The transition period is wasteful and uncertain.  True morality is the opposite.  But so long as growth in moral matters goes on there is a continuous change from transition period to truly moral conduct and back again to a fresh transition period and again a change to morality of a still higher order.  Each rationalized habit but paves the way for one still higher.  Morality, then, should be a continual evolution from level to level.  Only so is progress in the individual life maintained.

Morality, then, requires the inhibition of some instincts and the perpetuation of others, the formation of habits and ideals, the development of the power to think and judge, the power to react to certain abstractions such as ought, right, duty, and so on, the power to carry into execution values accepted.  The general laws of instinct, of habit, the response by piecemeal association, the laws of attention and appreciation, are active in securing these responses that we call moral, just as they are operative in securing other responses that do not come under this category.  It is only as these general psychological laws are carried out sufficiently that stable moral conduct is secured.  Any violation of these laws invalidates the result in the moral field just as it would in any other.  There is not one set of principles governing moral conduct and another set governing all other types of conduct.  The same general laws govern both.  This being true, there is no need of discussing in detail the operation of laws controlling moral conduct—­that has all been covered in the previous chapters.  However, there are some suggestions which should be borne in mind in the application of these laws to this field.

First, it is a general principle that habits, to be fixed and stable, must be followed by satisfactory results and that working along the opposite line, that of having annoyance follow a lapse in the conduct, is uneconomical and unreliable.  This principle applies particularly to moral habits.  Truth telling, bravery, obedience, generosity, thought for others, church going, and so on must be followed by positive satisfaction, if they are to be part of the warp and woof of life.  Punishing falsehood, selfishness, cowardice, and so on is not enough, for freedom from supervision will usually mean rejection of such forced habits.  A child must find that it pays to be generous; that he is happier when he cooeperates with others than when he does not.  Positive satisfaction should follow moral conduct.  Of course this satisfaction must vary in type with the age and development of the child, from physical pleasure occasioned by an apple as a reward for self-control at table to the satisfaction which the consciousness of duty well done brings to the adolescent.