390 Ethical Functions of Scientific Study — Chamberlin. 
opinion and substituting therefor judicial inquiry and impartial 
presentation. 
There is an important aspect of personal morals which is 
destined to feel the force of the spirit of impartial inquiry, of 
discriminating perception, of reserved judgment and of strict 
regard for truth, which characterize scientific study. If I 
were called upon to name the greatest evil of our times, above 
the grade of the grossly criminal, that evil which brings the 
most poignant suffering to the most sensitive souls, that evil 
from which all suffer, and that sin of which all are guilty, I 
think I should name misconstruction of ijersonal actions and 
motives^ embracing in its train false interpretations, libelous 
thoughts, issuing in libelous words and stretching on down 
through its gradations of guiltiness until it reaches the lowest, 
most cowardly, most heinous, blackest of crimes, the crime of 
character-assassination. By as much as character is dearer to 
every noble man than life, by so much is character-assassination 
deeper in criminality than the assassination of the body. He 
who points at your person the weapon of death faces a punish- 
ment of equal degree, and is entitled to whatsoever considera- 
tion courage may merit in the accomplishment of an evil deed; 
but he who points at your reputation the deadly weapon of 
character-assassination, encounters no such risk, nay, too often 
he stands loftily up and pharisaically plumes himself upon his 
superior moral altitude while he strikes the dagger through that 
which is dearer than life to you. Cowardice,tliere is none greater, 
Pharisaical villainy, there is none blacker than that which lifts 
its irresponsible hand against the character of a fellow being. 
In its milder forms — alas in too many cases its scarcely milder 
forms — this evil finds a place in the press, the pulpit, the plat- 
form, the sewing circle, the club, the unnun)bered places of 
assemblage, nay, it even finds a place m the private circle and 
at the hearthstone. 
In so far as this is a conscious, purposeful crime, the mild 
slow gentle influences of intellectual and ethical training are 
relatively impotent agencies of reform. Stronger and more 
direct remedies are demanded, since the evil, in such cases, 
springs not from intellectual processes but from a pronounced 
moral degradation. It is a declared moral disease and drastic 
remedies applied directly to the abnormal functions rather than 
