In this way we shall have a strong, well-knit soul-texture, made up of volitions
and ideas like warp and woof. Mind and will will be so compactly organized that
all their forces can be brought to a single point. Each concept or purpose will call
up those related to it, and once strongly set toward its object, the soul will find
itself borne along by unexpected forces. This power of totalizing, rather than any
transcendent relation of elements, constitutes at least the practical unity of the
soul, and this unimpeded association of its elements is true or inner freedom of
will. Nothing is wanting or lost when the powers of the soul are mobilized for a
great task, and its substance is impervious to passion. With this organization,
men of really little power accomplish wonders. Without it great minds are
confused and lost. They have only velleity or caprice. The will makes a series of
vigorous, perhaps almost convulsive, but short, inconsistent efforts. As Jean Paul
says, there is sulphur, charcoal, and saltpetre in the soul, but powder is not made,
for they never find each other. To understand this will-plexus is preeminent
among the new demands now laid on educators.
But, although this focalizing power of acting with the whole rather than with a
part of the soul, gives independence of many external, conventional, proximate
standards of conduct, deepening our interests in life, and securing us against
disappointment by defining our expectations, while such a sound and simple
will-philosophy is proof against considerable shock and has firmness of texture
enough to bear much responsibility, there is, of course, something deeper,
without which all our good conduct is more or less hollow. This is that better
purity established by mothers in the plastic heart, before the superfoetation of
precept is possible, or even before the "soul takes flight in language"; it is
perhaps pre-natal or hereditary. Much every way depends on how aboriginal our
goodness is, whether the will acts with effort, as we solve an intricate problem,
in solitude, or as we say the multiplication table, which only much distraction
can confuse, or as we repeat the alphabet, which the din of battle could not
hinder. Later and earlier training should harmonize with each other and with
nature. Thrice happy he who is so wisely trained that he comes to believe he
believes what his soul deeply does believe, to say what he feels and feel what he
really does feel, and chiefly whose express volitions square with the profounder
drift of his will as the resultant of all he has desired or wished, expected,
attended to, or striven for. When such an one comes to his moral majority by
standing for the first time upon his own careful conviction, against the popular
cry, or against his own material interests or predaceous passions, and feels the
constraint and joy of pure obligation which comes up from this deep source, a