26.
CHAPTER XXVI
THEORIES OF MORALS:
1. The Inner and the Outer.
—Since morality is concerned with conduct, any dualisms which are
set up between mind and activity must reflect themselves in the theory
of morals. Since the formulations of the separation in the philosophic
theory of morals are used to justify and idealize the practices employed
in moral training, a brief critical discussion is in place. It is a
commonplace of educational theory that the establishing of character is
a comprehensive aim of school instruction and discipline. Hence it is
important that we should be on our guard against a conception of the
relations of intelligence to character which hampers the realization of
the aim, and on the look-out for the conditions which have to be
provided in order that the aim may be successfully acted upon.
The first obstruction which meets us is the currency of moral ideas
which split the course of activity into two opposed factors, often named
respectively the inner and outer, or the spiritual and the physical.
This division is a culmination of the dualism of mind and the world,
soul and body, end and means, which we have so frequently noted. In
morals it takes the form of a sharp demarcation of the motive of action
from its consequences, and of character from conduct. Motive and
character are regarded as something purely "inner," existing exclusively
in consciousness, while consequences and conduct are regarded as outside
of mind, conduct having to do simply with the movements which carry out
motives; consequences with what happens as a result. Different schools
identify morality with either the inner state of mind or the outer act
and results, each in separation from the other.
Action with a purpose is deliberate; it involves a consciously foreseen
end and a mental weighing of considerations pro and eon. It also
involves a conscious state of longing or desire for the end. The
deliberate choice of an aim and of a settled disposition of desire takes
time. During this time complete overt action is suspended. A person
who does not have his mind made up, does not know what to do.
Consequently he postpones definite action so far as possible. His
position may be compared to that of a man considering jumping across a
ditch. If he were sure he could or could not make it, definite activity
in some direction would occur. But if he considers, he is in doubt; he
hesitates. During the time in which a single overt line of action is in
suspense, his activities are confined to such redistributions of energy
within the organism as will prepare a determinate course of action. He
measures the ditch with his eyes; he brings himself taut to get a feel
of the energy at his disposal; he looks about for other ways across, he
reflects upon the importance of getting across. All this means an
accentuation of consciousness; it means a turning in upon the
individual's own attitudes, powers, wishes, etc.
Obviously, however, this surging up of personal factors into conscious
recognition is a part of the whole activity in its temporal development.
There is not first a purely psychical process, followed abruptly by a
radically different physical one. There is one continuous behavior,
proceeding from a more uncertain, divided, hesitating state to a more
overt, determinate, or complete state. The activity at first consists
mainly of certain tensions and adjustments within the organism; as these
are coordinated into a unified attitude, the organism as a whole
acts—some definite act is undertaken. We may distinguish, of
course, the more explicitly conscious phase of the continuous activity
as mental or psychical. But that only identifies the mental or
psychical to mean the indeterminate, formative state of an activity
which in its fullness involves putting forth of overt energy to modify
the environment.
Our conscious thoughts, observations, wishes, aversions are important,
because they represent inchoate, nascent activities. They fulfill their
destiny in issuing, later on, into specific and perceptible acts. And
these inchoate, budding organic readjustments are important because they
are our sole escape from the dominion of routine habits and blind
impulse. They are activities having a new meaning in process of
development. Hence, normally, there is an accentuation of personal
consciousness whenever our instincts and ready formed habits find
themselves blocked by novel conditions. Then we are thrown back upon
ourselves to reorganize our own attitude before proceeding to a definite
and irretrievable course of action. Unless we try to drive our way
through by sheer brute force, we must modify our organic resources to
adapt them to the specific features of the situation in which we find
ourselves. The conscious deliberating and desiring which precede overt
action are, then, the methodic personal readjustment implied in activity
in uncertain situations.
This rôle of mind in continuous activity is not always maintained,
however. Desires for something different, aversion to the given state
of things caused by the blocking of successful activity, stimulates the
imagination. The picture of a different state of things does not always
function to aid ingenious observation and recollection to find a way out
and on. Except where there is a disciplined disposition, the tendency
is for the imagination to run loose. Instead of its objects being
checked up by conditions with reference to their practicability in
execution, they are allowed to develop because of the immediate
emotional satisfaction which they yield. When we find the successful
display of our energies checked by uncongenial surroundings, natural and
social, the easiest way out is to build castles in the air and let them
be a substitute for an actual achievement which involves the pains of
thought. So in overt action we acquiesce, and build up an imaginary
world in, mind. This break between thought and conduct is reflected in
those theories which make a sharp separation between mind as inner and
conduct and consequences as merely outer.
