Ethical Functions of Scientific Study — Chamherlin. 387 
lems, the tests and the determinations of the student in the 
laboratory, the field, and the seminar may and should involve 
the same mental and moral characteristics as the more weighty 
work of the true discoverer. The scientific child in training 
should foreshadow the scientific man in creative work. 
The continuous exercise of the mind during its formative 
stages in these sterling activities and in these scrupulous attitudes, 
and the development of corresponding habits of mental action 
have a direct bearing upon two of the great sources from whence 
spring reprehensible action, namely, defective and warped think- 
ing and deficient regard for strict truth. These are not the 
only sources of blameworthy action, and the intellectual train- 
ing under 'consideration is not the only remedy. The whole 
field of wrong-doing is not before us for consideration either in 
cause or cure. It is my effort only to point out the hygienic 
and preventive agency of a special phase of intellectual training. 
Let me not be uu'lerstood as advocating a panacea. 
A much larger percentage of reprehensible action springs 
from defective perception and interpretation than we are wont 
to realize. While this is true of those graver misdeeds that 
rank as crimes, it is much more widely true of those blameworthy 
actions which are not under the restraint of law or the forms 
of society. The "misunderstandings'' that lead to broils and 
end in the crack of pistols are indeed misunderstandings in a 
large percentage of cases, and would never occur, even with 
the belligerent dispositions that prompt them, if clearer per- 
ceptions and truer interpretations replaced the dull apprehension 
and the twisted mental action that go before the passion and 
give it occasion. In a careful analysis of criminal cases it will 
be found of many, I think, that at some point in their history 
defective and distorted perception and interpretation constituted 
determining factors, and that had these been replaced by more 
complete and accurate understanding, the issue would have 
been reversed. I am far from maintaining that defective in- 
telligence is the supreme factor in misdeeds. Morality must 
be advanced by other appliances than superior intellectual train- 
ing. It is something to us, however, if this yields an important 
contribution to the exaltation of morals. 
But the discussion of criminality is apart from my purpose. 
This is the weakest aspect of my subject. However beneficent 
