Since morality is concerned with conduct, any dualisms which are set
up between mind and activity must reflect themselves in the theory of
morals. Since the formulations of the separation in the philosophic
theory of morals are used to justify and idealize the practices employed
in moral training, a brief critical discussion is in place. It is a
commonplace of educational theory that the establishing of character is
a comprehensive aim of school instruction and discipline. Hence it is
important that we should be on our guard against a conception of the
relations of intelligence to character which hampers the realization
of the aim, and on the look-out for the conditions which have to be
provided in order that the aim may be successfully acted upon. The first
obstruction which meets us is the currency of moral ideas which
split the course of activity into two opposed factors, often named
respectively the inner and outer, or the spiritual and the physical.
This division is a culmination of the dualism of mind and the world,
soul and body, end and means, which we have so frequently noted. In
morals it takes the form of a sharp demarcation of the motive of
action from its consequences, and of character from conduct. Motive and
character are regarded as something purely "inner," existing exclusively
in consciousness, while consequences and conduct are regarded as outside
of mind, conduct having to do simply with the movements which carry out
motives; consequences with what happens as a result. Different schools
identify morality with either the inner state of mind or the outer act
and results, each in separation from the other. Action with a purpose is
deliberate; it involves a consciously foreseen end and a mental weighing
of considerations pro and eon. It also involves a conscious state of
longing or desire for the end. The deliberate choice of an aim and of
a settled disposition of desire takes time. During this time complete
overt action is suspended. A person who does not have his mind made up,
does not know what to do. Consequently he postpones definite action
so far as possible. His position may be compared to that of a man
considering jumping across a ditch. If he were sure he could or could
not make it, definite activity in some direction would occur. But if
he considers, he is in doubt; he hesitates. During the time in which a
single overt line of action is in suspense, his activities are confined
to such redistributions of energy within the organism as will prepare
a determinate course of action. He measures the ditch with his eyes;
he brings himself taut to get a feel of the energy at his disposal; he
looks about for other ways across, he reflects upon the importance of
getting across. All this means an accentuation of consciousness; it
means a turning in upon the individual's own attitudes, powers, wishes,
etc.
Obviously, however, this surging up of personal factors into conscious
recognition is a part of the whole activity in its temporal development.
There is not first a purely psychical process, followed abruptly by
a radically different physical one. There is one continuous behavior,
proceeding from a more uncertain, divided, hesitating state to a more
overt, determinate, or complete state. The activity at first consists
mainly of certain tensions and adjustments within the organism; as
these are coordinated into a unified attitude, the organism as a whole
acts--some definite act is undertaken. We may distinguish, of course,
the more explicitly conscious phase of the continuous activity as mental
or psychical. But that only identifies the mental or psychical to mean
the indeterminate, formative state of an activity which in its fullness
involves putting forth of overt energy to modify the environment.
Our conscious thoughts, observations, wishes, aversions are important,
because they represent inchoate, nascent activities. They fulfill their
destiny in issuing, later on, into specific and perceptible acts. And
these inchoate, budding organic readjustments are important because
they are our sole escape from the dominion of routine habits and
blind impulse. They are activities having a new meaning in process
of development. Hence, normally, there is an accentuation of personal
consciousness whenever our instincts and ready formed habits find
themselves blocked by novel conditions. Then we are thrown back upon
ourselves to reorganize our own attitude before proceeding to a definite
and irretrievable course of action. Unless we try to drive our way
through by sheer brute force, we must modify our organic resources to
adapt them to the specific features of the situation in which we find
ourselves. The conscious deliberating and desiring which precede overt
action are, then, the methodic personal readjustment implied in activity
in uncertain situations. This role of mind in continuous activity is not
always maintained, however. Desires for something different, aversion to
the given state of things caused by the blocking of successful activity,
stimulates the imagination. The picture of a different state of things
does not always function to aid ingenious observation and recollection
to find a way out and on. Except where there is a disciplined
disposition, the tendency is for the imagination to run loose. Instead
of its objects being checked up by conditions with reference to their
practicability in execution, they are allowed to develop because of
the immediate emotional satisfaction which they yield. When we find the
successful display of our energies checked by uncongenial surroundings,
natural and social, the easiest way out is to build castles in the air
and let them be a substitute for an actual achievement which involves
the pains of thought. So in overt action we acquiesce, and build up
an imaginary world in, mind. This break between thought and conduct is
reflected in those theories which make a sharp separation between mind
as inner and conduct and consequences as merely outer.
