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Even in the first edition of the Essay, however, Locke disclosed his dissatisfaction with the view he was expounding. It seemed to drive him to the conclusion that moral education was impossible, since action follows the greatest balance of pleasure, and men are not free to choose what objects they will find their pleasures in; and it seemed to leave no opportunity for reason at all. He was almost apologetic in hist statement of this extreme hedonistic view. He wished to escape the conclusion that men were mere creatures swayed by the strongest pleasure. And so he devoted three paragraphs to the point that it is not an imperfection in man to be determined by the greatest good (good here being used in the hedonistic sense). Men would be slaves if they were determined by anything other than the greatest good. God's will chooses the supreme happiness, and men are most like him when they do likewise. "It is as much a perfection that the power of preferring should be determined by the will." Men surely do not desire "to be at liberty to play the fool." Only madmen are free in the sense of being able to choose the worse alternative or of having no preference between pleasure and pain; and in contrast with madmen, "an understanding free agent naturally follows that which causes pleasure to it and flies that which causes pain, i.e., naturally seeks happiness and shuns misery." 8 Nevertheless, in spite of this seeming defense, Locke seems to have remained discontented with his theory. He dreaded what he viewed as the fatalism of Hobbes; and he was apprehensive lest he was putting men too much under the control of the mechanical play of a balance of pleasures, and was thus leaving no room for the guiding activity of reason.

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4. Locke's more mature views were set forth in the second edition of the Essay. He had continually gone over the chapter in which he discussed the springs of action, as he wrote in a letter to Molyneux, and finally discovered what he believed to have been his error. The error, he maintained, was his having incorrectly used the word "thing" when he should have used the word "action," 10 by which verbal mistake he led his own thought astray. In the first edition he had improperly argued that a man could not be indifferent toward an object, but must desire or not desire it. He now insisted that many objects, even objects which a man recognizes as certain to give him pleasure if he should attain them, may nevertheless be indifferent. Many absent goods may not arouse any desires at all; when a man is easy and content as he is, further goods may have no appeal. Even if the further goods do

7 Essay, First edition, II, 21, 30-32. Cf. Fraser's edition, Vol. I, pp. 376–377.

8 King: Op. cit., p. 310.

9 Works, Vol. IX, p. 317.

10 The passage in the first edition in which this error appeared reads as follows: "Is then a man indifferent to be pleased, or not pleased, more with one thing than another? Is it in his choice, whether he will or will not be better pleased with one thing than another? And to this I think every one's experience is ready to make answer, No." Cf. Fraser's edition of the Essay, Vol. I, p. 375.

stir up some desire, such desire may be so slight as to be negligible in its effect on conduct.11 What a man cannot help preferring or not preferring, being pleased or not pleased with, is a proposed or contemplated action. But since proffered pleasures do not necessarily give rise to desires, i.e., do not necessarily arouse the operative faculties, a man may have several goods before his mind and may exercise his reason upon their relative merits without being at once driven, in an almost mechanical way, to seek the one which seems at first to be the greatest. There is thus a gap between having things present to the mind and being impelled to seek or to avoid them.

The gap between having things present to the mind and being impelled to seek or to avoid them can be filled of course only by that which is the spring of action. This Locke now conceived to be uneasinesswhich is the same thing as pain, torment, anguish, misery, or desire.12 "The chief, if not only spur to human industry and action is uneasiness." 13 Only a present pain, therefore, whether of body or of mind, at once gives rise to an activity which seeks to get rid of the pain. A present pleasure, so far from stirring to activity, calms the mind, causing contentment with the existing situation; and a contemplated future pleasure or pain has no direct effect upon the operative faculties, unless it first produces a present pain. An absent good may be so much better than the present is without it that a keen desire for it, i.e., a pain, may appear; and an absent pain may be so terrible that a present pain may arise and an immediate action result to avoid the impending catastrophe. Yet it may be said that pain or uneasiness, and never pleasure, is the spur to action; for while most pains lead to action, only those pleasures indirectly do so which first produce pain as an intermediary connecting link between the idea of them as absent and the enjoyment of them as present.

