is continually drawn away by more attractive thoughts.  Hence the impressions are respectively strong and weak.  Moreover, to the intellectual listlessness which a pupil’s lack of interest in any study involves, must be added the paralysing fear of consequences.  This, by distracting his attention, increases the difficulty he finds in bringing his faculties to bear upon facts that are repugnant to them.  Clearly, therefore, the efficiency of tuition will, other things equal, be proportionate to the gratification with which tasks are performed.

It should be considered also, that grave moral consequences depend upon the habitual pleasure or pain which daily lessons produce.  No one can compare the faces and manners of two boys—­the one made happy by mastering interesting subjects, and the other made miserable by disgust with his studies, by consequent inability, by cold looks, by threats, by punishment—­without seeing that the disposition of the one is being benefited and that of the other injured.  Whoever has marked the effects of success and failure upon the mind, and the power of the mind over the body, will see that in the one case both temper and health are favourably affected, while in the other there is danger of permanent moroseness, or permanent timidity, and even of permanent constitutional depression.  There remains yet another indirect result of no small moment.  The relationship between teachers and their pupils is, other things equal, rendered friendly and influential, or antagonistic and powerless, according as the system of culture produces happiness or misery.  Human beings are at the mercy of their associated ideas.  A daily minister of pain cannot fail to be regarded with secret dislike; and if he causes no emotions but painful ones, will inevitably be hated.  Conversely, he who constantly aids children to their ends, hourly provides them with the satisfactions of conquest, hourly encourages them through their difficulties and sympathises in their successes, will be liked; nay, if his behaviour is consistent throughout, must be loved.  And when we remember how efficient and benign is the control of a master who is felt to be a friend, when compared with the control of one who is looked upon with aversion, or at best indifference, we may infer that the indirect advantages of conducting education on the happiness principle do not fall far short of the direct ones.  To all who question the possibility of acting out the system here advocated, we reply as before, that not only does theory point to it, but experience commends it.  To the many verdicts of distinguished teachers who since Pestalozzi’s time have testified this, may be here added that of Professor Pillans, who asserts that “where young people are taught as they ought to be, they are quite as happy in school as at play, seldom less delighted, nay, often more, with the well-directed exercise of their mental energies than with that of their muscular powers.”