Ethical Functions of Scientijic Study — Chamherlin. 391 
hygienic and preventive measures are needed. The slow moral 
effects induced by intellectual habit might, in the course of 
time", undermine the sinister attitude of the mind and lead to a 
more wholesodie condition, but a quicker and more direct 
remedy is needed. This is a case in v^^hich direct assault is the 
better strategy. 
But by far the greater evil, at least the wider evil, springs 
not from criminal intent but from defects of intellectual action 
and from faulty attitudes of the mind. Misjudgment of others 
springs in some large part from a want of rigorous scrutiny 
of the evidence upon which judgment is predicated. Rumors, 
reports, suggestions, innuendoes are accepted without sufficient 
inspection. Ofttimes they bear in their very nature elements 
of sheer inconsistency. Stories that would not bear for a 
moment a rigorous inspection of their coherence are accepted 
without scrutiny and form the basis of sinister conclusions. 
The habit of close inspection of all statements before acceptance, 
the practice of withholding judgment from imperfect data, the 
rule of looking upon all sides before arriving at a conclusion, in 
short, the fundamental scholarly habit of mind, if given full 
play, would eradicate the larger percentage of this enormous 
evil and eliminate with it an incalculable measure of poignant 
suffering which the best and most sensitive natures are contin- 
ually forced to endure. 
Among the sinister influences now affecting our body politic, 
one of the most baneful, to my judgment, is the indiscriminate, 
wholesale, inconsiderate denunciation of our public servants . 
Moral denunciation has unquestionably a most important func- 
tion to perform in restraining corruption and unfaithful public 
service. But when that denunciation is applied without indi- 
vidual discrimination, without a careful and conscientious 
regard for its justness, it tends to defeat its own object. The 
honest man is from his very nature more sensitive to reflections 
upon his integrity than the rogue, and if they are equally lashed 
by the assumed reformer, or by the pharisaical preacher of civic 
righteousness, the greater punishment falls upon the just, while 
the unjust pockets the reward of his villainy, and chuckles over 
the smartings of his more honest fellow official, while he enjoys 
the price of corruption. It is indeed important that official 
malfeasance shall be denounced, but it is equally and more im- 
