The specific nature of the proposed new education, insofar as it was described in the previous address, consisted in this, that it was the deliberate and sure art of cultivating the pupil to pure morality. To pure morality, I said. This morality is something primary, independent, self-sufficient, and self-existent; and not at all, like the lawfulness often intended before now, linked to and grafted on to a non-moral drive whose satisfaction it serves. It is the deliberate and sure art of this moral education, I said. It does not wander aimlessly and haphazardly, but proceeds according to a fixed rule well known to it and is certain of its success. Its pupil goes forth at the proper time as a fixed and immutable product of its art, who could not go in any other way save that determined by it, who requires no assistance, but continues of himself and according to his own law.

True, this education also cultivates the mind of the pupil and indeed its work begins with this mental culture. Yet this development of the mind is not its primary and sovereign purpose, but only the means by which it imparts moral culture to the pupil. In the meantime, this mental culture, though acquired but incidentally, remains an ineradicable possession of the pupil's life and the eternally blazing beacon of his moral love.