As we’ve come to our summer break, we’re ready to say goodbye. And as we do, we want to part with an inspiring idea for both you, listener, and ourselves. We’ve mentioned a time or two that mothers must strengthen their will for the work before them, and today, we’re going to talk about how to do just that. Because we are pursuing educations that nourish whole persons on a wide variety of ideas, mothers need a strong will to do the work set before her. So in this episode we’ll be talking all about a kingdom–the kingdom of Mansoul. And the centurion guard of that kingdom is the Will. 

Books Mentioned: Home Education | A Philosophy of Education (*affiliate links) 

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COMMONPLACE:

“Choose ye, this day” is the command that comes to each of us in every affair, and on every day of our lives, Miss Mason says, and the business of the will is to choose whom we will serve. (A Philosophy of Education, 134)

“Are you cross? Change your thoughts. Are you tired of trying? Change your thoughts. Are you craving for things you are not to have? Change your thoughts; there is a power within you, your own will, which will enable you to turn your attention from thoughts that make you unhappy and wrong, to thoughts that make you happy and right. And this is the exceedingly simple way in which the will acts; this is the sole secret of the power over himself which the strong man wields––he can compel himself to think of what he chooses, and will not allow himself in thoughts that breed mischief.” (Home Education, 326)

“When he wakes to the consciousness of whose he is and whom he serves, [the mother] would have him ready for that high service, with every faculty in training––a man of war from his youth; above all, with an effective will, to will and to do of [God’s] good pleasure.” (Home Education, 324)

“The will is the controller of the passions and emotions, the director of the desires, the ruler of the appetites. But observe, the passions, the desires, the appetites, are there already, and the will gathers force and vigour only as it is exercised in the repression and direction of these; for though the will appears to be of purely spiritual nature, yet it behaves like any member of the body in this––that it becomes vigorous and capable in proportion as it is duly nourished and fitly employed.” (Home Education, 319)

“The ordering of the will is not an affair of sudden resolve; it is the outcome of a slow and ordered education in which precept and example flow in from the lives and thoughts of other men, men of antiquity and men of the hour, as unconsciously and spontaneously as the air we breathe. But the moment of choice is immediate and the act of the will voluntary; and the object of education is to prepare us for this immediate choice and voluntary action which every day presents.” (A Philosophy of Education, 137)