The Moral Instruction of Children by Felix Adler (read after txt) 📕

[2] During the reactionary period which followed the Revolution of 1848, the school regulations of Kur-Hessen provided that twenty hours a week be devoted in the Volkschulen to religious teaching.

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 they have become awakened on ethical subjects, often betray a tendency toward moral asceticism. I find that teachers, in the earnest desire to impress the laws of the moral empire, are sometimes betrayed into disregarding the provincial laws of the senses, the intellect, and the feelings; are apt to go too far in applying moral prescriptions to the minutiæ of conduct; are apt to leave the impression that pleasant things, just because they are pleasant, are therefore sinful.

But we have now to take a further step, which will bring us close to our special subject for to-day, viz., the efficient motives of good conduct. The non-moral faculties are not only not anti-moral, as has been shown, but, when appealed to in the right way, they lend to Morality a friendly, an almost indispensable support. The æsthetic, the intellectual, and the emotional faculty have not in themselves a moral quality, but when used as auxiliaries they pave the way for moral considerations pure and simple, and have in this sense an immense propædeutic value. Without entering in this place into the philosophy of æsthetics, it is enough to say that the beautiful, like the good, results from and depends on the observance of certain limits and certain relations. And it will not seem far-fetched to suggest that pupils who have been trained to appreciate moderation, restraint and harmony of relations in external objects, will be predisposed to apply analogous measures to matters of conduct, and that a standard of valuation will thus be created in their