3o6 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



well date from Neolithic times. Throughout the book there is bad reasoning 

 combined with admirable morals. Practically no motive is given for moral 

 conduct except that it is pleasing to God. The moral sentiments in the book 

 are never reasoned. They are mentioned incidentally. Their correctness is 

 taken for granted. That they are beyond reason is indicated by the fact that 

 the Deity is represented as having a standard of conduct far different from 

 that demanded of His followers. Hence there is nothing in the morals likely 

 to arouse reasoning on the part of the child and thereby cause them to stick 

 in his consciousness. They are therefore likely to pass beyond it to the parts 

 of the mind that are outside consciousness or conscious reasoning and thus 

 give rise to moral prepossessions. This appears to be a valid reason why 

 such teaching of religious dogma is of value, and why it is more valuable the 

 more it disregards the use of sensible reasoning. 



Moral character based on prepossessions seems to have another use besides 

 making us moral. If making us moral was the sole function of moral system, 

 the argument in the previous paragraph might not be sufficient for distrusting 

 a morality based on reason. Indeed, it mi^ht be asked why sensible people 

 should not make their interests their standard of conduct. This has been 

 done in recent years to a large extent by the Germans. It has been followed 

 by, and apparently has been the cause of, a singular defect in their reasoning 

 powers. In such \videly diSerent fields of mental activity as commerce, 

 diplomacy, and the conduct of war, their reasoning power has shown itself 

 singularly short-sighted and also has exhibited a remarkable preference for 

 the more devious or the more brutal of two alternatives.^ These features 

 of the German mentality have only developed in recent years pari passu with 

 the loss of religious influence in their education.^ The Germans are influenced 

 by the evidence that is immediately under their noses, but they fail to be 

 influenced by that effect of accumulated earlier experience that may be 

 designated as common sense. Hence their conduct has often been in contra- 

 diction to their real interests. Leaving fact for theory, it seems that what 

 happens is that their reasoning process is cut short by the intervention of 

 some selfish or brute feeling. We all have in our minds such feelings. In 

 normal minds they are balanced or inhibited by moral prepossessions, and 

 therefore they fail to cut short the reasoning process and we arrive at well- 

 balanced conclusions. The example of German mentality suggests that a 

 morality based on reason is less capable of inhibiting our selfish nature than 

 one based on unreasoned prepossessions. 



Principal Graham, in his letter to you, asserts that the strength of the 

 Quakers in business, etc., lay " in their reverence for human beings as the 

 only holy Temples where the divine dwells." That neither this nor any other 

 purely religious influence was the source of their capacity in business is 

 rendered probable by the fact that they showed high business ability during 

 what a Quaker authority describes as " the darkest period in the history of 

 the sect,"' when what Principal Graham designates as "temporary fads" 

 formed perhaps the predominating part of their creed, that this dark period 

 was brought to an end by a revival due to the preaching of Stephen Grellet 

 and William Forster between 1810 and 1820,* that thenceforward the Quakers 



\ See " German Business Methods in the United States," by H. C. Burr, Quarterly 

 Review, July 1919, p. 16; Ourselves and Germany, by Dr. E. J. Dillon (London, 

 Chapman and Hall, 1916) ; and Britons versus Germans in China, by Dennis K. Moss 

 (Hongkong Daily Press, 1917). 



2 See After the Day, by Hayden Talbot (London, Herbert Jenkins, 1920). 



3 Religious Societies of the Commonwealth, by R. Barclay (London, Hodder & 

 Stoughton, 1876). 



* Life of the Right Honourable William Edward Forster, by T. W. Reid (London, 

 Chapman & Hall. 1888). 