For the split may be more than an incident of a particular individual's
experience. The social situation may be such as to throw the class
given to articulate reflection back into their own thoughts and desires
without providing the means by which these ideas and aspirations can
be used to reorganize the environment. Under such conditions, men
take revenge, as it were, upon the alien and hostile environment by
cultivating contempt for it, by giving it a bad name. They seek refuge
and consolation within their own states of mind, their own imaginings
and wishes, which they compliment by calling both more real and more
ideal than the despised outer world. Such periods have recurred in
history. In the early centuries of the Christian era, the influential
moral systems of Stoicism, of monastic and popular Christianity and
other religious movements of the day, took shape under the influence of
such conditions. The more action which might express prevailing ideals
was checked, the more the inner possession and cultivation of ideals was
regarded as self-sufficient--as the essence of morality. The external
world in which activity belongs was thought of as morally indifferent.
Everything lay in having the right motive, even though that motive
was not a moving force in the world. Much the same sort of situation
recurred in Germany in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries; it led to the Kantian insistence upon the good will as
the sole moral good, the will being regarded as something complete in
itself, apart from action and from the changes or consequences effected
in the world. Later it led to any idealization of existing institutions
as themselves the embodiment of reason.
The purely internal morality of "meaning well," of having a good
disposition regardless of what comes of it, naturally led to a reaction.
This is generally known as either hedonism or utilitarianism. It was
said in effect that the important thing morally is not what a man is
inside of his own consciousness, but what he does--the consequences
which issue, the charges he actually effects. Inner morality was
attacked as sentimental, arbitrary, dogmatic, subjective--as giving men
leave to dignify and shield any dogma congenial to their self-interest
or any caprice occurring to imagination by calling it an intuition or an
ideal of conscience. Results, conduct, are what counts; they afford
the sole measure of morality. Ordinary morality, and hence that of the
schoolroom, is likely to be an inconsistent compromise of both views.
On one hand, certain states of feeling are made much of; the individual
must "mean well," and if his intentions are good, if he had the right
sort of emotional consciousness, he may be relieved of responsibility
for full results in conduct. But since, on the other hand, certain
things have to be done to meet the convenience and the requirements of
others, and of social order in general, there is great insistence upon
the doing of certain things, irrespective of whether the individual has
any concern or intelligence in their doing. He must toe the mark; he
must have his nose held to the grindstone; he must obey; he must form
useful habits; he must learn self-control,--all of these precepts being
understood in a way which emphasizes simply the immediate thing tangibly
done, irrespective of the spirit of thought and desire in which it is
done, and irrespective therefore of its effect upon other less obvious
doings.
It is hoped that the prior discussion has sufficiently elaborated the
method by which both of these evils are avoided. One or both of these
evils must result wherever individuals, whether young or old, cannot
engage in a progressively cumulative undertaking under conditions which
engage their interest and require their reflection. For only in such
cases is it possible that the disposition of desire and thinking should
be an organic factor in overt and obvious conduct. Given a consecutive
activity embodying the student's own interest, where a definite result
is to be obtained, and where neither routine habit nor the following of
dictated directions nor capricious improvising will suffice, and
there the rise of conscious purpose, conscious desire, and deliberate
reflection are inevitable. They are inevitable as the spirit and quality
of an activity having specific consequences, not as forming an isolated
realm of inner consciousness.
2. The Opposition of Duty and Interest. Probably there is no antithesis
more often set up in moral discussion than that between acting
from "principle" and from "interest." To act on principle is to act
disinterestedly, according to a general law, which is above all personal
considerations. To act according to interest is, so the allegation runs,
to act selfishly, with one's own personal profit in view. It substitutes
the changing expediency of the moment for devotion to unswerving moral
law. The false idea of interest underlying this opposition has already
been criticized (See Chapter X), but some moral aspects of the question
will now be considered. A clew to the matter may be found in the fact
that the supporters of the "interest" side of the controversy habitually
use the term "self-interest." Starting from the premises that unless
there is interest in an object or idea, there is no motive force, they
end with the conclusion that even when a person claims to be acting from
principle or from a sense of duty, he really acts as he does because
there "is something in it" for himself. The premise is sound; the
conclusion false. In reply the other school argues that since man is
capable of generous self-forgetting and even self-sacrificing action, he
is capable of acting without interest. Again the premise is sound, and
the conclusion false. The error on both sides lies in a false notion of
the relation of interest and the self.
