Ethical Functions of Scientific Stuchj — Chamherlin. 389 
pugilism and the prevalence of intellectual pugilism. Physical 
pugilism has been banished to the lower classes, but intellectual 
pugilism pervades the press, the pulpit, the platform, and the 
private walks of life. Personal encounter with the fists is 
under the ban of law and public opinion; but personal encounter 
with the tongue and the pen finds expression in levels where 
the other is unknown. To strike with the fist is beyond all 
thought in the better grades of society ; to strike with the tongue 
grossly lies also under reproach, but to strike with the tongue 
adroitly too often escapes condemnation not only but even calls 
forth admiration. The morality of the fist is a full century in 
advance of the morality of the tongue. Literal John Sullivanism 
is under contempt among all cultivated people, but intellectual 
John Sullivanism, if sufiiciently skillful, finds many an admirer 
in the galleries that look down upon legislative halls, in many 
a cushioned pew, even though bathed in "dim religious light." 
To thrash a ruffian has ceased to be an approved method of 
moral reform, but to thrash a congregation, a party, or a society, 
is still in common, if not in good practice. 
If we rise a grade higher, we find widely, if not universally, 
prevalent attack in thought which does not find expression even 
in words; a spirit of pugilism unexpressed in tangible form but 
scarcely the less pervasive and mischievous. 
Into this realm of the immoral, the concealed, the intangible 
immoral law can make no advance, and public opinion is rela- 
tively impotent. The remedy must come from the opposite 
source. The polemic element in the mental constitution, the 
relic of savage contests and still more ancient beastly battles, is 
to be eradicated by working at the fountains of thought and of 
feeling and by training the fundamental intellectual and ethical 
activities. The polemic habit in thought and in feeling has 
held sway through all the earlier ages of mind development and 
still holds wide dominance in the domains of opinion and belief. 
It has in some measure been banished from the domain of pre- 
cise thought and from the more scientific and scholarly circles. 
Nevertheless some of our so-called scientific discussions have 
been altogether worthy to be ranked with the disputations of 
the middle ages. But the leaven of the spirit of impartial in- 
quiry, of supreme devotion to the unqualified truth are rapidly 
banishing personal disputations and the contentious war of 
