Morals in Plain Figures

...Snedden's difficulty becomes clear...

...Within astronomy, physics and chemistry, the atmosphere which reigns is wholesome, hopeful, laden with the sweet odors of difficult tasks that have been well done...

...What is morality...

...Snedden also leaves us in the dark regarding that sort of moral behavior which comes natural, like "tastes for specific kinds of foods, dispositions to move playfully, and curiosities...

...I do not wish to misrepresent Dr...

...Says Professor Persing: "In applying the incorrect grades to the papers, several precautions were observed to avoid arousing a suspicious attitude on the part of the student...

...The pupils whose honesty quotient was so cleverly discovered to be deficient have doubtless listened to the same teaching, or worse, and personally I think they made a remarkably good showing under the circumstances...

...In the first place, an appeal seems to be made to authority, to "responsible, controlling agencies...

...In other words, they were like poker players sitting in a game where everybody was expected to look out for himself...

...And while I was wondering why they had not been more honest, marking their own papers right even though the heavens threatened to fall, I chanced upon another article, also in the Educational Review, which seemed to throw considerable light upon what Professor Per-' sing terms "a pronounced tendency to ignore the moral value in judging situations...

...Other kinds and degrees are doubtless difficult if not impossible to learn, just as certain kinds or degrees of morality can be learned, at least by some persons, only with a great deal of difficulty, if at all...

...He continues in the plural: Specific moral behaviors are different according to the kinds of social groups they affect...

...Professor Persing had claimed that the pupils had such an ideal, but he failed to describe it or to explain how they happened to have it or upon what it was founded...

...But what the Doctor means, I suppose, is that circumstances alter cases...

...God and the gang might not suggest the same realistic behavior on every occasion...

...And though I have read his article several times, the only answer I get is that supplied by the echo...

...And he adds that much might be gained if we could substitute for it the word "moralities," to be used somewhat in the same way that discriminating speakers use the term "manners...

...For illustration, let us take the experiences of Professor Kimber M. Persing, of the Glenville High School, in Cleveland, Ohio, and those of Miss Selda Cook, a teacher in the Outhwaite School, which is also in Cleveland...

...Observe that these circumstances have nothing to do with Dr...

...Certain kinds and degrees of "immoral" behavior are just as easy to learn...

...The identification of moralities with manners here seems to be complete...

...No doubt he means something...

...But what is his meaning when he speaks of the impossibility of teaching moral or immoral behavior, truthfulness or chastity, in the absence of temptation...

...For some time—ever since the publication of Herbert Spencer's famous Data, in fact—this is precisely what he has been doing...

...A psychologist, for example, insists on being called a scientist, but proving his right to the title is often a strain upon his candor and good nature...

...But it might tend to rob conflict of the dignity of a question...

...Snedden...

...A man, especially a young man, might honestly think that coveting his neighbor's wife, or even stealing her, would be a good thing not only for himself, but for her...

...Psychological phenomena are so difficult to measure and to weigh that there is a temptation to select the more weighable among them and then simply pretend that the others do not exist...

...But when one considers the fact that he is merely a more distinguished member of that same Protestant educational hierachy to which Miss Cook and Professor Persing belong, the objection loses weight...

...I do not wish to say anything against the passion itself...

...But triumphant science, though it seems to occupy a very large section of the public mind, occupies a very small section of nature...

...Second circumstance: she may not be my neighbor's wife, or she may be my own...

...The Doctor says: Common sense should expect it to be difficult if not impossible for a teacher to teach kinds and degrees of moral (or immoral) behavior that are not here and now functional...

...First circumstance: I perhaps do not covet her...

...They were told to add an O. K. to such markings as they deemed correct, and invited to call attention to those which were either too high or too low...

...Now, if I seek a ruling in regard to the morality of my relation with any particular woman, there are just two circumstances which might relieve me of the obligations imposed by the commandment...

...Those precautions against arousing a suspicious attitude, those interpolations of questions about business deals, tending to disguise the fact that markings were the real matter at stake—it didn't listen well, to put it bluntly...

...For if conscience itself be so likely to be obscured, so in need of some "responsible and controlling" agency, what of the human intellect, lost amidst a multitude of different "moralities" and conflicting hopes and fears...

...But unfortunately the learned sociologist does not say what agencies he has in mind...

...Snedden reached the end of his reductio ad absurdum of ethics, "sociologically considered" and divorced from religion...

...Snedden...