Both sides assume that the self is a fixed and hence isolated quantity.
As a consequence, there is a rigid dilemma between acting for an
interest of the self and without interest. If the self is something
fixed antecedent to action, then acting from interest means trying to
get more in the way of possessions for the self--whether in the way
of fame, approval of others, power over others, pecuniary profit, or
pleasure. Then the reaction from this view as a cynical depreciation
of human nature leads to the view that men who act nobly act with no
interest at all. Yet to an unbiased judgment it would appear plain that
a man must be interested in what he is doing or he would not do it. A
physician who continues to serve the sick in a plague at almost certain
danger to his own life must be interested in the efficient performance
of his profession--more interested in that than in the safety of his
own bodily life. But it is distorting facts to say that this interest
is merely a mask for an interest in something else which he gets by
continuing his customary services--such as money or good repute or
virtue; that it is only a means to an ulterior selfish end. The moment
we recognize that the self is not something ready-made, but something
in continuous formation through choice of action, the whole situation
clears up. A man's interest in keeping at his work in spite of danger to
life means that his self is found in that work; if he finally gave up,
and preferred his personal safety or comfort, it would mean that he
preferred to be that kind of a self. The mistake lies in making a
separation between interest and self, and supposing that the latter
is the end to which interest in objects and acts and others is a mere
means. In fact, self and interest are two names for the same fact;
the kind and amount of interest actively taken in a thing reveals
and measures the quality of selfhood which exists. Bear in mind that
interest means the active or moving identity of the self with a certain
object, and the whole alleged dilemma falls to the ground.
Unselfishness, for example, signifies neither lack of interest in
what is done (that would mean only machine-like indifference) nor
selflessness--which would mean absence of virility and character. As
employed everywhere outside of this particular theoretical controversy,
the term "unselfishness" refers to the kind of aims and objects which
habitually interest a man. And if we make a mental survey of the kind
of interests which evoke the use of this epithet, we shall see that
they have two intimately associated features. (i) The generous self
consciously identifies itself with the full range of relationships
implied in its activity, instead of drawing a sharp line between itself
and considerations which are excluded as alien or indifferent; (ii)
it readjusts and expands its past ideas of itself to take in new
consequences as they become perceptible. When the physician began
his career he may not have thought of a pestilence; he may not have
consciously identified himself with service under such conditions. But,
if he has a normally growing or active self, when he finds that his
vocation involves such risks, he willingly adopts them as integral
portions of his activity. The wider or larger self which means inclusion
instead of denial of relationships is identical with a self which
enlarges in order to assume previously unforeseen ties.
In such crises of readjustment--and the crisis may be slight as well
as great--there may be a transitional conflict of "principle" with
"interest." It is the nature of a habit to involve ease in the
accustomed line of activity. It is the nature of a readjusting of habit
to involve an effort which is disagreeable--something to which a man
has deliberately to hold himself. In other words, there is a tendency to
identify the self--or take interest--in what one has got used to, and to
turn away the mind with aversion or irritation when an unexpected thing
which involves an unpleasant modification of habit comes up. Since
in the past one has done one's duty without having to face such a
disagreeable circumstance, why not go on as one has been? To yield to
this temptation means to narrow and isolate the thought of the self--to
treat it as complete. Any habit, no matter how efficient in the past,
which has become set, may at any time bring this temptation with it. To
act from principle in such an emergency is not to act on some abstract
principle, or duty at large; it is to act upon the principle of a course
of action, instead of upon the circumstances which have attended it. The
principle of a physician's conduct is its animating aim and spirit--the
care for the diseased. The principle is not what justifies an activity,
for the principle is but another name for the continuity of the
activity. If the activity as manifested in its consequences is
undesirable, to act upon principle is to accentuate its evil. And a man
who prides himself upon acting upon principle is likely to be a man who
insists upon having his own way without learning from experience what
is the better way. He fancies that some abstract principle justifies
his course of action without recognizing that his principle needs
justification.