For the split may be more than an incident of a particular individual's
experience. The social situation may be such as to throw the class
given to articulate reflection back into their own thoughts and desires
without providing the means by which these ideas and aspirations can be
used to reorganize the environment. Under such conditions, men take
revenge, as it were, upon the alien and hostile environment by
cultivating contempt for it, by giving it a bad name. They seek refuge
and consolation within their own states of mind, their own imaginings
and wishes, which they compliment by calling both more real and more
ideal than the despised outer world. Such periods have recurred in
history. In the early centuries of the Christian era, the influential
moral systems of Stoicism, of monastic and popular Christianity and
other religious movements of the day, took shape under the influence of
such conditions.
The more action which might express prevailing ideals was checked, the
more the inner possession and cultivation of ideals was regarded as
self-sufficient—as the essence of morality. The external world in
which activity belongs was thought of as morally indifferent.
Everything lay in having the right motive, even though that motive was
not a moving force in the world. Much the same sort of situation
recurred in Germany in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries; it led to the Kantian insistence upon the good will as the
sole moral good, the will being regarded as something complete in
itself, apart from action and from the changes or consequences effected
in the world. Later it led to any idealization of existing institutions
as themselves the embodiment of reason.
The purely internal morality of "meaning well," of having a good
disposition regardless of what comes of it, naturally led to a reaction.
This is generally known as either hedonism or utilitarianism. It was
said in effect that the important thing morally is not what a man is
inside of his own consciousness, but what he does—the
consequences which issue, the charges he actually effects. Inner
morality was attacked as sentimental, arbitrary, dogmatic,
subjective—as giving men leave to dignify and shield any dogma
congenial to their self-interest or any caprice occurring to imagination
by calling it an intuition or an ideal of conscience. Results, conduct,
are what counts; they afford the sole measure of morality.
Ordinary morality, and hence that of the schoolroom, is likely to be an
inconsistent compromise of both views. On one hand, certain states of
feeling are made much of; the individual must "mean well," and if his
intentions are good, if he had the right sort of emotional
consciousness, he may be relieved of responsibility for full results in
conduct. But since, on the other hand, certain things have to be done
to meet the convenience and the requirements of others, and of social
order in general, there is great insistence upon the doing of certain
things, irrespective of whether the individual has any concern or
intelligence in their doing. He must toe the mark; he must have his
nose held to the grindstone; he must obey; he must form useful habits;
he must learn self-control,—all of these precepts being understood
in a way which emphasizes simply the immediate thing tangibly done,
irrespective of the spirit of thought and desire in which it is done,
and irrespective therefore of its effect upon other less obvious doings.
It is hoped that the prior discussion has sufficiently elaborated the
method by which both of these evils are avoided. One or both of these
evils must result wherever individuals, whether young or old, cannot
engage in a progressively cumulative undertaking under conditions which
engage their interest and require their reflection. For only in such
cases is it possible that the disposition of desire and thinking should
be an organic factor in overt and obvious conduct. Given a consecutive
activity embodying the student's own interest, where a definite result
is to be obtained, and where neither routine habit nor the following of
dictated directions nor capricious improvising will suffice, and there
the rise of conscious purpose, conscious desire, and deliberate
reflection are inevitable. They are inevitable as the spirit and
quality of an activity having specific consequences, not as forming an
isolated realm of inner consciousness.
2. The Opposition of Duty and Interest.
—Probably there is no antithesis more often set up in moral
discussion than that between acting from "principle" and from
"interest." To act on principle is to act disinterestedly, according to
a general law, which is above all personal considerations. To act
according to interest is, so the allegation runs, to act selfishly, with
one's own personal profit in view. It substitutes the changing
expediency of the moment for devotion to unswerving moral law. The
false idea of interest underlying this opposition has already been
criticized (See Chapter X), but some moral aspects of the question will
now be considered.
