study of the principles of right conduct, that we awaken their
consciousness about their modes of life, and so by degrees impart to
them a science of righteousness. This is theory, ethics; not morals,
practice; and in my judgment it is dangerous business, with the
slenderest chance of success. Useless is it to say that the aim of such
instruction need not be ethical, but moral. Whatever the ultimate aim,
the procedure of instruction is of necessity scientific. It operates
through intelligence, and only gets into life so far as the instructed
intelligence afterward becomes a director. This is the work of books and
teachers everywhere: they discipline the knowing act, and so bring
within its influence that multitude of matters which depend for
excellent adjustment on clear and ordered knowledge. Such a work,
however, is evidently but partial. Many matters do not take their rise
in knowledge at all. Morality does not. The boy as soon as born is
adopted unconsciously into some sort of moral world. While he is growing
up and is thinking of other things, habits of character are seizing him.
By the time he comes to school he is incrusted with customs. The idea
that his moral education can be fashioned by his teacher in the same way
as his education in geography is fantastic. It is only his ethical
training which may now begin. The attention of such a boy may be called
to habits already formed; he may be led to dissect those habits, to pass
judgment on them as right or wrong, and to inquire why and how they may
be bettered. This is the only power teaching professes: it critically
inquires, it awakens interest, it inspects facts, it discovers laws. And
this process applied in the field of character yields ethics, the
systematized knowledge of human conduct. It does not primarily yield
morals, improved performance.
Nor indeed is performance likely to be improved by ethical enlightenment
if, as I maintain, the whole business of self-criticism in the child is
unwholesome. By a course of ethical training a young person will, in my
view, much more probably become demoralized than invigorated. What we
ought to desire, if we would have a boy grow morally sturdy, is that
introspection should not set in early and that he should not become
accustomed to watch his conduct. And the reason is obvious. Much as we
incline to laud our prerogative of consciousness and to assert that it
is precisely what distinguishes us from our poor relations, the brutes,
we still must acknowledge that consciousness has certain grave defects
when exalted into the position of a guide. Large tracts of life lie
altogether beyond its control, and the conduct which can be affected by
it is apt--especially in the initial stages--to be rendered vague, slow,
vacillating, and distorted. Only instinctive action is swift, sure, and
firm. For this reason we distrust the man who calculates his goodness.
We find him vulgar and repellent. We are far from sure that he will keep
that goodness long. If I offer to shake hands with a man with precisely
that degree of warmth which I have decided it is well to express, will
he willingly take my hand? A few years ago there were some nonsense
verses on this subject going the rounds of the English newspapers. They
seemed to me capitally to express the morbid influence of consciousness
in a complex organism. They ran somewhat as follows:
The centipede was happy, quite,
Until the toad for fun
Said, "Pray which leg comes after which?"
This worked her mind to such a pitch
She lay distracted in a ditch.
Considering how to run.
And well she might! Imagine the hundred legs steered consciously--now it
is time to move this one, now to move that! The creature would never
move at all, but would be as incapable of action as Hamlet himself. And
are the young less complex than centipedes? Shall their little lives be
suddenly turned over to a fumbling guide? Shall they not rather be
stimulated to unconscious rectitude, gently led into those blind but
holy habits which make goodness easy, and so be saved from the perilous
perplexities of marking out their own way? So thought the sagacious
Aristotle. To the crude early opinion of Socrates that virtue is
knowledge, he opposed the ripened doctrine that it is practice and
habit.
This, then, is the inexpugnable objection to the ethical instruction of
children: the end which should be sought is performance, not knowledge,
and we cannot by supplying the latter induce the former. But do not
these considerations cut the ground from under practical teaching of
every kind? Instruction is given in other subjects in the hope that it
may finally issue in strengthened action, and I have acknowledged that
as a fact this hope is repeatedly justified. Why may not a similar
result appear in ethics? What puts a difference between that study and
electricity, social science, or manual training? This: according as the
work studied includes a creative element and is intended to give
expression to a personal life, consciousness becomes an increasingly
dangerous dependence. Why are there no classes and text-books for the
study of deportment? Is it because manners are unimportant? No, but
because they make the man, and to be of any worth must be an expression
of his very nature. Conscious study would tend to distort rather than to
fashion them. Their practice cannot be learned in the same way as
carpentry.
But an analogy more enlightening for showing the inaptitude of the
child for direct study of the laws of conduct is found in the case of
speech. Between speech and morals the analogies are subtle and wide. So
minute are they that speech might almost be called a kind of vocal
morality. Like morality, it is something possessed long before we are
aware of it, and it becomes perfect or debased with our growth. We
employ it to express ourselves and to come into ordered contact with our
neighbor. By it we confer benefits and by it receive benefits in turn.