Assuming, however, that school conditions are such as to provide
desirable occupations, it is interest in the occupation as a whole--that
is, in its continuous development--which keeps a pupil at his work in
spite of temporary diversions and unpleasant obstacles. Where there is
no activity having a growing significance, appeal to principle is either
purely verbal, or a form of obstinate pride or an appeal to extraneous
considerations clothed with a dignified title. Undoubtedly there are
junctures where momentary interest ceases and attention flags, and
where reinforcement is needed. But what carries a person over these hard
stretches is not loyalty to duty in the abstract, but interest in his
occupation. Duties are "offices"--they are the specific acts needed for
the fulfilling of a function--or, in homely language--doing one's job.
And the man who is genuinely interested in his job is the man who
is able to stand temporary discouragement, to persist in the face of
obstacles, to take the lean with the fat: he makes an interest out of
meeting and overcoming difficulties and distraction.
3. Intelligence and Character. A noteworthy paradox often accompanies
discussions of morals. On the one hand, there is an identification of
the moral with the rational. Reason is set up as a faculty from which
proceed ultimate moral intuitions, and sometimes, as in the Kantian
theory, it is said to supply the only proper moral motive. On the
other hand, the value of concrete, everyday intelligence is constantly
underestimated, and even deliberately depreciated. Morals is often
thought to be an affair with which ordinary knowledge has nothing to
do. Moral knowledge is thought to be a thing apart, and conscience is
thought of as something radically different from consciousness. This
separation, if valid, is of especial significance for education.
Moral education in school is practically hopeless when we set up the
development of character as a supreme end, and at the same time treat
the acquiring of knowledge and the development of understanding, which
of necessity occupy the chief part of school time, as having nothing
to do with character. On such a basis, moral education is inevitably
reduced to some kind of catechetical instruction, or lessons about
morals. Lessons "about morals" signify as matter of course lessons
in what other people think about virtues and duties. It amounts to
something only in the degree in which pupils happen to be already
animated by a sympathetic and dignified regard for the sentiments of
others. Without such a regard, it has no more influence on character
than information about the mountains of Asia; with a servile regard, it
increases dependence upon others, and throws upon those in authority the
responsibility for conduct. As a matter of fact, direct instruction in
morals has been effective only in social groups where it was a part of
the authoritative control of the many by the few. Not the teaching as
such but the reinforcement of it by the whole regime of which it was
an incident made it effective. To attempt to get similar results from
lessons about morals in a democratic society is to rely upon sentimental
magic.
At the other end of the scale stands the Socratic-Platonic teaching
which identifies knowledge and virtue--which holds that no man does evil
knowingly but only because of ignorance of the good. This doctrine is
commonly attacked on the ground that nothing is more common than for a
man to know the good and yet do the bad: not knowledge, but habituation
or practice, and motive are what is required. Aristotle, in fact, at
once attacked the Platonic teaching on the ground that moral virtue is
like an art, such as medicine; the experienced practitioner is better
than a man who has theoretical knowledge but no practical experience of
disease and remedies. The issue turns, however, upon what is meant by
knowledge. Aristotle's objection ignored the gist of Plato's teaching to
the effect that man could not attain a theoretical insight into the
good except as he had passed through years of practical habituation and
strenuous discipline. Knowledge of the good was not a thing to be got
either from books or from others, but was achieved through a prolonged
education. It was the final and culminating grace of a mature experience
of life. Irrespective of Plato's position, it is easy to perceive that
the term knowledge is used to denote things as far apart as intimate
and vital personal realization,--a conviction gained and tested in
experience,--and a second-handed, largely symbolic, recognition that
persons in general believe so and so--a devitalized remote information.
That the latter does not guarantee conduct, that it does not profoundly
affect character, goes without saying. But if knowledge means something
of the same sort as our conviction gained by trying and testing that
sugar is sweet and quinine bitter, the case stands otherwise. Every time
a man sits on a chair rather than on a stove, carries an umbrella when
it rains, consults a doctor when ill--or in short performs any of the
thousand acts which make up his daily life, he proves that knowledge of
a certain kind finds direct issue in conduct. There is every reason to
suppose that the same sort of knowledge of good has a like expression;
in fact "good" is an empty term unless it includes the satisfactions
experienced in such situations as those mentioned. Knowledge that other
persons are supposed to know something might lead one to act so as to
win the approbation others attach to certain actions, or at least so
as to give others the impression that one agrees with them; there is no
reason why it should lead to personal initiative and loyalty in behalf
of the beliefs attributed to them.
