On culture:  Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy; “Literature and Science” (in Discourses in America).  F. Paulsen, System of Ethics, book iii, chap.  V. H. Spencer, Education.  H. Sidgwick, Practical Ethics, chap.  VIII.  Atlantic Monthly, vol. 90, p. 589; vol. 97, p. 433; vol. 109, p. 111.  International Journal of Ethics, vol. 23, p. 1.  On the moral censorship of art:  Plato, Republic, books.  I, iii, X. Aristotle, Poetics.  Ruskin, Lectures on Art.  Tolstoy, What is Art?  G. Santayana, Reason in Art, chaps.  IX, xi.  R. B. Perry, Moral Economy, chap.  V. H. R. Haweis, Music and Morals.  Mackenzie, Manual of Ethics, chap.  XVI.  C. Read, Natural and Social Morals, chap.  X. Forum, vol. 50, p. 588.  Outlook, vol. 107, p. 412.

CHAPTER XXI

THE MECHANISM OF SELF-CONTROL

To discuss, as we have been doing, the various duties which are the unavoidable pre-conditions of a lasting and widespread welfare for men, would be futile, if we had not the ability to fulfill them.  The power of self-control is the sine qua non of a secure morality, and therefore of a secure happiness.  But this power seems often bafflingly absent.  Hard as it is to know what is right to do, it is harder yet for many of us to make ourselves do what we know is right.  Life for the average conscientious man is a perpetual battle between two opposing tendencies, that which his better self endorses, and that which is easiest or most alluring at the moment of action.  The latter course too often seduces his will; and for the earnest and aspiring this continual moral failure constitutes one of the most tragic aspects of life. [Footnote:  Cf.  Ovid’s Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor.  And St. Paul’s “To will is present with me, but how to perform that which is good I find not.  For the good that I would I do not, but the evil which I would not, that I do.”  From pagan and Christian pen alike there comes testimony to this universal and disheartening experience.] There is no greater need for most men than that of some wiser and more effective method whereby those who have ideals beyond their practice may regularly and consistently realize them.

What are our potentialities of greater self-control?

The encouraging side of the matter is that there have been many, of very various codes and creeds, who have attained to a nearly perfect self-control, who easily and almost inevitably govern their conduct by their ideals.  Puritans with their personal Devil, Christian Scientists who believe that there is no evil at all-Christians, Buddhists, atheists-there have been saints in all the folds.  The fact seems to be that the particular form which our moral ideas take matters much less than the completeness with which they possess the mind.  Almost any of the many motives to right conduct will reform a character if it be so stamped into the mind as to become the dominant idea.  What is necessary