I want to propose four qualities, which, in my opinion, together form the basis of an ideal character, namely, vitality, courage, sensitivity and wisdom. I don't think this list is comprehensive, but I think it is very helpful to us. In addition, I firmly believe that these qualities can become very common through proper care for children's body, feelings and intelligence. I will analyze these qualities one by one. Vitality is not so much a spiritual quality as a physiological trait. Vitality is probably always accompanied by good physical condition, but it tends to decline with people's age and gradually disappears in old age. Before energetic children enter school, their vitality quickly rises to a highest stage; Children are often weakened by education after entering school. Where there is vitality, even if there is no specific pleasant environment, there will be vitality and joy. Vitality can increase the fun of life and reduce the pain of life. No matter what happens, vitality can easily bring benefits to people. As the basis of wise judgment, it can promote the change of objective reality. Humans tend to pay attention to their bodies, but they are not interested in what they see and hear. Since vitality can help people bear the greatest troubles and the greatest depression, it is a great misfortune for people themselves. Except in rare cases, it is also a fatal obstacle for people to obtain practical benefits. Vitality enhances the benefits of the outside world; It also enhances people's efforts. Moreover, vitality is a protective measure against jealousy because it can make a person feel happy all the time. Because jealousy is one of the biggest sources of human suffering, preventing jealousy is a very important advantage of vitality. Many bad qualities are processes that conform to vitality: Newton and Locke, for example, have almost no vitality. In any case, Newton and Locke are easily excited and jealous, and these shortcomings can be overcome by healthy people. If Newton was healthier and could enjoy the happiness of daily life, perhaps the argument between Newton and Leibniz that destroyed the development of mathematics in Britain 100 years could be avoided. Therefore, although vitality has its limitations, I still regard it as one of the most important qualities that all people should have. Courage, the second quality we list, has many forms and is complex and changeable. Fearlessness is one form, and the power to control fear is another. When fear is reasonable, being fearless is one thing. Conversely, when fear is unreasonable, being fearless is another matter. No unreasonable fear is an obvious good quality; This power to control fear. However, if there is no reasonable fear, this is a quality that may cause controversy. However, I want to put this question aside until I talk about other forms of courage. A kind of courage that does not exist in oppression must be composed of many factors. Courage comes from the greatest respect: health and vitality, although not necessary, are very beneficial. There is a great need for practice and skills in dangerous situations. But when we think of losing courage in one situation or another, the emergence of universal courage needs something more basic. This more basic thing is the combination of self-esteem and impersonal outlook on life. Self-esteem begins with some people living a life of self-esteem, while others are regarded as mirrors by people around them. The latter will never have real courage: they must have praise, and fear of losing it will haunt them. The "humility" teaching, once considered necessary, is a means to create evil and depravity. "Humility" suppresses self-esteem and does not expect others to respect themselves; It just makes people lower their dignity and gain the trust of others. In this way, only hypocrisy and instinctive fraud can be produced. When children grow up, people unreasonably discipline them to obey and continue to teach them to develop "humility"; It is said that only those who learn to surrender know how to command. In my opinion, no one should learn to persuade others, and no one should direct others. There is no doubt that I am not.

It is not that you should not lead in a cooperative enterprise; On the contrary, their authority should, like the captain of the football team, voluntarily endure the pain to achieve the common goal. Our goal should be ourselves, not the decision of external authority. We should never impose our purpose on others by violence. That's what I meant when I said don't command others and don't obey them.