It is not necessary, accordingly, to dispute about the proper meaning
of the term knowledge. It is enough for educational purposes to note
the different qualities covered by the one name, to realize that it
is knowledge gained at first hand through the exigencies of experience
which affects conduct in significant ways. If a pupil learns things
from books simply in connection with school lessons and for the sake of
reciting what he has learned when called upon, then knowledge will have
effect upon some conduct--namely upon that of reproducing statements at
the demand of others. There is nothing surprising that such "knowledge"
should not have much influence in the life out of school. But this is
not a reason for making a divorce between knowledge and conduct, but for
holding in low esteem this kind of knowledge. The same thing may be
said of knowledge which relates merely to an isolated and technical
specialty; it modifies action but only in its own narrow line. In truth,
the problem of moral education in the schools is one with the problem of
securing knowledge--the knowledge connected with the system of impulses
and habits. For the use to which any known fact is put depends upon its
connections. The knowledge of dynamite of a safecracker may be identical
in verbal form with that of a chemist; in fact, it is different, for it
is knit into connection with different aims and habits, and thus has a
different import.
Our prior discussion of subject-matter as proceeding from direct
activity having an immediate aim, to the enlargement of meaning found in
geography and history, and then to scientifically organized knowledge,
was based upon the idea of maintaining a vital connection between
knowledge and activity. What is learned and employed in an occupation
having an aim and involving cooperation with others is moral knowledge,
whether consciously so regarded or not. For it builds up a social
interest and confers the intelligence needed to make that interest
effective in practice. Just because the studies of the curriculum
represent standard factors in social life, they are organs of initiation
into social values. As mere school studies, their acquisition has only
a technical worth. Acquired under conditions where their social
significance is realized, they feed moral interest and develop moral
insight. Moreover, the qualities of mind discussed under the topic
of method of learning are all of them intrinsically moral qualities.
Open-mindedness, single-mindedness, sincerity, breadth of outlook,
thoroughness, assumption of responsibility for developing the
consequences of ideas which are accepted, are moral traits. The habit
of identifying moral characteristics with external conformity to
authoritative prescriptions may lead us to ignore the ethical value of
these intellectual attitudes, but the same habit tends to reduce morals
to a dead and machinelike routine. Consequently while such an attitude
has moral results, the results are morally undesirable--above all in a
democratic society where so much depends upon personal disposition.
4. The Social and the Moral. All of the separations which we have been
criticizing--and which the idea of education set forth in the
previous chapters is designed to avoid--spring from taking morals too
narrowly,--giving them, on one side, a sentimental goody-goody turn
without reference to effective ability to do what is socially needed,
and, on the other side, overemphasizing convention and tradition so
as to limit morals to a list of definitely stated acts. As a matter of
fact, morals are as broad as acts which concern our relationships with
others. And potentially this includes all our acts, even though their
social bearing may not be thought of at the time of performance. For
every act, by the principle of habit, modifies disposition--it sets up
a certain kind of inclination and desire. And it is impossible to tell
when the habit thus strengthened may have a direct and perceptible
influence on our association with others. Certain traits of character
have such an obvious connection with our social relationships that we
call them "moral" in an emphatic sense--truthfulness, honesty, chastity,
amiability, etc. But this only means that they are, as compared with
some other attitudes, central:--that they carry other attitudes with
them. They are moral in an emphatic sense not because they are isolated
and exclusive, but because they are so intimately connected with
thousands of other attitudes which we do not explicitly recognize--which
perhaps we have not even names for. To call them virtues in their
isolation is like taking the skeleton for the living body. The bones
are certainly important, but their importance lies in the fact that they
support other organs of the body in such a way as to make them capable
of integrated effective activity. And the same is true of the qualities
of character which we specifically designate virtues. Morals concern
nothing less than the whole character, and the whole character is
identical with the man in all his concrete make-up and manifestations.
To possess virtue does not signify to have cultivated a few namable
and exclusive traits; it means to be fully and adequately what one is
capable of becoming through association with others in all the offices
of life.