...The young used to be taught that they should tell the truth and shame the devil, that the very essence of moral behavior is the absence of selfish calculation...

...Evidently the unregenerate human heart is less desperately wicked than was once supposed— but perhaps Dr...

...Called upon, whenever an occasion for "realistic behavior" arises, to determine which of an infinite number of specific moral behaviors is in order, could a boy or girl be blamed for becoming momentarily scientific rather than philosophical, and assuming that since there is no such thing as honesty in general there is probably no such thing as honesty in particular...

...An older man might possibly go as far as to think that it would be a good thing for the neighbor...

...Science has won so many triumphs by this homely method that it has come to be said that a science is not a science until it has reduced its data to arithmetical formulae and established itself upon a quantitative basis...

...He goes on: But to make such usage effective we would have to be in agreement that there are thousands of kinds of these "moralities...

...Snedden's hedonistic idea of possible weal or woe to the affected parties...

...His methods, which take honesty as the touchstone, were interesting and novel...

...Now it seemed to me, when reading this, that there was something wrong beneath the whole procedure...

...The word" (morality) he would have us believe, "is of the same generic order as are the words health, culture, civism and religion...

...But while only <)l/2 per cent had actually called attention to gradings that were too high, a full 88 percent said they would have done so—being in ignorance, of course, of the fact that the test had already been applied...

...Accuracy, getting down to brass tacks, is a most admirable thing...

...On the other hand, 18 percent frankly admitted that they would never report overgrading...

...And the "central area" which now takes the place of the ancient fixed point of perfection from which moral lapses could be measured, is any species of "realistic behavior" involving the idea of weal or woe...

...If instead of receiving too much money, you found that you had received less than was due you, what would you do...

...Might one suggest loyalty to God as a desirable controlling agency...

...But from the standpoint of morality, these considerations are not only mistaken, they are irrelevant...

...In the domain of ethics, the prevalence of imponderables would seem to make the application of the scientific method still more difficult...

...No less than 97 percent of the students complained when given too low a mark, while but 954 percent acknowledged the corn when the mark was too high...

...Recently, however, a new school of ethical thought has come into being, the exponents of which, nothing daunted by difficulty, have determined to apply the quantitative method to morals, so that we may at last determine how good or how bad we are in plain figures, out of which can be constructed a chart with accompanying tables and all the other paraphernalia of accuracy so dear to the modern investigator...

...They had evidently not regarded themselves as upon their honor, but as engaged in some sort of contest wherein any chance advantage was only an offset to certain disadvantages beyond their control...

...Sociologically considered, each realistic species of behavior between two or more humans— wherein consciousness of some kind or degree of weal or woe of the affected parties is involved—can be taken as of at least the central area of all those moralities that make up morality...

...Snedden himself is moving playfully at this point...

...As an alibi for doing this many offered the excuse that their teachers often carelessly and unfairly graded their work without any recourse to an adjustment...

...These are surely not impossible tasks, however...

...But we are crowding Dr...

...In the section on Conscience he says: The sense of right and wrong is so delicate, so fitful, so easily puzzled, obscured, perverted, so subtile in its argumentative methods, so impressionable by education, so biased by pride and passion, so unsteady in its course, that in the struggle for existence amid the various exercises and triumphs of the human intellect, the sense is at once the highest of all teachers yet the least luminous...

...He has more to say, as follows: Certain kinds and degrees of approvable (beneficient as conceived of by responsible, controlling agencies) moral behavior are so easy to learn that, like tastes for specific kinds of foods, dispositions to move playfully, and curiosities, we are prone to think of them as instinctive or otherwise innate...

...I am absolved...

...And if he finds such pastures not lacking in the treacherous thistles of mismarked examination papers, he naturally meets the situation with such realistic behavior as his loyalty to his gang, or to himself, may dictate...

...Snedden out of the pulpit...

...How can truthfulness or chastity "be taught" in the absence of any real temptation to be untruthful or unchaste...

...There is something in disingenuousness which makes itself felt even when it is not consciously understood, and everybody knows the proneness of even the very best among us to fight fire with fire...

...Nor has Dr...

...To establish a means of comparing practice with profession, a quiz was then held in which these same students were asked such questions as: "If in a business deal you were given a sum of money greater than you were entitled to, what would you do when you discovered the mistake...

...One reads in the Decalogue, for example, that one should not covet the wife of a neighbor...

