the facts; and that the farther one strays away, the more dangerous it becomes, and almost inevitably leads to self-deception. The attitude of mind which training in science tends to cultivate has been illustrated sufficiently for our purpose. The moral aspects of it seem to me to be quite evident even in this partial analysis. It is open to the truth; it seeks for trustworthy evidence in reference to it; if necessary, it strives to strip off the husks of human opinion that it may get at the kernel; and when found it accepts it with ardor. It may be well, however, to carry the subject forward to a more definite stage. Without pretending any knowledge of the philosophy of morality, and still more ignorant of its terminology, I wish to indicate the attitude of the scientific mind towards those questions that affect personal and social conduct. The problem is to develop an effective man and an effective social order. From the standpoint of science, the various moral codes that have been formulated do not have any suggestion of commands. They are attempted statements of truth, which, therefore, must be tested. To take an extreme illustration, the set of moral principles contained in the Ten Commandments or in the Sermon on the Mount are not authoritative because they are commanded, but because they are true. Science would never raise the question whether the Ten Commandments or the Sermon on the Mount are "binding" upon this nation or upon that, or upon this generation or upon some other; but simply whether they contain principles essential to a well-ordered individual or society; if so, they are true and always apply everywhere, just as does what we call the "law of gravitation." Newton has the reputation of having announced the law of gravitation, which science prefers to call a mode of operation rather than a "law"; but I presume that no one would say that this law is binding upon us because Newton announced it. The world, like the individual, grows in knowledge; and the childhood of the race received as commands what maturity recognizes as statements of eternal truth, infinitely more binding than any commands could be. There is no resenting truth or no quibbling about it; and obedience is imperative. Moral truth, therefore, has the eternal and binding qualities of the truths of nature, which we call laws. I count this scientific attitude towards morality to be a distinct contribution towards its enforcement. I recognize freely that when this compelling power of knowledge is reinforced by the attraction of a noble emotion there is a tremendous gain, but such a reinforcement is the peculiar function of the Christian religion. As a further illustration, showing how science reinforces religion as a teacher of morality, it may not be out of place to outline a scientific approach to the fundamentals of morality and even of Christianity, an approach that has proved satisfactory to many students trained in science. If a plant is to develop to the fullest possible vigor, it must establish effective relationships with its surroundings, otherwise it will be a failure. A green leaf, to be strong and useful, must establish relations with the air and the sunshine. If a root seeks to establish the same relations, it will be a failure, but relations with the soil will make it strong and useful. This very well-known biological law furnishes a clue to the problem of a strong and effective human life. It must establish effective relationships with its necessary environment. The first step is to discover what are the dominating factors in the environment of a human life. At least two conspicuous factors are one's self and one's fellow-men. The problem, then, is to discover the most effective adjustment to these factors, an adjustment that means growth and the highest expression of the human powers; in other words, making the most of one's self. The next step is to discover illustrations of the most effective lives, and at this point the perspective of the investigator comes into play. Compelled to consider the things that really make life worth the living, the things that are to give a quiet mind in the retrospect, it is rare that the most desirable lives are not chosen. Pressing the search for the completed exemplification of the most effective life, the lines all focus in the person of Jesus Christ, and this quite apart from any peculiar claim made for him by Christians. I have found absolute unanimity in the judgment that no life, in all that makes for strength and effectiveness, has approached that of Jesus Christ. It seems to be a human life at the limit of its capacity. The next step in the investigation is to discover the solution offered by such a life to the problem of effective adjustment of one's self and to one's fellow-men. No questions of authenticity enter into such an investigation; for even if such a person never existed, the character is clearly drawn, and it stands as a definite conception of the finest possible man. The investigator recognizes that he himself is a bundle of contradictory impulses, all of which cannot dominate, and some of which must. The grosser ones he recognizes offhand as dangerous, and they are eliminated from the investigation. But among the finer ones, to choose that one to dominate which will make the most effective life is not so easy. An investigation of the personal character of Christ reveals the fact that He selected unselfishness to dominate, a selection that squarely holds in check the strongest natural impulses. The difficulty of