In order to gain the greatest courage, there is one thing more worth having, and that is an impersonal outlook on life that I just mentioned. An objective outlook on life that focuses on hopes and fears. A person who concentrates his hopes and fears on himself cannot look at death calmly, because death can destroy his whole passionate world. Here, we once again encounter a low-cost and convenient suppression method driven by tradition: a virtuous person must give up on himself, abstain from sex and refuse natural happiness. It is possible to do so, but the consequences are not good. It is easier for ascetic saints to abandon their own happiness than others. A saint always envies others' happiness in his heart, but it brings him a noble appearance of suffering, so it is reasonable for him to suffer. This has caused a complete value inversion: good things are considered bad, and bad things are considered good. The root of all hazards is that people follow a negative law in order to find a better life. Instead of expanding and developing natural desires and instincts to find a better life. There are some things in human nature that can make us surpass ourselves without blowing off dust. The most common thing in human nature is love, which is more common and extensive than the love of parents. Some love is so broad that it embraces all mankind. The other is knowledge. There is no reason to think that Galileo is not a particularly kind person. He lived for his goal and was not intimidated by death. In fact, every interest outside the body can make a person's life impersonal to some extent. For this reason, it seems a bit ridiculous. A savage with a strong interest is more likely to give his life than those who lose interest because of setbacks in life and are obsessed with mystery and paranoia. So the advantages of this kind of courage can be found in people with more interests. A person with many interests feels that his ego is only a small part of the world, not because he looks down on himself, but because he feels that there are many valuable things besides himself. Unless a person is naturally free, rational and lively, it is difficult for him to achieve such a state. The combination of natural freedom and intellectual liveliness can produce an idea that is not understood by extravagant people and people who forbid bathing. People who hold this idea regard personal death as a common thing. This kind of courage is positive and natural, not negative and depressing. This is the courage to form a positive concept. In my opinion, this positive concept is the main component of forming a certain superior quality. Sensitivity, the third quality we listed, is to correct the quality of pure courage in consciousness. For a person who can't understand the danger, brave behavior is easy to happen, but this kind of courage may often be a stupid behavior. We will not be satisfied with any behavior based on ignorance and negligence, and as complete a knowledge and understanding as possible is the basic factor worthy of yearning. In any case, thoughtful opinions come from rational minds; Sensitivity belongs to passion in the sense of this special attribute I use. A pure theoretical explanation may be: when a person will have passion under the action of many stimulating factors, he is an excited and angry person; However, an educated person does not need to have rough qualities. If sensitivity is considered good, then the reflection of passion must be appropriate from a certain angle, and pure sensitivity intensity is not needed. People's inner quality is the product of many things, or the inversion caused by many things. What I want to explain is what is right. The first step, that is, most children have it when they are about five months old, is to transcend sensory pleasures such as eating and drinking and ask for social recognition. Once you have this kind of pleasure, it will develop rapidly: every child loves praise and hates responsibility. Hope is usually considered as one of the elements that run through life. Hope is certainly valuable as a stimulating factor of happy behavior and a restraining factor of greedy impulse. If we are smarter than those we praise, then hope may be more valuable. However, as long as most of the heroes who are eulogized are people who kill people to the maximum extent, the love of the eulogized people is of no help to the ideal life. Cognitive sensitivity should also be included. In fact, like the habit of observation, we will naturally associate cognitive sensitivity with wisdom. I don't want to discuss many problems brought by aesthetic sensitivity here. I will continue to analyze the last of the four qualities we have listed, namely wisdom. One of the biggest shortcomings of traditional morality is the low evaluation of wisdom. In this respect, the Greeks did the right thing, but the religious church led people to think that there was nothing but virtue, and virtue existed in abstinence, and abstinence came from a series of behaviors arbitrarily labeled as "evil". As long as this attitude persists, it is impossible for people to realize that wisdom plays a better role than any man-made traditional "virtue" By wisdom, I mean the ability to practice knowledge and accept it. In fact, these two aspects are closely related. Ignorant adults are difficult to teach; Such as hygiene or eating habits, they simply can't believe what science reveals. If a person is not influenced by dogmatism, the more he learns, the