Locke realized that in rejecting his earlier opinion that the will is determined by the greatest pleasure, he was departing from an “established and settled" theory which had behind it "the general consent of mankind." 14 But he thereby greatly strengthened his position. For the earlier opinion made an absent, and as yet unattained, pleasure the cause of men's activity. Such a theory is untenable. "It is against the nature of things that what is absent should operate where it is not." 15 The attainment of pleasure or escape from pain is still the end at which activity aims. But in the earlier view Locke confused this end of action with the efficient cause or spring of action. In his more mature view he made the proper distinction. That pleasure which,

just because absent, is the goal of an action, cannot be the existing agent which leads to the action. Unless the idea of the pleasure as absent arouses uneasiness, it will not produce action at all. Hence, while Locke remained a hedonist in his statement of the end of action, he was not bound down to any mechanical balance of pleasures in his statement of the causes which give rise to action.

The bearing upon educational theory of the view that uneasiness is the spring of human action is considerable. Though Locke granted that occasionally a particular pain or uneasiness was so violent as to lead at once to action, yet he insisted that usually such was not the case. "The ordinary and successive uneasinesses. . . determine the will, but with a power of suspension." And in this period of suspension there is an opportunity for the free play of reason. It is not clear whether, according to Locke, the directing work of reason enters into the situation before the various possible absent pleasures arouse feelings of uneasiness, or whether reason restrains the feelings of uneasiness from operating even after the feelings are actually present. The latter alternative seems to be favored by Locke's language, though the former could be more easily maintained. But in either case, since the will is no longer identified with the desires, but is a power in the mind to suspend or release the operation of the desires, reason has an opportunity to prevail. Reason can so picture to the mind the allurements. of an absent good, as to give rise to an uneasiness which will be more powerful than the other uneasinesses which previously were present. Even though the strongest uneasiness may at length prevail, action will be deliberative, and not impulsive. That is, the uneasiness which after reason has been at work is keenest will be so because it is reasonable for it to be so, not merely because it is connected with some violent passion. Thus not only pleasures and pains, but reason also, are important factors in regulating conduct; and all these factors must be taken into account in a theory of moral education.

5. Locke's Thoughts concerning Education is probably to be rated as the most consistently developed of any of his writings. It is in fairly complete harmony with the view just outlined in which uneasiness is the, spring of human action. It sums up the main features of his thought in a striking way, and reveals which of the aspects of his various ethical theories really were the most firm and central convictions. Three points in particular call for special notice.

(a) Locke approached the problem of education from an angle which would doubtless have surprised some of the critics who misunderstood his attack in the Essay on innate ideas. He deemed it necessary for those who desire to train children to know the exact nature of the material upon which they have to work. As even in the first book of the Essay he granted that "there are natural tendencies

imprinted on the minds of men" which can be summed up as “a desire of happiness and an aversion to misery," 16 so he made a similar analysis of men's original, or innate, endowment in the Thoughts concerning Education. He spoke of "the natural make” of men's minds, "the unalterable frame of their constitution," "native propensities," "prevalences of constitution."17 These natural aptitudes were stamped upon men's minds by God, and hence, though they "may perhaps be a little mended,” they "can hardly be totally altered and transformed into the contrary, i.e., though they "are not to be cured by rules, . . . with art they may be much mended, and turned to good purposes." 19 Men do steadily pursue pleasure and always will; and the problem of education is, not to stamp out the pursuit of pleasure, but to rationalize it.20

