Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 74.djvu/292

288 human affection. In another and not less glorious way it has exerted a profound influence for good. It has taught the golden value of truth and candor. Beliefs, dogmas, have no place in science. More than any religion science has inculcated the love of truth for its own sake. Truth, modesty, candor! That is its creed, so far as it has any. So rare; so simple; so powerful for good! Science has patiently taught, at first to a few and now to the multitude, that the understanding of the causes of things can only come through patient and unprejudiced study. A mighty force for good has come into the world unknown to it in all its past history.

Perceiving that virtue springs from affection, it becomes possible intelligently to attack the problem of moral instruction in the schools. It would be a mistake to return to religious instruction as a basis of morality, for, as we have seen, morals do not really depend on religion and there are many tenets of the present faith which are, on the whole, distinctly detrimental or, at least, not an aid to morality. Duty, or responsibility to others, should be the key word of education. While all knowledge is a moral force, knowledge being in its nature essentially moral since it increases happiness, and while any real education is in itself a powerful aid to morality, it would be well indeed if the ideals of science could become the ideals of every one; if the love of truth and candor could permeate every individual; if the interdependence of mankind could be so clearly perceived by all that obscure crimes against the community could be recognized and detested. Above all, the whole plan of education, if it is to be efficient morally, while it stimulates the feelings of sympathy, compassion, duty and affection, must inculcate habits of logical thought, the conception of physical cause and effect, and a knowledge of the work-a-day world. For all morality has in it these three components, reason, knowledge and affection; and affection alone is instinctive and blind.

We need not worry, therefore, over the decadence of religious beliefs. All that is erroneous in such beliefs it is obviously immoral to uphold and should be got rid of as soon as possible. Unproved hypotheses, such, for example, as that of a continued, conscious existence after death, should not be taught as facts. For that man who builds his moral edifice upon such unproved beliefs is assuredly building on a doubtful foundation. What is good and worth saving in religion will be found to be working in the future side by side with science in increasing in each individual that human affection which makes man better, will he nil he, and is the really valuable thing in the characters of all of us.

Moral conduct, then, is conduct which increases human happiness. A man must be moral if he would be happy, since he has in him a fundamental instinct, the social instinct, which causes him to love his