’Hence, both as to national and domestic education, he formerly dwelt principally upon the cultivation of the understanding, meaning chiefly the reasoning faculty as applied to the conduct.  But to see the best, and to follow it, are not, alas! necessary consequences of each other.  Resolution is often wanting where conviction is perfect.  —­Resolution is most necessary to all our active, and habit most essential to all our passive virtues.  Probably nine times out of ten the instances of imprudent or vicious conduct arise, not from want of knowledge of good and evil, or from want of conviction that the one leads to happiness, and the other to misery; but from actual deficiency in the strength of resolution, deficiency arising from want of early training in the habit of self control.’

Maria adds:  ’The silence which has been observed in Practical Education on the subject of religion has been misunderstood by some, and misrepresented by others. ...  To those who, with upright and benevolent intentions, from a sense of public duty, and in a spirit of Christian charity, made remonstrances on this subject, he thought it due to give all the explanation in his power;’ and he writes:  ’The authors continue to preserve the silence upon this subject, which they before thought prudent; but they disavow, in explicit terms, the design of laying down a system of education founded upon morality, exclusive of religion. . . .  We most earnestly deprecate the imputation of disregarding religion in Education. . . .  We are convinced that religious obligation is indispensably necessary in the education of all descriptions of people in every part of the world.

’We dread fanaticism and intolerance, whilst we wish to hold religion in a higher point of view than as a subject of seclusive possession, or of outward exhibition.  To introduce the awful ideas of God’s superintendence upon puerile occasions, we decline. ...  I hope I shall obtain the justice due to me on the subject, and that it will appear that I consider religion, in the large sense of the word, to be the only certain bond of society.

’You have turned back our thoughts to this most important subject (education), upon which, next to a universal reverence for religion, we believe the happiness of mankind to depend.’  Maria adds:  ’I have often been witness of the care with which he explained the nature and enforced the observance of that great bond of civil society, which rests upon religion.  The solemnity of the manner in which he administered an oath can never leave my memory; and I have seen the salutary effect this produced on the minds of those of the lower Irish, who are supposed to be the least susceptible of such impressions.  But it was not on the terrors of religion he chiefly dwelt.  No man could be more sensible than he was of the consolatory, fortifying influence of the Christian religion in sustaining the mind in adversity, poverty, and age.  No man knew better its power to carry