The Moral Instruction of Children. Felix Adler
as a teacher he is bound to remain within the safe limits of his own province. He is not to explain why we should do the right, but to make the young people who are intrusted to his charge see more clearly what is right, and to instill into them his own love of and respect for the right. There is a body of moral truth upon which all good men, of whatever sect or opinion, are agreed: it is the business of the public schools to deliver to their pupils this common fund of moral truth. But I must hasten to add, to deliver it not in the style of the preacher, but according to the methods of the pedagogue – i. e., in a systematic way, the moral lessons being graded to suit the varying ages and capacities of the pupils, and the illustrative material being sorted and arranged in like manner. Conceive the modern educational methods to have been applied to that stock of moral truths which all good men accept, and you will have the material for the moral lessons which are needed in a public school.
II.
THE EFFICIENT MOTIVES OF GOOD CONDUCT
There are persons in whom moral principle seems to have completely triumphed; whose conduct, so far as one can judge, is determined solely by moral rules; but whom, nevertheless, we do not wholly admire. We feel instinctively that there is in their virtue a certain flaw – the absence of a saving grace. They are too rigorous, too much the slaves of duty. They lack geniality.
Like religion, morality has its fanatics. Thus, there is in the temperance movement a class of fanatics who look at every public question from the point of view of temperance reform, and from that only. There are also woman's-rights fanatics, social purity fanatics, etc. The moral fanatic in every case is a person whose attention is wholly engrossed by some one moral interest, and who sees this out of its relation to other moral interests. The end he has in view may be in itself highly laudable, but the exaggerated emphasis put upon it, the one-sided pursuit of it, is a mischievous error.
Observe, further, that there are degrees of moral fanaticism. The fanatic of the first degree, to whom Emerson addresses the words, "What right have you, sir, to your one virtue?" has just been described. He is a person who exalts some one moral rule at the expense of the others. A fanatic of a higher order is he who exalts the whole body of moral rules at the expense of human instincts and desires. He is a person who always acts according to rule; who introduces moral considerations into every detail of life; who rides the moral hobby; in whose eyes the infinite complexity of human affairs has only one aspect, namely, the moral; who is never satisfied unless at every step he feels the strain of the bridle of conscience; who is incapable of spontaneous action and of naïve enjoyment. It is believed that there are not a few persons of this description in the United States, and especially in the New England States – fanatics on the moral side, examples of a one-sided development in the direction of moral formalism. We must be very careful, when insisting on the authority of moral ideas, lest we encourage in the young a tendency of this sort. The hearts of children are very pliable; it is easily possible to produce on them too deep an impression: to give them at the outset a fatal twist, all the more since at a certain age many young people are prone to exaggerated introspection and self-questioning. But it may be asked: Are not moral principles really clothed with supreme authority? Ought we not, indeed, to keep the standard of righteousness constantly before our eyes; in brief, is it possible to be too moral? Evidently we have reached a point where a distinction requires to be drawn.
Ethics is a science of relations. The things related are human interests, human ends. The ideal which ethics proposes to itself is the unity of ends, just as the ideal of science is the unity of causes. The ends of the natural man are the subject-matter with which ethics deals. The ends of the natural man are not to be crushed or wiped out, but to be brought into right relations with one another. The ends of the natural man are to be respected from an ethical point of view, so long as they remain within their proper limits. The moral laws are formulas expressing relations of equality or subordination, or superordination. The moral virtue of our acts consists in the respect which we pay to the system of relationships thus prescribed, in the willingness with which we co-ordinate our interests with those of others, or subordinate them to those of others, as the exigencies of the moral situation may require.
But the point on which it is now necessary to fix our attention is that when morality has once sanctioned any of the ends of life, the natural man may be left to pursue them without interference on the part of the moralist. When morality has marked out the boundaries within which the given end shall be pursued, its work so far is done; except, indeed, that we are always to keep an eye upon those boundaries, and that the sense of their existence should pervade the whole atmosphere of our lives.3 A few illustrations will make my meaning clear. There is a moral rule which says that we should eat to live; not, conversely, live to eat. This means that we should regulate our food in such a way that the body may become a fit instrument for the higher purposes of existence, and that the time and attention bestowed upon the matter of eating shall not be so great as to divert us from other and more necessary objects. But, these limits being established, it does not follow that it is wrong or unspiritual to enjoy a meal. The senses, even the lowest of them, are permitted to have free play within the bounds prescribed. Nor, again, should we try rigidly to determine the choice of food according to moral considerations. It would be ridiculous to attempt to do so. The choice of food within a wide range depends entirely on taste, and has nothing to do with moral considerations (whether, for instance, we should have squash or beans for dinner). Those who are deeply impressed with the importance of moral rules are often betrayed into applying them to the veriest minutiæ of conduct. Did they remember that ethics is a science of relations, or, what amounts to the same thing, a science of limits, they would be saved such pedantry. Undoubtedly there are moral adiaphora. The fact that such exist has been a stumbling-block in the way of those who believe that morality ought to cover the whole of conduct. The definition of ethics as a science of relations or limits removes this stumbling-block. Ethics stands at the frontier. With what goes on in the interior it does not interfere, except in so far as the limitations it prescribes are an interference. Take another illustration. Ethics condemns vanity and whatever ministers to vanity – as, e. g., undue attention to dress and adornment of the person – on the ground that this implies an immoral subordination of the inner to the outer, of the higher to the lesser ends. But, to lay down a cast-iron rule as to how much one has a right to expend on dress, can not be the office of ethics, on account of the infinite variety of conditions and occupations which subsists among men. And the attempt to prescribe a single fashion of dress, by sumptuary laws or otherwise, would impair that freedom of taste which it is the business of the moralist to respect. Again, every one knows with what bitterness the moral rigorists of all ages have condemned the impulse which attracts the sexes toward one another, and how often they have tried, though vainly, to crush it. But here, again, the true attitude is indicated by the definition of ethics as a science of limits. The moral law prescribes bounds within which this emotional force shall be free to operate, and claims for it the holy name of love, so long as it remains within the bounds prescribed, and, being within, remains conscious of them. That is what is meant when we speak of spiritualizing the feelings. The feelings are spiritualized when they move within certain limits, and when the sense of the existence of these limits penetrates them, and thereby imparts to them a new and nobler quality. And, because such limitation is felt to be satisfying and elevating, the system of correlations which we call ethical, and which, abstractly stated, would fail to interest, does by this means find an entrance into the human heart, and awakens in it the sense of the sublimity and the blessedness of the moral commands.
There are two defects of the moral fanatic which can now be signalized: First, he wrongly believes that whatever is not of morality is against it. He therefore is tempted to frown upon the natural pleasures; to banish them if he can, and, if not, to admit them only within the narrowest possible limits as a reluctant concession to the weakness of human nature. In consequence, the moral fanatic commits the enormity of introducing the taint of the sense of sin into the most innocent enjoyments, and thus perverts and distorts the conscience. Secondly, he is always inclined to seek a moral reason for that which has only a natural one; to forget that, like the great conquerors of antiquity, Morality respects the laws of the several realms which it unites into a single empire, and guarantees to each the unimpaired maintenance of its local customs. These remarks are intended to serve as a general caution. I find that young people, when
It must be remembered also that our knowledge of the right ethical relations is still extremely imperfect, and that the duty of extending the knowledge and promoting the recognition of them is perhaps the highest of all – to which, on occasion, every lesser end must be sacrificed.