The moral and the social quality of conduct are, in the last analysis,
identical with each other. It is then but to restate explicitly
the import of our earlier chapters regarding the social function of
education to say that the measure of the worth of the administration,
curriculum, and methods of instruction of the school is the extent to
which they are animated by a social spirit. And the great danger which
threatens school work is the absence of conditions which make possible
a permeating social spirit; this is the great enemy of effective moral
training. For this spirit can be actively present only when certain
conditions are met.
(i) In the first place, the school must itself be a community life
in all which that implies. Social perceptions and interests can be
developed only in a genuinely social medium--one where there is give and
take in the building up of a common experience. Informational statements
about things can be acquired in relative isolation by any one who
previously has had enough intercourse with others to have learned
language. But realization of the meaning of the linguistic signs is
quite another matter. That involves a context of work and play in
association with others. The plea which has been made for education
through continued constructive activities in this book rests upon the
fact they afford an opportunity for a social atmosphere. In place of a
school set apart from life as a place for learning lessons, we have
a miniature social group in which study and growth are incidents of
present shared experience. Playgrounds, shops, workrooms, laboratories
not only direct the natural active tendencies of youth, but they
involve intercourse, communication, and cooperation,--all extending the
perception of connections.
(ii) The learning in school should be continuous with that out of
school. There should be a free interplay between the two. This is
possible only when there are numerous points of contact between the
social interests of the one and of the other. A school is conceivable in
which there should be a spirit of companionship and shared activity,
but where its social life would no more represent or typify that of the
world beyond the school walls than that of a monastery. Social concern
and understanding would be developed, but they would not be available
outside; they would not carry over. The proverbial separation of
town and gown, the cultivation of academic seclusion, operate in
this direction. So does such adherence to the culture of the past as
generates a reminiscent social spirit, for this makes an individual feel
more at home in the life of other days than in his own. A professedly
cultural education is peculiarly exposed to this danger. An idealized
past becomes the refuge and solace of the spirit; present-day concerns
are found sordid, and unworthy of attention. But as a rule, the absence
of a social environment in connection with which learning is a need and
a reward is the chief reason for the isolation of the school; and this
isolation renders school knowledge inapplicable to life and so infertile
in character.
A narrow and moralistic view of morals is responsible for the failure to
recognize that all the aims and values which are desirable in education
are themselves moral. Discipline, natural development, culture, social
efficiency, are moral traits--marks of a person who is a worthy member
of that society which it is the business of education to further. There
is an old saying to the effect that it is not enough for a man to be
good; he must be good for something. The something for which a man must
be good is capacity to live as a social member so that what he gets from
living with others balances with what he contributes. What he gets and
gives as a human being, a being with desires, emotions, and ideas, is
not external possessions, but a widening and deepening of conscious
life--a more intense, disciplined, and expanding realization of
meanings. What he materially receives and gives is at most opportunities
and means for the evolution of conscious life. Otherwise, it is neither
giving nor taking, but a shifting about of the position of things in
space, like the stirring of water and sand with a stick. Discipline,
culture, social efficiency, personal refinement, improvement of
character are but phases of the growth of capacity nobly to share in
such a balanced experience. And education is not a mere means to such a
life. Education is such a life. To maintain capacity for such education
is the essence of morals. For conscious life is a continual beginning
afresh.
Summary. The most important problem of moral education in the school
concerns the relationship of knowledge and conduct. For unless the
learning which accrues in the regular course of study affects character,
it is futile to conceive the moral end as the unifying and culminating
end of education. When there is no intimate organic connection between
the methods and materials of knowledge and moral growth, particular
lessons and modes of discipline have to be resorted to: knowledge is
not integrated into the usual springs of action and the outlook on life,
while morals become moralistic--a scheme of separate virtues.
The two theories chiefly associated with the separation of learning
from activity, and hence from morals, are those which cut off inner
disposition and motive--the conscious personal factor--and deeds
as purely physical and outer; and which set action from interest
in opposition to that from principle. Both of these separations are
overcome in an educational scheme where learning is the accompaniment of
continuous activities or occupations which have a social aim and utilize
the materials of typical social situations. For under such conditions,
the school becomes itself a form of social life, a miniature community
and one in close interaction with other modes of associated experience
beyond school walls. All education which develops power to share
effectively in social life is moral. It forms a character which not only
does the particular deed socially necessary but one which is interested
in that continuous readjustment which is essential to growth. Interest
in learning from all the contacts of life is the essential moral
interest.