nviction is perfect.
--Resolution is most necessary to all our active, and habit most
essential to all our passive virtues. Probably nine times out of ten
the instances of imprudent or vicious conduct arise, not from want
of knowledge of good and evil, or from want of conviction that the
one leads to happiness, and the other to misery; but from actual
deficiency in the strength of resolution, deficiency arising from
want of early training in the habit of self control.'

Maria adds: 'The silence which has been observed in Practical
Education on the subject of religion has been misunderstood by some,
and misrepresented by others. ... To those who, with upright and
benevolent intentions, from a sense of public duty, and in a spirit
of Christian charity, made remonstrances on this subject, he thought
it due to give all the explanation in his power;' and he writes:
'The authors continue to preserve the silence upon this subject,
which they before thought prudent; but they disavow, in explicit
terms, the design of laying down a system of education founded upon
morality, exclusive of religion. . . . We most earnestly deprecate
the imputation of disregarding religion in Education. . . . We are
convinced that religious obligation is indispensably necessary in
the education of all descriptions of people in every part of the
world.

'We dread fanaticism and intolerance, whilst we wish to hold
religion in a higher point of view than as a subject of seclusive
possession, or of outward exhibition. To introduce the awful ideas
of God's superintendence upon puerile occasions, we decline. ... I
hope I shall obtain the justice due to me on the subject, and that
it will appear that I consider religion, in the large sense of the
word, to be the only certain bond of society.

'You have turned back our thoughts to this most important subject
(education), upon which, next to a universal reverence for religion,
we believe the happiness of mankind to depend.' Maria adds: 'I have
often been witness of the care with which he explained the nature
and enforced the observance of that great bond of civil society,
which rests upon religion. The solemnity of the manner in which he
administered an oath can never leave my memory; and I have seen the
salutary effect this produced on the minds of those of the lower
Irish, who are supposed to be the least susceptible of such
impressions. But it was not on the terrors of religion he chiefly
dwelt. No ma