We have within us that controlling element or power known as the will
which should be distinguished from mere impulse, and which gives us the
ability of passing upon and determining suggestions made to our mind and
of allowing or disapproving the thought or possible impulse which gives
them use. Will is distinguished from conscience in that it marks the
determination and lends the force which makes conscience potent, drawing
us nearer to the perfection which self-denial and self-control create
and, let us hope, to the end—
“That God which ever lives and loves,
One God, one law, one element,
And one far-off divine event,
To which the whole creation moves.”
“The great end of training,” says a great writer, “is liberty; and the
sooner you can get a child to be a law unto himself, the sooner you will
make a man of him. I will respect human liberty in the smallest child
even more scrupulously than in a grown man; for the latter can defend it
against me, while the child cannot. Never will I insult the child so far
as to regard him as material to be cast into a mold, to emerge with the
stamp given by my will.”