whom what at least appear to be sterling virtues in one sphere sadly lack their counterparts in another, if, indeed, they do not give place to positive vices. unify the life as well as enrich it.

It must

This does not mean that we can expect even the best among us to be equally strong in all the virtues. On the contrary, men will differ endlessly here, according to their native aptitudes and according to their vocation and opportunities. The important matter is that each man, in whatever spheres he may have to play his part, should carry into these the same principle and standard. Yet this is precisely the result that is not likely, so long as the great moralizing social influences which we have been discussing work in, at any rate, partial independence of 'each other, and not under the unifying influence of one all-dominating moral plan and purpose. Hence the Education of Actual Institutions Needs Supplementing, in the Interests of Unity of Character.

This being so, we come in sight of two conclusions. One, that the moral training which any actual society is likely to give, stands manifestly in need of supplementing; the other, that, whatever form this supplementing takes, its aim must be to bring into human character more of that unity, consistency, harmony, proportion, upon which the Greek philosophers were never weary of insisting as the essence of virtue.

The further question that emerges is therefore fairly clear. We must ask how the actual influences even of a well-developed society are to be supplemented in this direction. And to this question there are more answers than one.

It Has Been Held That This Can Only Be Done by a Re-organization of Society.

It was the conviction alike of Plato and Aristotle that the betterment of the character of individuals is, to any great extent, impossible without the re-organization of society, the instrument of education, in the interests of the moral life. They did not of course deny that even in a bad society a good life could be led. There are

pages in both in which they join hands with the Stoics hemselves in delineating the victory of virtue over cir

cumstance. Yet the doctrine is central to both that character will never come to its best until the day that sees society re-organized as at once a school and sphere of virtue.

The Teaching of Plato.

There is a characteristic, well-known passage, in which Plato falls to discussing what a man has open to him when his lot has fallen amidst adverse and evil social surroundings, and when it seems a hopeless struggle to make the society of which he is a member better. Even then a strong man is not without resource. He can withdraw from the press of life, possess his own soul in patience like one who shelters from the wintry blasts, until the day comes for him to depart with a calm mind to the islands of the blessed. But then Plato adds, "He will not have reached the best, nor ever can he, unless he have found the fitting social life." Hence the burden of Plato's whole message that the hope for morality lies in the reform of institutions. Commentators have sometimes accused him of sacrificing the individual to the state. Strange criticism! For is not his ideal state expressly devised to evoke in utmost fulness all that he believes to be best and most permanent in human nature? There is nothing more characteristic in Plato, and indeed in what is most valuable in Greek ethics, than this.

The Platonic View is not Wholly Impracticable, Tho Reform of the Economic and Political Systems, in a Moral Interest, is Peculiarly Difficult.

We need not reject it as a devout imagination. Many are the generations in which social reformers have been proving experimentally that society is modifiable. And the evolutionists have come, in these latter days, to tell us from a wide survey of things that, by the very laws. of life, society must needs undergo ceaseless transformations. And tho evolution has more to say about the whence than about the whither of this process, and may even trample ruthlessly upon the individual and his hopes, it may help us to believe that there is nothing visionary in the reformer who bids us work, at any rate, for better homes, schools, churches, than those we know. It is

when we stand face to face with the forces that, in a moral interest are more intractable, in other words with the economic and political systems, that the difficulty comes. For, however far we may be from the obsolete conservatism that would ascribe to these the fixity of nature's ordinances, experience, even tho now and again illumined by the fires of revolution, carries the lesson that their modification is a slow process at best, and slowest of all when it is our aim to transform institutions into better instruments for the making of the character of their members. They are so firmly wedded to their own ends, so intent upon wealth production or wealth-distribution, or upon the reform or defence of the constitution, or upon the administration or expansion of the empire. Not that there is any reason to despair.

What Can Be Done Apart from Social Re-organization?

