376 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



but these are ignored, as if there were no such relations. Here, 

 in our judgment, is the most serious defect of our schools, and not 

 in the lack of proper " correlation " of studies. 



Whether the study of human relations is the province of the 

 schools we can not stop to discuss, but pass it with the remark 

 that the schools belong to the people, and the people have the 

 right to do what they please with their own. They can make the 

 function of the schools whatsoever they choose to make it — what- 

 soever will serve themselves best. 



How can this most serious defect be remedied ? By introduc- 

 ing instruction in pure human ethics, divorced from religion, 

 which then becomes a study of the relations which exist among 

 men in this real world. One great difficulty in the way of pro- 

 viding instruction in ethics heretofore has been the lack of a clear 

 distinction in the minds of the people between ethics and religion. 

 The Christian world has been in the habit of thinking and of 

 claiming that there can be no valid system of ethics, except that 

 which is based upon the existence of God, and upon the relations 

 which we suppose exist between him and us. This claim has 

 never been substantiated in a manner satisfactory to scientific 

 thought. Religion is a system of beliefs and worship, and points 

 to an after life, for which we all hope ; while ethics is a system of 

 principles of conduct for man as a social being in this life, which 

 we are all now living. Ethics deals with realities, with a real life 

 in a real world. Its realm is entirely a realm of actualities ; while 

 the realm of religion, defined in a scientific manner, is one of be- 

 liefs and hopes. So far as these beliefs and hopes are determin- 

 ing factors in the conduct of man to man, the realm of religion 

 affects the realm of ethics. But apart from this, if by some magic 

 power the realm of beliefs and hopes were annihilated, the realm 

 of ethics would remain absolutely undisturbed. Poes ethics, 

 then, find its basis in religion ? Does that which is real depend 

 for its existence upon that which we suppose to be real ? It may, 

 providing that which we suppose to be real is actually real; but 

 when, as in this case, it is beyond human powers to determine 

 whether it is real or not, it is about as unphilosophical to declare 

 that something which is known to be real depends for its exist- 

 ence upon another something which we suppose to be real, as to 

 declare that the Himalayas hang upon the sky. The only possi- 

 bility of substantiating the claim that ethics and religion can not 

 be divorced is found in so formulating a definition of one of them 

 as to embrace in it the realm of the other. But such an attempt 

 would be futile in this scientific age of discrimination and defini- 

 tion. Ethics and religion are both right, and have their separate 

 and appropriate missions and fields, which, as we have indicated 

 above, overlap ; but their foundations are two distinct things in 



