The study of all that relates to the development of the intellectual faculties, the cure of aberrations of instinct and moral defects caused by the turbulence of the passions are problems so closely connected with phenomena of the physical order, that the physiologist and the physician should devote their attention to them as to a biological fact, as to the cure of a disease.
Unhappily, even considered from this point, the problem of education presents most serious difficulties. Some passions are incurable; others the body cannot resist, but wastes rapidly away under them, as under the fatal sway of a galloping consumption. The will does not suffice, for itself is only the result of the vitality of the organism, and of the greater or lesser resistance of which the nervous system feels itself capable.
The succession of causes and effects often forms an indissoluble circle which man cannot break with the simple force of his will. Weakness produces fear, and fear produces weakness. Here is a fatal revolution in the functions of the organism. Of what use are the arbitrary and imaginary distinctions philosophers have made in the functions of the mind, when they cannot be separated from those of the body? There are in life fatal cliffs, currents which we cannot stem, and which carry us to inevitable destruction.
Weakness increases excitability, excitability foments lasciviousness, and lasciviousness in its turn begets weakness. Here the functions of the organism are like a gaping whirlpool, like an avalanche moving onwards and dragging us to the fatal precipice, does a foot but slip on the path of life.
We now see that in our body some mechanism is lacking which would act as a curb to save us when we fall. It is one of the greatest imperfections of our nature that at every false step we may be thrown down and crushed, as though in the wheels of a machine. We may compare ourselves to those poor wretches who intoxicate themselves with opium or alcohol, and who, at last, cannot stop themselves on their downward path of intemperance, because if they cease drinking, opium-smoking, or opium-eating, there is an immediate aggravation of the morbid phenomena and tremor with which they are afflicted.
The primary cause of their disease now assuages the disease itself; it is a remedy which soothes them and slowly kills them.
Physiology is still too imperfect to make intelligible to us the intricate network of causes which impel man to act in one way rather than in another. Our eye cannot discern many important factors in human actions which, perhaps, will become evident to future generations. Chronicles, annals, biographies offer insufficient data and details too imperfectly known. I do not know when it will be possible to others to penetrate, as Taine did, far into the history of nations, to discover the biological laws governing the rise and fall of the greatness of a people. I only know that I am saddened and perplexed at the unhappy thought that, as the brain of the human race grows more perfect, the more sensitive and excitable will it become, the more will emotional desires wax within it.
V
Courage springs from three sources: nature, education, and conviction. Each of these may so preponderate as to compensate for the deficiency of the others. It is useless to say to a man, 'You must be courageous,’ in order to make him so. Every day we see that the example of parents, education, admonitions, do not suffice to implant virtue in the children. There is a vital element in education which must be prepared long before, like the soil and the seed before the harvest; parents must bequeath to their children the inheritance of a constitution, robust and full of courage.