Self-control and how to secure it = (L'éducation de soi-même) / by Paul Dubois ; Authorized translation by Harry Hutcheson Boyd.

  • Paul Charles Dubois
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Self-control and how to secure it = (L'éducation de soi-même) / by Paul Dubois ; Authorized translation by Harry Hutcheson Boyd. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    the broadest sense of the word, to the in- fluence of environment, that we must ascribe this gradual decadence we so often encounter. It is not occasioned by a natural growth of brutality, like that which renders adult ani- mals less tame and more rebellious against education—although we cannot escape these secret promptings of the flesh—but is a de- pendent brutality, changeable, due to moral and intellectual contagion acting on cases variously predisposed by heredity and pre- vious training. The fact is, we do not learn how to think. Schools impart to us, ever more zealously, knowledge of which we can only use the smallest part; it burdens our memory, and only tempers our intelligence with a common- place logic, which one would think ought to equip us for the struggle of life. This hot- house culture does not form our judgment; on the contrary, it troubles it by giving us ready-made opinions to digest, without teach- ing us to appreciate their accuracy. If one considers the work of logical reflec- tion in its apparent spontaneity, one might compare it to a game that consists in forming [6]