Rigid as are its laws, we still feel ourselves free in its use, though
obliged to give to our spontaneous feelings forms constructed by men of
the past. Ease, accuracy, and scope are here confessedly of vast
consequence. It has consequently been found a matter of extreme
difficulty to bring a young person's attention helpfully to bear upon
his speech. Indirect methods seem to be the only profitable ones.
Philology, grammar, rhetoric, systematic study of the laws of language,
are dangerous tools for a boy below his teens. The child who is to
acquire excellent speech must be encouraged to keep attention away from
the words he uses and to fix it upon that which he is to express.
Abstract grammar will either confound the tongue which it should ease,
or else it will seem to have no connection with living reality, but to
be an ingenious contrivance invented by some Dry-as-dust for the torture
of schoolboys.
And a similar pair of dangers await the young student of the laws of
conduct. On the one hand, it is highly probable that he will not
understand what his teacher is talking about. He may learn his lesson;
he may answer questions correctly; but he will assume that these things
have nothing to do with him. He becomes dulled to moral distinctions,
and it is the teaching of ethics that dulls him. We see the disastrous
process in full operation in a neighboring field. There are countries
which have regular public instruction in religion. The argument runs
that schools are established to teach what is of consequence to
citizens, and religion is of more consequence than anything else.
Therefore introduce it, is the conclusion. Therefore keep it out, is the
sound conclusion. It lies too near the life to be announced in official
propositions and still to retain a recognizable meaning. I have known a
large number of German young men. I have yet to meet one whose religious
nature has been deepened by his instruction in school. And the lack of
influence is noticeable not merely in those who have failed in the
study, but quite as much in those who have ranked highest. In neither
case has the august discipline meant anything. The danger would be
wider, the disaster from the benumbing influence more serious, if
ethical instruction should be organized; wider, because morality
underlies religion, and insensitiveness to the moral claim is more
immediately and concretely destructive. Yet here, as in the case of
religion, of manners, or of speech, the child will probably take to
heart very little of what is said. At most he will assume that the
text-book statement of the rules of righteousness represents the way in
which the game of life is played by some people; but he will prefer to
play it in his own way still. Young people are constructed with happy
protective arrangements; they are enviably impervious. So in expounding
moral principles in the schoolroom, I believe we shall touch the child
in very few moral spots. Nevertheless, it becomes dulled and hardened if
it listens long to sacred words untouched.
But the benumbing influence is not the gravest danger; analogies of
speech suggest a graver still. If we try to teach speech too early and
really succeed in fixing the child's attention upon its tongue, we
enfeeble its power of utterance. Consciousness once awakened, the child
is perpetually inquiring whether the word is the right word, and
suspecting that it is not quite sufficiently right to be allowed
free passage. Just so a momentous trouble appears when the moral
consciousness has been too early stirred. That self-questioning spirit
springs up which impels its tortured possessor to be continually
fingering his motives in unwholesome preoccupation with himself.
Instead of entering heartily into outward interests, the watchful
little moralist is "questioning about himself whether he has been as
good as he should have been, and whether a better man would not have
acted otherwise." No part of us is more susceptible of morbidness
than the moral sense; none demoralizes more thoroughly when morbid.
The trouble, too, affects chiefly those of the finer fibre. The
majority of healthy children, as has been said, harden themselves
against theoretic talk, and it passes over them like the wind. Here
and there a sensitive soul absorbs the poison and sets itself
seriously to work installing duty as the mainspring of its life. We all
know the unwholesome result: the person from whom spontaneity is
gone, who criticises everything he does, who has lost his sense of
proportion, who teases himself endlessly and teases his friends--so
far as they remain his friends--about the right and wrong of each
petty act. It is a disease, a moral disease, and takes the place in
the spiritual life of that which the doctors are fond of calling
"nervous prostration" in the physical. Few countries have been so
desolated by it as New England. It is our special scourge. Many here
carry a conscience about with them which makes us say, "How much
better off they would be with none!" I declare, at times when I see
the ravages which conscientiousness works in our New England stock, I
wish these New Englanders had never heard moral distinctions
mentioned. Better their vices than their virtues. The wise teacher will
extirpate the first sproutings of the weed; for a weed more difficult
to extirpate when grown there is not. We run a serious risk of
implanting it in our children when we undertake their class instruction
in ethics.
