The education of the will : the theory and practice of self-culture / by Jules Payot ; authorized translation by Smith Ely Jelliffe from the 30th French ed.

  • Payot, Jules, 1859-1940.
Date:
1909
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: The education of the will : the theory and practice of self-culture / by Jules Payot ; authorized translation by Smith Ely Jelliffe from the 30th French ed. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of bringing up children. Nature would take care of them herself by her immutable laws. These theoretical views are sufficient to in- validate the doctrine of the innateness of character. One should read, to complete the conviction, the recent works on character,1 and particularly the last part of the work by M. Paulhan. It will be seen that there exists for the most part plurality of types in the same individual; that evolution makes tendencies disappear, or produces new ones as time goes on, that the substitutions of character in the same individual are frequent. What does this prove, except that nothing is so rare as character! The vast majority of children present the spectacle of an anarchy of tendencies. Has not education rightly as its aim the task of organizing the disorder and producing sta- bility and uniformity? Often indeed, when one thinks the work completed, arrives the crisis of puberty, which, like a wind-storm, overthrows everything; anarchy recom- mences, and if the young man, henceforth i Ribot, Revue philos., November, 1892; Paulhan, “Les Caracteres,’’ 1 vol. 237 pages, 1894, F. Alcan; Perez, “Le caract&re de 1’enfant a l’homme, ” 1892, F. Alcan.