Ethical Functions of Sclentijic Studij — ChamherUn. 38JJ 
thinking as well as to onr feeling and our willing; and if we are 
further agreed that scientific study shall mean the intellectual 
processes! that enter into the development of science, and that 
it shall not mean the mere conning of knowledge; and if we 
further agree that the physical sciences are only the more early 
ripened fruits of a broad intellectual field now whitening to the 
harvest, we may with less fear of parting company later, turn 
to the inquiry, what are the ethical aspects of scientific study, 
and what is its practical, though it be slow and distant, influence 
on some of the dominant evils of our times? 
The essence of my argument Avill be this: scientific in- 
quiry involves certain fundamental habits of thought. 
When these become fixed in the intellectual nature, they 
form a permanent disposition which influences all the individ- 
ual's subsequent action. That disposition displaces certain 
other dispositions from which spring some of the prevalent evils 
of our day, and by so displacing them, it radically affects the 
moral welfare of our people. It forestalls an immoral issue by 
wholesome and preventive antecedent action. Its influence 
is not so much curative as preventive. The earlier physi- 
cians concerned themselves with disease and its remedies; 
the later concern themselves with health and its conditions. 
To secure the universal remedy was the ancient endeavor; to 
secure universal health is the true endeavor. To correct harm- 
ful action is not so much an object of effort as to prevent it. 
Moral endeavor should be turned not so much to the remedial 
as to the preventive. 
As educators we are coming to realize, what the great captains 
long since learned, that entrenched positions are often to be 
flanked rather than assaulted directly. We may waste our 
forces and crown the enemy with triumph by direct on- 
slaught, when we might, by more wisely directed efforts, 
ourselves bear away the fruits of victory. Direct moral de- 
nunciation and specific legislative prohibition have their im- 
portant functions, but many great evils can best be eliminated 
by displacing immoral tendencies by wholesome dispositions, 
and by forestalling wrong action by inducing a dominant ten- 
dency to right action, 
1. Let us first note certain characteristics of scientific study, 
and then turn to their application. 