Such, then, are some of the considerations which should give us pause
when the public is clamoring at our schoolhouse doors and saying to us
teachers, "We cannot bring up our children so as to make them righteous
citizens. Undertake the work for us. You have done so much already that
we turn to you again and entreat your help." I think we must sadly
reply, "There are limits to what we can do. If you respect us, you will
not urge us to do the thing that is not ours. By pressing into certain
regions we shall bring upon you more disaster than benefit."
Fully, however, as the dangers here pointed out may be acknowledged,
much of a different sort remains also true. Have we not all received a
large measure of moral culture at school? And are we quite content to
say that the greatest of subjects is unteachable? I would not say this;
on the contrary, I hold that no college is properly organized where the
teaching of ethics does not occupy a position of honor. The college, not
the school, is the place for the study. It would be absurd to maintain
that all other subjects of study are nutritious to man except that of
his own nature; but it is far from absurd to ask that a young man first
possess a nature before he undertakes to analyze it. A study useless for
developing initial power may still be highly profitable for doctrine,
for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness. Youth
should be spontaneous, instinctive, ebullient; reflection whispers to
the growing man. Many of the evils that I have thus far traced are
brought about by projecting upon a young mind problems which it has not
yet encountered in itself. Such problems abound in the later teens and
twenties, and then is the time to set about their discussion.
But even in college I would have ethical study more guarded than the
rest. Had I the power, I would never allow it to be required of all. It
should be offered only as an elective and in the later years of the
course. When I entered college I was put in my freshman year into a
prescribed study of this sort. Happily I received no influence from it
whatever. It passed over and left me untouched; and I think it had no
more effect on the majority of my classmates. Possibly some of the more
reflective took it to heart and were harmed; but in general it was a
mere wasting of precious ointment which might have soothed our wounds if
elected in the senior year. Of course great teachers defy all rules;
and under a Hopkins, a Garman, or a Hyde, the distinctions of elective
and prescribed become unimportant. Yet the principle is clear: wait till
the young man is confronted with the problems before you invite him to
their solution. Has he grown up unquestioning? Has he accepted the moral
code inherited from honored parents? Can he rest in wise habits? Then
let him be thankful and go his way untaught. But has he, on the other
hand, felt that the moral mechanism by which he was early guided does
not fit all cases? Has he found one class of duties in conflict with
another? Has he discovered that the moral standards obtaining in
different sections of society, in different parts of the world, are
irreconcilable? In short, is he puzzled and desirous of working his way
through his puzzles, of facing them and tracking them to their
beginnings? Then is he ripe for the study of ethics.
Yet when it is so undertaken, when those only are invited to partake of
it who in their own hearts have heard its painful call, even then I
would hedge it about with two conditions. First, it should be pursued as
a science, critically, and the student should be informed at the outset
that the aim of the course is knowledge, not the endeavor to make better
men. And, secondly, I would insist that the students themselves do the
work; that they do not passively listen to opinions set forth by their
instructor, but that they address themselves to research and learn to
construct moral judgments which will bear critical inspection. Some
teachers, no doubt, will think it wisest to accomplish these things by
tracing the course of ethics in the past, treating it as a historical
science. Others will prefer, by announcing their own beliefs, to
stimulate their students to criticise those beliefs and to venture on
their own little constructions. The method is unimportant; it is only of
consequence that the students themselves do the ethicizing, that they
trace the logic of their own beliefs and do not rest in dogmatic
statement. Yet such an undertaking may well sober a teacher. I never see
my class in ethics come to their first lecture that I do not tremble and
say to myself that I am set for the downfall of some of them. In every
such studious company there must be unprepared persons whom the teacher
will damage. He cannot help it. He must move calmly forward, confident
in his subject, but knowing that because it is living it is dangerous.
III
MORAL INSTRUCTION IN THE SCHOOLS
The preceding paper has discussed sufficiently the negative side of
moral education. It has shown how children should not be approached. But
few readers will be willing to leave the matter here. Are there no
positive measures to be taken? Is there no room in our schools for any
teaching of morality, or must the most important of subjects be
altogether banished from their doors? There is much which might lead us
to think so. If a teacher may not instruct his pupils in morality, what
other concern with it he should have is not at once apparent. One may
even suspect that attention to it will distract him from his proper
work. Every human undertaking has some central aim and succeeds by
loyalty to it. Each profession, for example, singles out one of our many
needs and to this devotes itself whole-heartedly. Such a restriction is
wise. No profession could be strong which attempted to meet the
requirements of man as a whole. The physician accordingly selects his
little aim of extirpating suffering and disease. His studies, his
occupation, his aptitudes, his hopes of gain, his dignity as a public
character, all have reference to this. Whatever is incompatible with
it, of however great worth in itself, is rightly ignored. To save the
soul of a patient may be of larger consequence than to invigorate his
body. But the faithful physician attends to spiritual matters only so
far as he thinks them conducive to bodily health. Or again the painter,
because he is setting ocular beauty before us, concerns himself with
harmonies of color, balance of masses, rhythms of line, rather than with
history, anecdote, or incitements to noble living. I once heard a
painter say, "There is religion enough for me in seeing how half a dozen
figures can be made to go together," and I honored him for the saying.