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(b) The educator, therefore, must use pleasures and pains as the means of furnishing the proper motive power in children. The pleasures and pains he may use are of several kinds. In the first place, he should make the most of the natural pleasures and pains which the children happen to feel. He should not allow the studies of lessons which they are to learn to "be made a burden to them or imposed on them as a task." 21 He should preferably not force lessons on them when they are indisposed, but should base his instruction upon "the favorable seasons of aptitude or inclination." 22 In the second place, the educator should also use artificially imposed pleasures and pains, i.e., rewards and punishments. He should not resort to beating or physical chastisement except in very rare cases of otherwise incurable stubbornness, nor should he employ as rewards such things as sugarplums, finery, or money; for such pleasures and pains are not the accustomed consequences of actions in ordinary living, and hence are not effective in establishing habits which may be permanent.23 Neverthe、less, some form of rewards and punishments is necessary. "Reward and punishment are the only motives to a rational creature; these are the spur and reins whereby all mankind are set on work." 24 Some pleasures and pains "must be proposed to children if we intend to work upon them.” 25 The proper ones to use are esteem and disgrace; for “a love of credit and an apprehension of shame" are not only "the most powerful incentives to the mind,” but are permanent influences which will continue to advance the interests of virtue throughout men's lives.26 The sooner children are made responsive to social opinion, the better for the formation of their habits of moral response. In the third place, the educator should endeavor to implant in children the notion of God as the source of "all manner of good to those that love and obey

16 Idem, I, 2, 3,

17 Thoughts concerning Education, § § 101-102.

18 Idem, § 66.

19 Idem, § 102.

20 Idem, § 143.

21 Idem, § 73.

22 Idem, § 74.

23 Idem, §§ 47-52, 82-84.

24 Idem, § 54.

25 Idem, § 55.

26 Idem, § 56.

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him." 27 Sensibility to common praise and blame is only "the proper stock whereon afterwards to graff the true principles of morality and religion." 28 The standards of popular opinion are at best only an approximation to genuine morality. Conduct becomes really moral only when it is coupled with and based upon the law of God.

(c) An educator has other means at his disposal, however, than the imposing of pleasures and pains. Indeed, he must have some further means if he is to make the law of God effective in its control of men; for the rewards and punishments attached to that law are wholly future. The teacher must aim to develop in children the power of self-direction, of examination, of proffered pleasures, of suspension of action pending the decision of reason. Locke occasionally wrote in a manner which recalls his purely rationalistic ethical system; 29 but he usually aimed to put reason in control, not as itself the moral standard, but as a means to securing the greatest pleasure. "The principle of all virtue and excellency lies in a power of denying ourselves the satisfaction of our own desires, where reason does not authorize them." 30 There is no moral fault so serious as the inability to restrain the importunity of a present pain for the sake of a greater pleasure which reason perceives to be in store. Haste and impetuosity are the gravest sources of vice. Deliberation in advance of action is the surest guarantee of virtue. Hence an educator should teach children the art of the mastery of their desires, “the custom of having their inclinations in subjection." 31 The 'supposition that children cannot be reasoned with is quite mistaken. They may not grasp intricate arguments at an early age; but they can -perceive the agreement or disagreement between the ideas essential to morality. They like to be "treated as rational creatures," being proud of the compliment thus paid to them.32 Indeed of almost any boy it is true that "the sooner you treat him as a man, the sooner he will begin to be one." 33 Thus in educational theory and practise the development of a habit of listening to the voice of reason is the most essential point. 6. In summary it may be said that there is suggested at least somewhere in Locke's writings a theory of the springs of action to correspond to each phase of his ethical views. The theory of the Conduct of the Understanding to the effect that ideas are the springs of action corresponds to the rationalistic ethics which finds the origin of moral distinctions in the perception by reason of the agreements or disagree

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27 Idem, § 136.

28 Idem, § 200.

29 Cf. Idem, §§ 31, 33. He here advised one "to deny himself his desires, cross his own inclinations, and purely follow what reason directs as best, though the appetite lean the other way." But even here he did not deny that what reason directs as best is only a greater future pleasure than the one on which the present inclination is bent.

30 Idem, § 38. Cf. also § 45.

31 Idem, § 107.

32 Idem, § 81.

33 Idem, § 95.