...But beyond these confines—perhaps because of certain obstacles which the weighing and measuring passion meets with when the subject-matter becomes more subtile than electrons, atoms, molecules, particles or stars—a different state of things exists...

...For without circumstances there can be no conduct...

...Of course it may be argued that the students of Glenville High School, and of the Outhwaite School, were not taught by Dr...

...he asks...

...Some are certainly needed if we are to get away from those "contradictions" which arise, for example, between loyalty to fellow gangsters and loyalty to other relationships, presumably higher and more important...

...Snedden at last is right...

...Some of us must have an uneasy feeling, indeed, that the thing has been done in the past times innumerable, but that somehow we have lost the key to the art...

...Having first betrayed the pupils' confidence, how could a teacher expect to be met by anything but cunning in return...

...Surely we are not to understand that the teaching should supply the temptation, or that we should attempt to teach that immoral behavior which the Doctor encloses in parenthesis...

...Confession is good for the soul...

...Certainly the former is nearer the scientific when he claims that there is no such thing as honesty (or truthfulness, or frugality, or purity) in general...

...True enough...

...Here arises the sometimes puzzling contradictions, as that loyalty to fellow gangsters may be disloyalty to the state...

...Sociologist and philosopher may seem to part company on some of these distinctions...

...Yet the students were unquestionably at fault...

...The "alibi" offered by the students suggested the possibility of the tests not having touched their moral sense at all...

...The experiments, covering two years and involving 136 high-school seniors, were conducted with craft and cunning...

...Professor Persing comments thus: 709 It seems rather alarming to find nearly 20 percent willing to admit over their own signatures their willingness to accept credits they have not earned...

...We seem somehow to have come out of the stifling study of the sociologist into the pure air of heaven, and at once Dr...

...Not only this, but it seemed to me that the teachers (Miss Cook obtained similar results from similar experiments at establishing an honesty quotient) had taken strange means to bring out such latent morality as those under their supervision might possess...

...It would not, of course, remove conflicts...

...What used to be known as astronomy, physics and chemistry—today these fields are subdivided, but their original boundaries remain— are responsible for practically all of those achievements which have given science its present prestige...

...I am exonerated...

...For in living up to an ideal it is necessary, first of all, to have an ideal to live up to...

...Back in the study, however, the intellect (no less subtile than the conscience in its argumentative methods) continues to grope...

...Imagine the naivete of expecting high-school pupils to be honest against their own interests after listening to preaching of this sort...

...The 97 percent who had complained of their gradings when they were too low, squared theory with conduct by declaring that they would do exactly that should occasion arise...

...710 As for reckoning up the probable chances for weal or woe, even a professional crook must do that, and do it rather skilfully if he expects to keep out of the hands of the law...

...And, an atmosphere sufficiently devoid of suspicion having thus been established, similar questions were put regarding examination papers that were incorrectly marked...

...But what sort of circumstances are to be considered as having a moral bearing...

...The individual, of whom we hear so much of late, seems at least invited to roam at will in the pastures of self-expression, with a host of moralities to choose from...

...Professor Persing has been conducting some interesting experiments, which he describes in the Educational Review under the heading, Morals and Chemistry...

...That is, "it is an abstract singular term of numberless connotations—by itself an almost useless term of intellectual intercourse because it means all things to all persons...

...and equally unenlightened as to those immoralities so difficult if not impossible to learn...

...But what is the modernist teacher of ethics to do ? Having once ceased to claim a sanction from Revelation he is simply bound to be "scientific," or fall by the wayside...

...Out in the air with that letter to the Duke of Norfolk, chaos has suddenly succumbed to rule...

...He first put the pupils on their honor by establishing a system under which they were called upon to review the markings given them in various tests, problems and home-written papers...

...That is, while the mask of bona fides was carefully preserved, many of the ratings were intentionally incorrect...

...The answers to the several questions would imply a recognition of moral values, but the practical test would seem to indicate a failure to live up to the ideal...

...Here is food for thought...

...And it was this ideal which formed the subject of the second article, one entitled, Teaching Morality, by Dr...

...Results were disconcerting...

...But before we go into that, and for the sake of change—among other things, a change in English style—let me quote a passage from Newman's Letter to the Duke of Norfolk...

...David Snedden, who is teacher of education and sociology in Columbia University, New York City...

...The uneasy feeling, which one certainly had, is banished...

...His object was to get quantitative measurements of the morality actually possessed by the pupils under his charge—not their professed morality alone, but also their real morality as proven in action...