Conduct Developed Through Actual Performance.—Self-control and the will to do can be trained and crystallized into habit as well as can any other activity. It is a fact that one well grounded in morals by habit will successfully resist subconscious impulsions to wrongdoing even when suggested in the hypnotic state. Conduct is largely a matter of growth through actual performance. For proper guidance of this growth there must, of course, be high ideals around which the feelings are led to cluster and by which they gradually come to be controlled.
Construction of Ideals.—The construction of such ideals through example, through precept, through appeal and through actual practise in self-denial and self-control on the part of the child, should be the foremost duty of the parent or teacher. Above all it should be remembered that imitation of teacher, of parents, of companions, is more of a factor than intellect in the moral action of children. At present educationally we are in a fever for vocational training, for “practical” work, and in general for all things conducive to coaching our pupils in how to make a living, yet commendable as all this may be, is it not of even more fundamental importance to train them how to live?
The Realization of Certain Possibilities of the Germ Rather Than Others Is Subject to Control.—It may be said in a sense that there exists potentially in any germ all the things that can possibly come out of it under any obtainable conditions of environment. The very initiation of a given mode of expression by some environmental factor, however, often mutually excludes many of the others. We get a given average result ordinarily because development normally takes place in a given average environment.
As may be easily shown by experiment, this is manifest even in the instincts of lower animals. In the young the various instincts do not come into expression at the same time, and it not infrequently happens that if one of the earlier instincts becomes operative toward certain objects or situations, later instincts will have a wholly different relation toward these objects or situations than they would otherwise have had. As a result the whole life conduct of the animal is markedly modified. For example, young animals immediately after birth have no instinct of fear. They do, however, have a strong instinct to attach themselves to some moving thing and follow it. The utility of such an instinct, as for instance in the case of young chickens, is obvious. The object of attachment is usually the parent, but man may take the place of a parent and the young animal will fearlessly follow him about. However if the young animal has had no experience with man during its earliest infancy a later instinct, that of fear or wildness, will have come into play and it will flee from him. It is clear, therefore, that by familiarizing the young animal with man before its instinct of fear has come to expression, certain habitual reactions are set up in it which inhibit or limit the application of its instinct of wildness as regards man. In other words, the whole course of its life has been altered by this simple experience. The same principle applies in even greater degree to the young of man.
We have seen in a former chapter that what in the ordinary course of nature was “predestined” to become one individual nevertheless contained the possibility of becoming four or more if the environing conditions were made such as to bring about a separation of the cleavage blastomeres. Or a fish egg that contained the possibility of becoming a normal two-eyed form also contained the possibility of becoming a one-eyed form and could be made to do so by certain unusual modifications of the conditions under which it develops. However we must not be led so far by the plausibility of this comparison that we are misled, for the fact is that we are not creating anything new by these environmental upheavals, but are mainly altering features that already exist. Beyond doubt the nature of the material is of greater import in the specificity of the outcome than are the external forces brought to play on it. The only point I wish to make is that even what seem ordinarily to be predestined ends can be altered by environment, and that the probabilities are that certain features are relatively indifferent at their inception, the environmental factor adding the final touch of specificity. And our common experience in education would indicate that the same is true of mental conditions, including behavior. The actual appearance of a particular trait is not necessarily always a matter of an initial trend, but may be due merely to the fact that its development is possible under certain conditions of environment and that these conditions have prevailed in the given instance. And even where there is a specific bent it may be arrested through the awakening of a contrary impulse, or, on the other hand, its exercise may prevent the engendering of the opposite impulse.
Our Duty to Afford the Opportunity and Provide the Proper Stimuli for the Development of Good Traits.—It is clearly our duty to see that the expression of good traits is made possible. We must throw a sheltering screen of social environment around the young individual which will fend off wrong forms of incitement and chances for harmful expression, and we must provide proper stimuli and afford opportunity for development of proper modes of expression. We must not forget that a normal instinct denied a legitimate outlet will not infrequently find an illegitimate one. Above all we must not forget the vital importance of establishing correct habits nor the possibility of even replacing undesirable ones by good ones. If training can redirect the machine-like behavior of as lowly a creature as the starfish into new courses, why should we be so willing as some of our genetists would seem to be to throw up our hands and admit failure in the case of man before we have even made a rational attempt to correct the evils in question? Even in lowly organisms we have seen that behavior is not only the result of an innate constitution but also of the degree and kind of stimulations to which it has been subjected.
If the individual himself has not the initiative or will to make the attempt to set up proper or corrective habits, or to cultivate the necessary specific inhibitors, then all the more is it our duty to see that he is led by suggestion and drill into the proper routine of activities for their establishment. For if the individual with propensities toward moral obliquity is to be saved to society it must be through the stereotyping effects of good habits.
Moral Responsibility.—Beyond question different men have different degrees of capacity for mental and moral training. All can not be held equally responsible ethically, but the lowermost limit of obligatory response to social and ethical demands necessary to rank one as within the pale of normal conduct is at such a level that any one not an actual defective can in a reasonably wholesome environment surmount it. All normal men are responsible for their conduct.