A clew to the matter may be found in the fact that the supporters of the
"interest" side of the controversy habitually use the term
"self-interest." Starting from the premises that unless there is
interest in an object or idea, there is no motive force, they end with
the conclusion that even when a person claims to be acting from
principle or from a sense of duty, he really acts as he does because
there "is something in it" for himself. The premise is sound; the
conclusion false. In reply the other school argues that since man is
capable of generous self-forgetting and even self-sacrificing action, he
is capable of acting without interest. Again the premise is sound, and
the conclusion false. The error on both sides lies in a false notion of
the relation of interest and the self.
Both sides assume that the self is a fixed and hence isolated quantity.
As a consequence, there is a rigid dilemma between acting for an
interest of the self and without interest. If the self is something
fixed antecedent to action, then acting from interest means trying to
get more in the way of possessions for the self—whether in the way
of fame, approval of others, power over others, pecuniary profit, or
pleasure. Then the reaction from this view as a cynical depreciation of
human nature leads to the view that men who act nobly act with no
interest at all. Yet to an unbiased judgment it would appear plain that
a man must be interested in what he is doing or he would not do it. A
physician who continues to serve the sick in a plague at almost certain
danger to his own life must be interested in the efficient performance
of his profession—more interested in that than in the safety of
his own bodily life. But it is distorting facts to say that this
interest is merely a mask for an interest in something else which he
gets by continuing his customary services—such as money or good
repute or virtue; that it is only a means to an ulterior selfish end.
The moment we recognize that the self is not something ready-made, but
something in continuous formation through choice of action, the whole
situation clears up. A man's interest in keeping at his work in spite
of danger to life means that his self is found in that work; if he
finally gave up, and preferred his personal safety or comfort, it would
mean that he preferred to be that kind of a self. The mistake lies in
making a separation between interest and self, and supposing that the
latter is the end to which interest in objects and acts and others is a
mere means. In fact, self and interest are two names for the same fact;
the kind and amount of interest actively taken in a thing reveals and
measures the quality of selfhood which exists. Bear in mind that
interest means the active or moving identity of the self with a
certain object, and the whole alleged dilemma falls to the ground.
Unselfishness, for example, signifies neither lack of interest in what
is done (that would mean only machine-like indifference) nor
selflessness—which would mean absence of virility and character.
As employed everywhere outside of this particular theoretical
controversy, the term "unselfishness" refers to the kind of aims and
objects which habitually interest a man. And if we make a mental survey
of the kind of interests which evoke the use of this epithet, we shall
see that they have two intimately associated features. (i) The generous
self consciously identifies itself with the full range of relationships
implied in its activity, instead of drawing a sharp line between itself
and considerations which are excluded as alien or indifferent; (ii) it
readjusts and expands its past ideas of itself to take in new
consequences as they become perceptible. When the physician began his
career he may not have thought of a pestilence; he may not have
consciously identified himself with service under such conditions. But,
if he has a normally growing or active self, when he finds that his
vocation involves such risks, he willingly adopts them as integral
portions of his activity. The wider or larger self which means
inclusion instead of denial of relationships is identical with a self
which enlarges in order to assume previously unforeseen ties.
In such crises of readjustment—and the crisis may be slight as
well as great—there may be a transitional conflict of "principle"
with "interest." It is the nature of a habit to involve ease in the
accustomed line of activity. It is the nature of a readjusting of habit
to involve an effort which is disagreeable—something to which a
man has deliberately to hold himself. In other words, there is a
tendency to identify the self—or take interest—in what one
has got used to, and to turn away the mind with aversion or irritation
when an unexpected thing which involves an unpleasant modification of
habit comes up. Since in the past one has done one's duty without
having to face such a disagreeable circumstance, why not go on as one
has been? To yield to this temptation means to narrow and isolate the
thought of the self—to treat it as complete. Any habit, no matter
how efficient in the past, which has become set, may at any time bring
this temptation with it. To act from principle in such an emergency is
not to act on some abstract principle, or duty at large; it is to act
upon the principle of a course of action, instead of upon the
circumstances which have attended it. The principle of a physician's
conduct is its animating aim and spirit—the care for the diseased.
The principle is not what justifies an activity, for the principle is
but another name for the continuity of the activity. If the activity as
manifested in its consequences is undesirable, to act upon principle is
to accentuate its evil. And a man who prides himself upon acting upon
principle is likely to be a man who insists upon having his own way
without learning from experience what is the better way. He fancies
that some abstract principle justifies his course of action without
recognizing that his principle needs justification.