So too I should hold that the proper aim of the merchant is money-making
and that only so much of charity or public usefulness can fairly be
demanded of him as does not conflict with his profits. It is true that
there are large ways and petty ways of acquiring gain, and one's own
advantage cannot for long be separated from that of others. Still, the
merchant rightly desists from any course which he finds in the long run
commercially unprofitable.
What, then, is the central aim of teaching? Confessedly it is the
impartation of knowledge. Whatever furthers this should be eagerly
pursued; and all that hinders it, rejected. When schoolmasters
understand their business it will be useless for the public to call to
them, "We want our children to be patriotic. Drop for a time your
multiplication table while you rouse enthusiasm for the old flag." They
would properly reply, "We are ready to teach American history. As a part
of human knowledge, it belongs to our province. But though the
politicians fail to stir patriotism, do not put their neglected work
upon us. We have more than we can attend to already."
Now in my previous paper I showed how a theoretic knowledge of good
conduct had better not be given to children. By exposition of holy laws
they are not nourished, but enfeebled. What they need is right habits,
not an understanding of them: to become good persons rather than to
acquire a critical acquaintance with goodness. What moral function then
remains for the schools? To furnish knowledge of morality has been
proved dangerous. For teachers to turn away from imparting knowledge and
devote their scanty time to fashioning character is to abandon work
which they alone are fitted to perform. Yet to let them send forth boys
and girls alert in mind and loose in character is something which no
community will long endure.
Until one has clearly faced these alternative perplexities he is in no
condition to advise about grafting morality into a school curriculum;
for until then he will be pretty sure to be misled by the popular notion
of morality as a thing apart, demanding separate study, a topic like
geography or English literature. But the morality nutritious for
school-children is nothing of this kind. No additional hour need be
provided for its teaching. In teaching anything, we teach it. A false
antithesis was therefore set up just now when we suggested that a
teacher's business was to impart knowledge rather than to fashion
character. He cannot do the one without the other. Let him be altogether
true to his scientific aims and refuse to accommodate them to anything
else; he will be all the better teacher of morality. Carlyle tells of a
carpenter who broke all the ten commandments with every stroke of his
hammer. A scholar breaks or keeps them with every lesson learned. So
conditioned on morality is the process of knowing, so inwrought is it in
the very structure of the school, that a school might well be called an
ethical instrument and its daily sessions hours for the manufacture of
character. Only the species of character manufactured will largely
depend on the teacher's acquaintance with the instrument he is using. To
increase that acquaintance and give greater deftness in the use of so
exquisite an instrument is the object of this paper. Once mastered, the
tools of his own trade will be more prized by the earnest teacher than
any additional handbook of ethics.
It will be easiest to point out the kind of moral instruction a school
is fitted to give, if we distinguish with somewhat exaggerated
sharpness its several lines of activity. A school is primarily a place
of learning; it is unavoidably a social unit, and it is incidentally a
dependent fellowship. No one of these aspects is ever absent from it.
Each affords its own opportunity for moral training. The combination of
them gives a school its power. Yet each is so detachable that it may
well become the subject of independent study.
I. A school is primarily a place of learning, and to this purpose all
else in it is rightfully subordinated. But learning is itself an act,
and one more dependent than most on moral guidance. It occurs, too, at a
period of life whose chief business is the transformation of a thing of
nature into a spiritual being. Several stages in this spiritual
transformation through which the process of learning takes us I will
point out.
A school generally gives a child his first acquaintance with an
authoritatively organized world and reveals his dependence upon it. By
nature, impulses and appetites rule him. A child is charmingly
self-centred. The world and all its ordered goings he notices merely as
ministering to his desires. Nothing but what he wishes, and wishes just
now, is important. He relates all this but little to the wishes of other
people, to the inherent fixities of things, to his own future states, to
whether one wish is compatible with another. His immediate mood is
everything. Of any difference between what is whimsical or momentary and
what is rational or permanent he is oblivious. To him dreams and fancies
are as substantial as stars, hills, or moving creatures. He has, in
short, no idea of law nor any standards of reality.