"Prohibitions, again, they believe, except they be well founded, may confound the notions of children on the subject of morality; for if they are forbidden to do what they see worthy and enlightened persons do, they may never know where to fix the boundaries between vice and virtue."
"Prohibitions, again, they consider, if made without an allowance of exceptions, as having a tendency to break the spirit of youth. Break a horse in the usual way, and teach him to stop with the check of the reins, and you break him, and preserve his courage. But put him in a mill to break him, and you break his life and animation. Prohibitions therefore may hinder elevated feeling, and may lead to poverty and sordidness of spirit."
"Prohibitions, again, they believe, if youth once depart from the right way, render them more vicious characters than common. This arises from the abruptness or suddenness of transition. For having been shut up within narrow boundaries for a part of their lives, they go greater lengths, when once let loose, than others, who have not been equally curbed and confined."
"But while they are of opinion, that prohibitions are likely to be thus injurious to Quaker-youth, they are of opinion, that they are never to be relied upon as effectual guardians of morality, because they consider them as built upon false principles."
"They are founded, they conceive, on the principle, that ignorance is a security for innocence, or that vice is so attractive, that we cannot resist it but by being kept out of the way. In the first case, they contend that the position is false; for ignorant persons are of all others the most likely, when they fall into temptations, to be seduced, and in the second, they contend that there is a distrust of divine providence in his moral government of the world."
"They are founded, again, they conceive, on false principles, inasmuch as the Quakers confound causes with sub-causes, or causes with occasions. If a person, for example, were to get over a hedge, and receive a thorn in his hand, and die of the wound, this thorn would be only the occasion, and not the cause of his death. The bad state in which his body must have been, to have made this wound fatal, would have been the original cause. In like manner neither the theatre, nor the ball-room are the causes of the bad passions, that are to be found there. All these passions must have existed in persons previously to their entrance into these places. Plays therefore, or novels, or public dances, are only the sub-causes, or the occasions of calling forth the passions in question. The real cause is in the infected state of the mind, or in the want of knowledge, or in the want of a love of virtue."
"Prohibitions therefore, though they may become partial checks of vice, can never, they believe, be relied upon as effectual guardians of virtue. Bars and bolts seldom prevent thieves from robbing a house. But if armed men should be in it, who would venture to enter in? In the same manner the mind of man should be armed or prepared. It should be so furnished, that men should be able to wander through a vicious world, amidst all its foibles and its follies, and pass uncontaminated by them. It should have that tone given to it, which should hinder all circumstances from becoming occasions. But this can never be done by locking up the heart to keep vice out of it, but by filling it with knowledge and with a love of virtue."
"That this is the only method to be relied upon in moral education, they conceive may be shewn by considering upon whom the pernicious effects of the theatre, or of the ball-room, or of the circulating library, principally fall. Do they not fall principally upon those, who have never had a dignified education. 'Empty noddles, it is said, are fond of playhouses,' and the converse, is true, that persons, whose understandings have been enriched, and whose tastes have been corrected, find all such recreations tiresome. At least they find so much to disgust them, that what they approve does not make them adequate amends. This is the case also with respect to novels. These do harm principally to barren minds. They do harm to those who have no proper employment for their time, or to those, who in the manners, conversation, and conduct, of their parents, or others with whom they associate, have no examples of pure thinking, or of pure living, or of a pure taste. Those, on the other hand, who have been taught to love good books, will never run after, or be affected by, bad ones. And the same mode of reasoning, they conceive, is applicable to other cases. For if people are taught to love virtue for virtue's sake, and, in like manner, to hate what is unworthy, because they have a genuine and living knowledge of its unworthiness, neither the ball, nor concert-room, nor the theatre, nor the circulating library, nor the diversions of the field, will have charms enough to seduce them, or to injure the morality of their minds."
To sum up the whole. The prohibitions of the Quakers, in the first place, may become injurious, in the opinion of these philosophical moralists, by occasioning greater evils, than they were intended to prevent. They can never, in the second place, be relied upon as effectual guardians of virtue, because they consider them to be founded on false principles. And if at any time they can believe them to be effectual in the office assigned them, they believe them to to be productive only of a cold or a sluggish virtue.
MORAL EDUCATION.
CHAP. IX. … SECT. I.
Reply of the Quakers to these objections—they say first, that they are to be guided by revelation in the education of their children—and that the education, which they adopt, is sanctioned by revelation, and by the practice of the early Christians—they maintain again, that the objections are not applicable to them, for they pre-suppose circumstances concerning them, which are not true—they allow the system of filling the mind with virtue to be the most desirable—but they maintain that it cannot be acted upon abstractedly—and, that if it could, it would be as dangerous, as the philosophical moralists make their system of the prohibitions.
To these objections the Quakers would make the following reply.
They do not look up either to their own imaginations, or to the imaginations of others, for any rule in the education of their children. As a christian society, they conceive themselves bound to be guided by revelation, and by revelation only, while it has any injunctions to offer, which relate to this subject.
In adverting to the Old Testament, they find that no less than nine, out of the ten commandments of Moses, are of a prohibitory nature, and, in adverting to the new, that many of the doctrines of Jesus Christ and the apostles are delivered in the form of prohibitions. They believe that revealed religion prohibits them from following all those pursuits, which the objections notice; for though there is no specific prohibition of each, yet there is an implied one in the spirit of christianity, Violent excitements of the passions on sensual subjects must be unfavourable to religious advancement. Worldly pleasures must hinder those, which are spiritual. Impure words and spectacles must affect morals. Not only evil is to be avoided, but even the appearance of evil. While therefore these sentiments are acknowledged by christianity, it is to be presumed that the customs, which the objections notice, are to be avoided in christian education. And as the Quakers consider these to be forbidden to themselves, they feel themselves obliged to forbid them to others. And, in these parcticular prohibitions, they consider themselves as sanctioned both by the writings and the practice of the early christians.
In looking at the objections, which have been made with a view of replying to them, they would observe first, that these objections do not seem to apply to them as a society, because they presuppose circumstances concerning them, which are not true. They presuppose first, that their moral education is founded on prohibitions solely, whereas they endeavour both by the communication of positive precepts, and by their example, to fill the minds of their children with a love of virtue. They presuppose again, that they are to mix with the world, and to follow the fashions of the world, in which case a moderate knowledge of the latter, with