Assuming, however, that school conditions are such as to provide
desirable occupations, it is interest in the occupation as a
whole—that is, in its continuous development—which keeps a
pupil at his work in spite of temporary diversions and unpleasant
obstacles. Where there is no activity having a growing significance,
appeal to principle is either purely verbal, or a form of obstinate
pride or an appeal to extraneous considerations clothed with a dignified
title. Undoubtedly there are junctures where momentary interest ceases
and attention flags, and where reënforcement is needed. But what
carries a person over these hard stretches is not loyalty to duty in the
abstract, but interest in his occupation. Duties are
"offices"—they are the specific acts needed for the fulfilling of
a function—or, in homely language—doing one's job. And the
man who is genuinely interested in his job is the man who is able to
stand temporary discouragement, to persist in the face of obstacles, to
take the lean with the fat: he makes an interest out of meeting and
overcoming difficulties and distraction.
3. Intelligence and Character.
—A noteworthy paradox often accompanies discussions of morals. On
the one hand, there is an identification of the moral with the rational.
Reason is set up as a faculty from which proceed ultimate moral
intuitions, and sometimes, as in the Kantian theory, it is said to
supply the only proper moral motive. On the other hand, the value of
concrete, everyday intelligence is constantly underestimated, and even
deliberately depreciated. Morals is often thought to be an affair with
which ordinary knowledge has nothing to do. Moral knowledge is thought
to be a thing apart, and conscience is thought of as something radically
different from consciousness. This separation, if valid, is of especial
significance for education. Moral education in school is practically
hopeless when we set up the development of character as a supreme end,
and at the same time treat the acquiring of knowledge and the
development of understanding, which of necessity occupy the chief part
of school time, as having nothing to do with character. On such a
basis, moral education is inevitably reduced to some kind of
catechetical instruction, or lessons about morals. Lessons "about
morals" signify as matter of course lessons in what other people think
about virtues and duties. It amounts to something only in the degree in
which pupils happen to be already animated by a sympathetic and
dignified regard for the sentiments of others. Without such a regard,
it has no more influence on character than information about the
mountains of Asia; with a servile regard, it increases dependence upon
others, and throws upon those in authority the responsibility for
conduct. As a matter of fact, direct instruction in morals has been
effective only in social groups where it was a part of the authoritative
control of the many by the few. Not the teaching as such but the
reënforcement of it by the whole regime of which it was an incident made
it effective. To attempt to get similar results from lessons about
morals in a democratic society is to rely upon sentimental magic.
At the other end of the scale stands the Socratic-Platonic teaching
which identifies knowledge and virtue—which holds that no man does
evil knowingly but only because of ignorance of the good. This doctrine
is commonly attacked on the ground that nothing is more common than for
a man to know the good and yet do the bad: not knowledge, but
habituation or practice, and motive are what is required. Aristotle, in
fact, at once attacked the Platonic teaching on the ground that moral
virtue is like an art, such as medicine; the experienced practitioner is
better than a man who has theoretical knowledge but no practical
experience of disease and remedies. The issue turns, however, upon what
is meant by knowledge. Aristotle's objection ignored the gist of
Plato's teaching to the effect that man could not attain a theoretical
insight into the good except as he had passed through years of practical
habituation and strenuous discipline. Knowledge of the good was not a
thing to be got either from books or from others, but was achieved
through a prolonged education. It was the final and culminating grace
of a mature experience of life. Irrespective of Plato's position, it is
easy to perceive that the term knowledge is used to denote things as far
apart as intimate and vital personal realization,—a conviction
gained and tested in experience,—and a second-handed, largely
symbolic, recognition that persons in general believe so and so—a
devitalized remote information. That the latter does not guarantee
conduct, that it does not profoundly affect character, goes without
saying. But if knowledge means something of the same sort as our
conviction gained by trying and testing that sugar is sweet and quinine
bitter, the case stands otherwise. Every time a man sits on a chair
rather than on a stove, carries an umbrella when it rains, consults a
doctor when ill—or in short performs any of the thousand acts
which make up his daily life, he proves that knowledge of a certain kind
finds direct issue in conduct. There is every reason to suppose that
the same sort of knowledge of good has a like expression; in fact "good"
is an empty term unless it includes the satisfactions experienced in
such situations as those mentioned. Knowledge that other persons are
supposed to know something might lead one to act so as to win the
approbation others attach to certain actions, or at least so as to give
others the impression that one agrees with them; there is no reason why
it should lead to personal initiative and loyalty in behalf of the
beliefs attributed to them.
