Page:Philosophical Review Volume 9.djvu/236

220 There are certain fundamental modes of activity which determine the intellectual and sensible future of the child, and it is very essential that the educator should know how these activities operate. He should discover what tendencies are pernicious or advantageous; he should examine the danger and aids which the special environment offers to each child. In the cradle the child represents only a bundle of natural activities given by heredity; these are to be moulded into the best possible unitary and stable character which environment and education can afford.

The author offers a contribution to the question raised by Fowler in regard to the Ethics of intellectual life and work. Fowler maintains that, under the influence of the Church, the moderns are not so free to seek truth as were the ancients. But this needs modification. Others besides the Christian Church have set barriers to truth-seeking, viz., Greeks, Romans, Jews, and Moslems, as well as many others. In the case of the two last-named, and of Christianity, the chief reason is that they rest on sacred books which rank as conventionally inviolable. But the very fact of intolerance indicates a keener concern about truth than could be found elsewhere. In history, the necessity of freedom from bias has been urged by Plato, Aristotle, the Gospels, Paul, Bacon, Descartes, and others. Bacon pleaded for "minds washed free from opinions." Spinoza, on the other hand, urged that belief follows knowledge, though he later recognized the fact that desire and passion also sway men's choice. Kant was strangely inconsistent, sometimes urging his a priori conception of duty, and again urging acquiescence in convention. Mill and Clifford also urge open-mindedness, though the latter goes too far; for non-belief on all matters not fully investigated is impossible. He does not practise it himself. James, on the other hand, in The Will to Believe, pleads for a freedom to believe in the indemonstrable, especially in matters religious, though he admits that in matters scientific there is scarcely ever any excuse for believing without evidence. The author concludes by saying that the ideal is to develop some measure of the temper now held to be imperative in science, where, in the main, men escape the "tincture of passion."

We must examine the actions and motives commonly called 'good' and 'bad,' and try to discover their underlying principle. Then we can deduce an ethical system. First, we must determine the characteristic quality of the moral law. This forbids actions detrimental to others, and ordains