an equilibrium established as a mechanism at the margin of
consciousness, which makes a man of the world "correct" in his
conduct, is by no means that which constitutes the "person of will."
It has been said above that the consciousness remains free for other
voluntary requirements. The most refined and aristocratic lady might
nevertheless be a person "without will" and "without character,"
although she might have acquired the most rigorous mechanisms
productive of a mechanical will directed solely to external objects.

There is a voluntary fundamental quality upon which not only are the
superficial relations between man and man based, but on which the very
edifice of society is erected. This quality is known as "continuity."
The social structure is founded upon the fact that men can work
steadily and produce within certain average limits on which the
economic equilibrium of a people is constructed. The social relations
which are the basis of the reproduction of the species are founded
upon the continuous union of parents in marriage. The family and
productive work: these are the two pivots of society; they rest upon
the greatest volitive quality: constancy, or persistence.

This quality is really the exponent of the uninterrupted concord of
the inner personality. Without it, a life would be a series of
episodes, a chaos; it would be like a body disintegrated into its
cells, rather than an organism which persists throughout the mutations
of its own material. This fundamental quality, when it embraces the
sentiment of the individual and the direction of his ideation, that is
to say, his whole personality, is what we have called _character_. The
man of character is the persistent man, the man who is faithful to his
own word, his own convictions, his own affections.

Now the sum of these various manifestations of constancy has an
exponent of immense social value: persistence in work.

The degenerate, even before he gave way to criminal impulse, before he
betrayed the inconstancy of his affections, before he broke his word,
before he made havoc of all the convictions