It is not necessary, accordingly, to dispute about the proper meaning of
the term knowledge. It is enough for educational purposes to note the
different qualities covered by the one name, to realize that it is
knowledge gained at first hand through the exigencies of experience
which affects conduct in significant ways. If a pupil learns things
from books simply in connection with school lessons and for the sake of
reciting what he has learned when called upon, then knowledge will have
effect upon some conduct—namely upon that of reproducing
statements at the demand of others. There is nothing surprising that
such "knowledge" should not have much influence in the life out of
school. But this is not a reason for making a divorce between knowledge
and conduct, but for holding in low esteem this kind of knowledge. The
same thing may be said of knowledge which relates merely to an isolated
and technical specialty; it modifies action but only in its own narrow
line. In truth, the problem of moral education in the schools is one
with the problem of securing knowledge—the knowledge connected
with the system of impulses and habits. For the use to which any known
fact is put depends upon its connections. The knowledge of dynamite of
a safecracker may be identical in verbal form with that of a chemist; in
fact, it is different, for it is knit into connection with different
aims and habits, and thus has a different import.
Our prior discussion of subject-matter as proceeding from direct
activity having an immediate aim, to the enlargement of meaning found in
geography and history, and then to scientifically organized knowledge,
was based upon the idea of maintaining a vital connection between
knowledge and activity. What is learned and employed in an occupation
having an aim and involving coöperation with others is moral knowledge,
whether consciously so regarded or not. For it builds up a social
interest and confers the intelligence needed to make that interest
effective in practice. Just because the studies of the curriculum
represent standard factors in social life, they are organs of initiation
into social values. As mere school studies, their acquisition has only
a technical worth. Acquired under conditions where their social
significance is realized, they feed moral interest and develop moral
insight. Moreover, the qualities of mind discussed under the topic of
method of learning are all of them intrinsically moral qualities.
Open-mindedness, single-mindedness, sincerity, breadth of outlook,
thoroughness, assumption of responsibility for developing the
consequences of ideas which are accepted, are moral traits. The habit
of identifying moral characteristics with external conformity to
authoritative prescriptions may lead us to ignore the ethical value of
these intellectual attitudes, but the same habit tends to reduce morals
to a dead and machinelike routine. Consequently while such an attitude
has moral results, the results are morally undesirable—above all
in a democratic society where so much depends upon personal disposition.
4. The Social and the Moral.
—All of the separations which we have been criticizing—and
which the idea of education set forth in the previous chapters is
designed to avoid—spring from taking morals too
narrowly,—giving them, on one side, a sentimental goody-goody turn
without reference to effective ability to do what is socially needed,
and, on the other side, overemphasizing convention and tradition so as
to limit morals to a list of definitely stated acts. As a matter of
fact, morals are as broad as acts which concern our relationships with
others. And potentially this includes all our acts, even though their
social bearing may not be thought of at the time of performance. For
every act, by the principle of habit, modifies disposition—it sets
up a certain kind of inclination and desire. And it is impossible to
tell when the habit thus strengthened may have a direct and perceptible
influence on our association with others. Certain traits of character
have such an obvious connection with our social relationships that we
call them "moral" in an emphatic sense—truthfulness, honesty,
chastity, amiability, etc. But this only means that they are, as
compared with some other attitudes, central:—that they carry other
attitudes with them. They are moral in an emphatic sense not because
they are isolated and exclusive, but because they are so intimately
connected with thousands of other attitudes which we do not explicitly
recognize—which perhaps we have not even names for. To call them
virtues in their isolation is like taking the skeleton for the living
body. The bones are certainly important, but their importance lies in
the fact that they support other organs of the body in such a way as to
make them capable of integrated effective activity. And the same is
true of the qualities of character which we specifically designate
virtues. Morals concern nothing less than the whole character, and the
whole character is identical with the man in all his concrete make-up
and manifestations. To possess virtue does not signify to have
cultivated a few namable and exclusive traits; it means to be fully and
adequately what one is capable of becoming through association with
others in all the offices of life.
