Principles of mental physiology : with their applications to the training and discipline of the mind and the study of its morbid conditions / by William B. Carpenter.

  • William Benjamin Carpenter
Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Principles of mental physiology : with their applications to the training and discipline of the mind and the study of its morbid conditions / by William B. Carpenter. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    or by fear of punishment. These young reprobates have not the least idea of self-control, or of doing anything else than that which their inclinations prompt; their notions of right are all based upon limited self-interest; and they hold everything to be wrong which interferes with what they conceive to be their own rights. Now the first lesson that has to be taught them is that of obedience to discipline, for which punishment has often to be used as a motive. But in proportion as the habit of s<^/-control is acquired, appeals to the better nature come to have a force superior to that of mere coercion: and the greatest success is attained when that controlling power is spontaneously exerted under the direction of the ought or ought not. So, in the cultivation of the dormant Moral Sense, the first teaching goes to show that what the pupil considers his [or her] rights are some one else's wrongs; and the Golden Rule is enforced by the practical applications which are found most suitable to impress it on each individual nature. Thus a foundation is laid for the development of that higher Moral sense, on which the principle of Keligious obligation is most securely based (§§ 209-215). But the result of the most successful effort in this direction is only considered to have been attained, when the subject of it has been awakened to a full consciousness of possessing a power within himself to resist temptation and to act as duty directs ; which power it rests with himself to exert, and for the non-exercise of which he is responsible.* * My information on this subject is mainly derived from my sister, Mary Carpenter ; than whom no one can speak with a greater weight of authority.