On the contrary, it may be that with the growth of the genuinely democratic spirit, the belief in the worth and the possibilities of the individual man, that central article of a democratic creed, may steadily translate itself ever more into practice. And if so, it is as certain as any social forecast can be that men will be less willing than heretofore to be dealt with as nothing more than means, whether for the creation of wealth or for the realization of political programs. They will clain to be, as indeed they are, "ends in themselves." And in proportion as they do this, character as the ultimate end of all industrial and all political activities will begin to get something more nearly its due, even in the scramble for wealth and the struggle for power. Yet any reconstruction of institutions is slow, arduous, and liable to be in a thousand ways impeded by imperious economic and political exigencies, by the growing pressure of population, by the niggardliness of soils, by the race for markets, by the rivalries of parties, by the passion for national aggrandizement, even it may be by the struggle for national existence. And, this being so, it is natural to ask if anything can be done in the meanwhile. The answer is that something, perhaps much, may be done by using such instruments as are already available, family, school, church, and the rest, in the service of moral ideals.

Meaning of Character Training.

Character means, when applied to a human being, the peculiar group of mental and moral qualities by which he is distinguished as an individal from others. In this sense it is equivalent to individuality. Its natural basis is also marked off as idiosyncrasy. In a restricted and ethical sense character means a good or virtuous condition of the mind, and especially the emotional dispositions and the will.

Moral character is the highest result of moral development, being the outcome of a persistent series of efforts in doing right. It corresponds with what Kant calls a good will. Character has its chief support in moral habit, which implies a fixity of purpose in certain definite directions, as the pursuit of truth and of justice. But it includes more than a sum of habits, viz., a conscious self-subjection to duty, and a readiness to take pains to reach the truest and highest conception of duty.

This moral character, tho conceived abstractedly as a common attainment for all, is in every case vitally connected with, and in a sense an outgrowth from individual character. In truth, if the highest duty is to make the moral best of ourselves, it is evident that individuality has its rightful claims within the limits of moral growth.

The educator, as a former of character, has no doubt to insist on a certain uniformity of moral action and of motive. Nevertheless, his ultimate aim should be to harmonize the claims of the moral law and of individuality, by helping the child to develop to the utmost its own distinctive good qualities.

Every pedagogical method must be looked at from two points of view: first, its capacity to secure the development of rationality or of the true adjustment of the individual to the social whole, and, secondly, its capacity to strengthen the individuality of the pupil and avoid the danger of obliterating the personality of the child by securing blind obedience in place of intelligent co-operation, and by mechanical memorizing in place of rational insight.-WILLIAM T. HARRIS.

Conditions of Good School Management.

The principles that guide the internal arrangement of a school are common in essence to all schools alike, whatever may be the social class or range of ages of the scholars. For they assume the common attributes of immaturity and dependence in the taught, and of maturity of knowledge and judgment, together with practical and moral authority, in the teacher. School management then, in this sense, may be looked at in its most general aspect. An efficient secondary school and an efficient elementary school are alike produced and maintained by the faithful application of similar means, appliances, and laws of good management.

To a certain extent it is true that schools are differentiated in their characteristics, their methods of discipline, their treatment of individuals, by the more or less favorable social condition of the scholars, or by their greater or less youthfulness. For instance, an appeal to the sense of honor or of esprit de corps may be made with success in one kind of school but not in another; and, the greater the average age of the scholars, the less need is there to rule them, individually or collectively, as creatures of mere instinct rather than of reason; and the greater consequently is the range of action over which, under the influence of the teacher, principle rather than precept can exercise its restraining and governing power. But these differences are of degree, not of kind.

For successful school management well planned school buildings are the first essential. However perfect the teacher, the ideal of a good school is unattainable in defective buildings. A place for everything and everything in its place" reduces friction of all kinds -the opportunity of offending, the number of punishable offences, the necessity for vigilance and for fresh legislation to a minimum. The few regulations that exist are borne in upon the scholar's mind as requisite for the preservation of his property, the peace both of his lesson time and recreation time, and his freedom from anxiety and irritation at every moment of the school day; and a greater percentage of the scholars