The moral and the social quality of conduct are, in the last analysis,
identical with each other. It is then but to restate explicitly the
import of our earlier chapters regarding the social function of
education to say that the measure of the worth of the administration,
curriculum, and methods of instruction of the school is the extent to
which they are animated by a social spirit. And the great danger which
threatens school work is the absence of conditions which make possible a
permeating social spirit; this is the great enemy of effective moral
training. For this spirit can be actively present only when certain
conditions are met.
(i) In the first place, the school must itself be a community
life in all which that implies. Social perceptions and interests can be
developed only in a genuinely social medium—one where there is
give and take in the building up of a common experience. Informational
statements about things can be acquired in relative isolation by any one
who previously has had enough intercourse with others to have learned
language. But realization of the meaning of the linguistic signs is
quite another matter. That involves a context of work and play in
association with others. The plea which has been made for education
through continued constructive activities in this book rests upon the
fact they afford an opportunity for a social atmosphere. In place of a
school set apart from life as a place for learning lessons, we have a
miniature social group in which study and growth are incidents of
present shared experience. Playgrounds, shops, workrooms, laboratories
not only direct the natural active tendencies of youth, but they involve
intercourse, communication, and coöperation,—all extending the
perception of connections.
(ii) The learning in school should be continuous with that out of
school. There should be a free interplay between the two. This is
possible only when there are numerous points of contact between the
social interests of the one and of the other. A school is conceivable
in which there should be a spirit of companionship and shared activity,
but where its social life would no more represent or typify that of the
world beyond the school walls than that of a monastery. Social concern
and understanding would be developed, but they would not be available
outside; they would not carry over. The proverbial separation of town
and gown, the cultivation of academic seclusion, operate in this
direction. So does such adherence to the culture of the past as
generates a reminiscent social spirit, for this makes an individual feel
more at home in the life of other days than in his own. A professedly
cultural education is peculiarly exposed to this danger. An idealized
past becomes the refuge and solace of the spirit; present-day concerns
are found sordid, and unworthy of attention. But as a rule, the absence
of a social environment in connection with which learning is a need and
a reward is the chief reason for the isolation of the school; and this
isolation renders school knowledge inapplicable to life and so infertile
in character.
A narrow and moralistic view of morals is responsible for the failure to
recognize that all the aims and values which are desirable in education
are themselves moral. Discipline, natural development, culture, social
efficiency, are moral traits—marks of a person who is a worthy
member of that society which it is the business of education to further.
There is an old saying to the effect that it is not enough for a man to
be good; he must be good for something. The something for which a man
must be good is capacity to live as a social member so that what he gets
from living with others balances with what he contributes. What he gets
and gives as a human being, a being with desires, emotions, and ideas,
is not external possessions, but a widening and deepening of conscious
life —a more intense, disciplined, and expanding realization of
meanings. What he materially receives and gives is at most
opportunities and means for the evolution of conscious life. Otherwise,
it is neither giving nor taking, but a shifting about of the position of
things in space, like the stirring of water and sand with a stick.
Discipline, culture, social efficiency, personal refinement, improvement
of character are but phases of the growth of capacity nobly to share in
such a balanced experience. And education is not a mere means to such a
life. Education is such a life. To maintain capacity for such
education is the essence of morals. For conscious life is a continual
beginning afresh.
Summary.
—The most important problem of moral education in the school
concerns the relationship of knowledge and conduct. For unless the
learning which accrues in the regular course of study affects character,
it is futile to conceive the moral end as the unifying and culminating
end of education. When there is no intimate organic connection between
the methods and materials of knowledge and moral growth, particular
lessons and modes of discipline have to be resorted to: knowledge is not
integrated into the usual springs of action and the outlook on life,
while morals become moralistic—a scheme of separate virtues.
The two theories chiefly associated with the separation of learning from
activity, and hence from morals, are those which cut off inner
disposition and motive—the conscious personal factor—and
deeds as purely physical and outer; and which set action from interest
in opposition to that from principle. Both of these separations are
overcome in an educational scheme where learning is the accompaniment of
continuous activities or occupations which have a social aim and utilize
the materials of typical social situations. For under such conditions,
the school becomes itself a form of social life, a miniature community
and one in close interaction with other modes of associated experience
beyond school walls. All education which develops power to share
effectively in social life is moral. It forms a character which not
only does the particular deed socially necessary but one which is
interested in that continuous readjustment which is essential to growth.
Interest in learning from all the contacts of life is the essential
moral interest.
