Ethical Functions of Scientific Study — Chamherlin. 381 
element that necessarily accompanies intellectual action, I shall 
make no issue with him. It is the actual concrete action of 
the mind and notjts ultimate abstract analysis that concerns 
us in this discussion. The full sphere of moral completeness is 
only attained when the trinity, to think right, to feel right, and 
to do right, are joined in individual perfection to form an ethi- 
cal unity. 
I crave your indulgence, therefore, in the use of the terms 
moral and ethical in a sufficiently broad sense to embrace all- 
falsity of mental action and all harmful processes of thought. 
If you strike hands with me in this fundamental view, you 
cannot fail also to join in the affirmation that every intellectual 
activity that enters into our processes of education is a fit sub- 
ject of inquiry respecting its inherent moral character and its 
ethical tendencies and results. 
We shall plunge at once, however, into misunderstandings 
unless we agree upon a special meaning also for the phrase, sci- 
entific study. In common speech, science has come to signify 
merely physical or natural science. Let us set aside this com- 
mon but narrow sense, and adopt the true and full meaning 
which embraces all specific systematized knowledge; not less 
knowledge of the mind and the humanities than of matter and 
its creatures. The objects of nature present tangible subjects 
of inquiry, governed by fixed and relatively simple laws, while 
mind and its products present profound intricacies, intangible 
factors, and the mystery of volition. The former have on this 
account offered the easier and thus far the more fruitful field 
for the development of demonstrative knowledge, and hence the 
science of things physical and things natural sprang up earlier 
and grew more rapidly than the science of things mental and 
things artificial. It has therefore happened, not strangely, that 
the term science has come to be monopolized in common speech 
by knowledge of the physical world, ignoring the sciences of 
mind, of language, of civic institutions, of morals and of relig- 
ions. But, unless the element of volition vitiates the reign of 
law, the systematic study of language, of histor}^ of civic insti- 
tutions and of the mind itself, is, or at least should be as truly 
scientific, in process and in product, as the stud}^ of earth or of 
air, of tree or of beast. As a disciple of "the gospel of dirt," I 
may, without suspicion of bias, urge that the simpler and lower 
