Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/452

434 left by the outcome upon his own mind, especially the impression as to the reason for the virtue in question. The answers brought out a considerable mass of material, incidentally as well as directly. Some of this seems to me to have value beyond the immediate pedagogical occasion which called it forth, as furnishing a fairly representative sample of the motives instilled by existing methods of moral training, and the impressions which these methods leave behind.

Nine tenths of the answers may be classified under one of the following heads: The impression left by the mode of treatment was that the motive for right doing is (1) found in the consequences of the act; (2) fear of being punished; (3) simply because it is right; (4) because right doing pleases the parent, while wrongdoing displeases; (5) the religious motive. In number the religious motive predominates; next to that comes fear of punishment. In many cases, of course, several of these reasons were inculcated.

1. The regard for consequences as a reason for morality takes the form of regard either for external consequences or for intrinsic reactions—that is to say, upon the character of the agent or upon those about him. A number seem to have learned the value of obedience by observation of disagreeable results proceeding from its opposite. For example, one child was told not to take off her shoes and stockings; she disobeyed, and had croup in the night—whence, she remarks, she derived the idea that others knew more than she, and that disobedience was dangerous. Another girl was told not to wear a lawn dress to a picnic; she disobeyed, but a rain storm came up and faded it out. "From this and other similar experiences I deduced the idea that obedience was wise. Yet this was with the reservation that obedience was to be tempered with discretion, as I observed that in some instances acting upon my own judgment was justified by the outcome."

When we come to the moral motive as determined by the intrinsic results of the act, we are obviously approaching the question, so mooted upon its theoretical side, of intuitionalism versus empiricism. Nothing was said upon this point in giving out the questions; the students may fairly be presumed to have been unconscious of any such bearing in their answers, and so these may be taken as fairly free from any bias. No one reply indicates any distinct recognition of right or wrong prior to the commission of