this adjustment is unquestionable; no more difficult one could be suggested; but it means the difference between the sun pulling everything to itself, and the sun radiating light and energy in every direction. Testing the conclusion by the lives that have actually touched his own, the investigator finds abundant confirmation, for the effective lives are essentially radiating centers of energy. The problem of one's effective adjustment to his fellow-men is even more perplexing; but the model studied says clearly that the answer is service, not service that seeks a return, but service prompted by love. And again, personal observation says that this is true. Perhaps you are not aware of the strong appeal that love as a stimulus to right conduct makes to the scientific mind. The scientific man is accustomed to stimuli and their responses, and he is fully alive to the fact that all that is finest in human conduct is a response to the stimulus of love. Therefore, in a religion whose basic principle is love, and whose God is the personification of infinite love, he recognizes an influence on personal character and on social order that must regenerate both when fully applied. Thus the effective adjustments are found, and the life that seeks to develop by selecting unselfishness and service as dominant principles is well started on its way towards religion. I wish to remind you again that this is no fancy sketch of what might occur and probably never has occurred, but a very brief statement of the successive steps that have often been taken by men whose training demands an approach of this kind or none at all. It is not clear to me that you will regard such results as of very large value, especially if you are not familiar with the scientific attitude of mind and the steps it must take to reach a conclusion that brings conviction and self-application. And yet it means to me that the scientific mind is open to moral truth, is incapable of being diverted from it by prejudice or second-hand opinion, and is compelled to accept and apply it when recognized. It is an attitude of mind peculiarly intolerant of sham or of cant, and likely to brush aside unessentials that do not seem such to all; but this comes not only from its training, but is also one of the things it has learned to admire in the life of Jesus Christ. I am afraid that it is little interested in theologies, for their data, methods, and conclusions are to it like a foreign tongue; but I make bold to say that it is immensely interested in morality and religion, and none appeals to it so strongly as does the morality and religion of Jesus Christ. It is impossible to overestimate the effect of the scientific spirit, which dominates modern scholarship, upon that general attitude of mind that is making the world at large more sane and better able to repress unbalanced thinking. From this point of view, it would seem as though scholarship had at last entered upon its serious mission of curbing the irrelevant emotions of mankind, and of introducing that intellectual domination which must analyze problems to their ultimate factors and construct general systems of belief that are rational and effective. THE ETHICAL EDUCATION OF PUBLIC OPINION PRESIDENT HENRY S. PRITCHETT, PH.D., LL.D. In a sense, this question includes all other questions of education, for in our day public opinion has come to be the supreme intellectual and moral force of civilization. In a state of religious and civil freedom such as we enjoy in America, public opinion is nothing other than the gradually forming, gradually advancing conscience of the nation and of the race. It is worth noting that we give to this universal conscience sometimes one name, sometimes another. When men speak to-day of Christianity, they sometimes mean nothing other than this race conscience, for in its wider sense Christianity to-day is no longer a matter of church or of dogma; it is an expression of the spiritual life of a race, as determined by the gradually growing conscience of humanity. The question is, How shall this public opinion, this race conscience, affected by a thousand influences of our complex modern life, - how shall this conscience of a nation be educated so that it may grow steadily toward strong and true ethical standards? Men have been trying to answer this question for two thousand years; but in the last quarter of a century they have been trying to answer it under conditions so vastly different from those of the centuries before, that a very brief reference to them seems necessary for any consideration whatsoever of the question itself. The essential difference between those conditions is this: we men of to-day - and again I speak to college men have entered into a state of intellectual and religious freedom which the world never before knew. Up to the middle of the last century men's thinking and men's consciences, were, in great measure, limited by considerations of authority and of organization. There are still men, and men of the highest intelligence, who are willing to submit their thinking and their conscience to the limits of religious authority or of religious dogma, and are happy in it. With such men the scholar who strives toward a larger religious life can have no quarrel. But for the great body of college men, for the great mass of scholars, the day of authority in religious thinking has gone by. We stand in a world of complete intellectual and religious freedom, in which each man acknowledges no higher authority than the standard of his own |