Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/717

Rh be at full liberty to expound the laws of human life and well-being to their pupils. Let them show them what they are and what they are adapted for, and how each kind and grade of happiness—physical, intellectual, moral, personal, domestic, social—l attainable by human beings, depends on the wise and patient exercise of specific faculties and powers, on the steady pursuit of specific courses of action. Let him appeal less than has hitherto been done to the coarse and often hurtful stimulus of individual ambition, and more to the sense of comradeship and mutual good-will which is never wholly lacking in children. Let him exhibit civilization, as we now enjoy it, as the joint product of unnumbered minds and hands co-operating, often unconsciously, toward a common end; and let him point out that greater triumphs still are to be wrought in the future when the thought of the common good shall be present to every mind, and more or less sweeten every day of toil. The trouble with multitudes of men and women is that their true self-respect has never been properly aroused. Dreams of ambition may have been presented to their minds, but they have not been sedulously taught to consider themselves as capable of good things. They have heard in all probability that they have souls to be saved (or the reverse), but it has not been sufficiently impressed on them that they have characters to be refined, that they have the germs of a hundred good qualities which a little generous nurture would quicken into vigorous and beautiful life. From this point of view the old Socratic maxim, "Know thyself," acquires a new and powerful significance. To know one's self is to know one's own best capacities, and to know these is to desire to exercise them. To know one's self is to know one's weaknesses, and to know these is to be more or less on one's guard against them. In one aspect, therefore, the teaching of morals is simply the unfolding of the actual facts of human life. When the facts are once exhibited in their proper order and relation, the inferences to be drawn from them hardly require pointing out.

Far, therefore, from the teaching of morals in this sense being unsuited to the public schools, we conceive that it is precisely this that they should most earnestly concern themselves with. The system of state education is upheld on the ground that the stability of the state depends on the character of its citizens, and that this in turn depends on education. We do not now discuss that theory; we only say that a prime inference to be drawn from it is that whatever bears directly on character and conduct should take precedence, in state education, of what only bears indirectly thereon. And we hold not only that morals can be taught apart from theology, but that the less moral teaching is complicated with theology, provided only it is delivered with conviction, the better effects it will produce. We want to know the reactions that different courses of conduct produce in this world, not to speculate as to the reactions they may produce in a world of wholly different constitution. In all probability it may be difficult for a long time to come to obtain a generation of teachers capable of expounding a scientific morality with intelligence, conviction, and enthusiasm; but none the less is it clear that the only morality that can gain a permanent footing in the public schools is one capable of demonstration, one founded on the laws of life.

looking over the various departments of special scientific study mapped out in the organization of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, one searches in vain for any recognition of psychology. In the various sections provided for by the