Josiah Royce

On Certain Psychological Aspects of Moral Training

OUR way in the foregoing course of lectures has been a long one; but we have yet to face, in concluding to-day, one of the most difficult and delicate of our problems,-a problem which has recently been discussed by some of the ablest of our public teachers. I refer to the problem of the moral education of the young. My only hope of being able to suggest to you anything that can at once possess any real value, and contain any relative novelty, must depend altogether upon the fact that in the present discussion, as in the earlier lectures of this course, I come to this problem, for the time, with the interests of the student of psychology. Both the practical and the purely philosophical aspects of the problems here involved are for us, just now, subordinate to the psychological questions which come in sight as we approach this region of discussion. As teachers, you are indeed usually more directly concerned with the practical question, What can I do