easier he will accept more things. Ignorant people never want to change their thinking habits, and have formed a rigid and unchanging behavior attitude. They are not only credulous where they are in doubt, but also opinionated in many places that should be accepted. There is no doubt that the word "wisdom" is not so much an appropriate expression of acquiring knowledge as a good expression of acquiring knowledge ability. However, I don't think you can acquire this ability without practical experience. This ability is no better than that of a pianist or an acrobat. Of course, it is also possible to impart knowledge without cultivating wisdom, which is not only possible, but also convenient and often possible; However, I don't believe that wisdom can be cultivated without imparting knowledge, nor that knowledge can be mastered to any extent. Without wisdom, our complex and changeable modern world cannot continue to exist; Without reason, the world can't progress. Therefore, I know that the cultivation of wisdom is one of the main goals of education. This seems to be a cliche, but it is not. Expectations instilled as correct beliefs often have too great an impact on education and wisdom cannot be cultivated at all. In order to make us know this more clearly, it is necessary to make some exact restrictions on wisdom to reveal the thinking habits needed by wisdom. To this end, I will only consider the ability to acquire knowledge, and I will not consider the practical knowledge that can be reasonably included in the scope of wisdom. The natural basis of intellectual life is curiosity, and even in animals, we can find the original form of curiosity. Intelligence requires keen curiosity, but this curiosity must belong to a certain type. There is one kind: after nightfall, some rural inferior people like to peep at their neighbors' religions through curtains, which is of little value. The general interest in gossip and gossip is not based on the love of knowledge, but on bad motives: no rapper will preach the unknown virtues of others, but only the evils of others' privacy. Therefore, most private comments are not credible, but no one pays attention to clarifying the rights and wrongs. The crimes committed by our neighbors are as pleasant as religious comfort, so we will not stop to check the relevant evidence. On the other hand, the so-called legitimate curiosity is radical for real curiosity. You may see this impulse in a moderately pure form. For example, after the cat was taken to a strange room, it began to smell everywhere, and every corner and piece of furniture did not move. This is a legitimate and simple curiosity. You can also see this impulse from children, for example, opening drawers or desks and chairs cabinets that are usually locked for children to see, and they will show great interest, which is also legitimate curiosity. Animals, machines, thunderstorms and all kinds of manual labor can arouse children's curiosity, and their thirst for knowledge can make the smartest adults feel ashamed. However, with the growth of age, this impulse is weakening, so that in the end, I am tired of all unfamiliar things, and my desire to know more about things has disappeared. At this stage, people will say that the country is dying, or "everything is very different from what I looked like when I was young." In fact, what is different from that year is the speaker's curiosity. We can say that when curiosity dies, active intelligence dies with it. Although people's curiosity will decline in intensity and breadth after childhood, it may improve in quality for a long time. Compared with their curiosity about special things, their curiosity about general things can show a higher level of intelligence. Generally speaking, the higher the equipotential of general things, the higher the level of intelligence it contains. Compared with curiosity related to opportunities such as getting food, curiosity divorced from personal interests shows a higher level of development. A cat sniffing around a new house is not a selfless scientific researcher. Maybe it also wants to find out if there are mice around. I am afraid it is not entirely correct to say that curiosity is the best when it has nothing to do with self-interest. Rather, when the relationship between curiosity and other interests is not direct and obvious, and can only be discovered through a certain degree of intelligence, this curiosity is the most available. However, we don't need to draw a conclusion now. If curiosity is to be fruitful, it must be combined with the method of seeking knowledge. Here, we must form the habit of observation, believe in the possibility of understanding, be patient and diligent. If one has curiosity as the original storage and gets proper intellectual education, all these things will naturally develop. However, because our intellectual life is only a part of our activities, and because curiosity often conflicts with other emotions, spiritual virtues such as modesty are still necessary. Because of the limitation of habit and desire, we become indifferent and insensitive to the new truth. It is difficult for us to deny what we have believed for many years. If we have doubts about what can satisfy our self-esteem or other basic desires, it is really difficult to teach students in accordance with their aptitude. Therefore, modesty should be one of the qualities that education tries to create. However, now this is only implemented in a very limited scope. ...