It seems to follow from these lines of Browning, perhaps the most flaccid spiritually in the English language, that to go out and mix oneself up with the landscape is the same as doing one’s duty. As a method of salvation this is even easier and more æsthetic than that of the Ancient Mariner, who, it will be remembered, is relieved of the burden of his transgression by admiring the color of water-snakes!”
Irving Babbitt, “Rousseau and Romanticism.”
“Objection: Will not this end in ethical scepticism? Answer: Nothing is further from scepticism than the conception of a reality subject to laws, and of a rational action based on the knowledge of those laws.”
L. Levy-Brühl, “Ethics and Moral Science,”
Table of Contents, p. xi.
“In the preceding pages we have no doubt often hurt—but we have hurt to heal. The good surgeon probes deeply in order that he may not have the operation to perform again. Even a minute amount of diseased tissues left behind can prevent the return of vigorous and creative health. Thus what may seem to the anxious patient unnecessary cruelty may be the greatest kindness. A sentimental compromise is never welcomed by the mature judgment of the brave man. And in this day when so many have willingly given their lives for the sake of a human ideal, is it just and right to flinch in the spiritual warfare which confronts our generation? We are seeking nothing less than a renaissance in which men’s energies will be wisely and loyally directed to what is greatly human and humanly great. In such a service we must will to be hard on ourselves and on others.”
Roy Wood Sellars, “The Next Step in Religion,” p. 211.
Little did Descartes dream that his attempt to find truth by the method of candid doubting was a sign that human evolution had “turned a corner,” or that the method he employed was to be the precursor of an ethical renaissance. Yet the introduction of this one form of psychological test as a philosophic instrument was an entering wedge of such power that where great darkness had been, much light was shed; and where the stolid inertia of many centuries had existed, movement and life and enlightenment began to appear. But nature is slow, and always takes plenty of time to play its elaborate game; indeed, often nature seems to us to proceed by circuitous paths where we would make an open right of way. However, even though it was several centuries after Descartes before the first psychological laboratory was founded, the development of thought toward the recognition and use of the psychological method was nevertheless steadily proceeding. Today there is no word we are more wont to conjure with than the word psychology. And even if the foolish always use it with derision, yet those who are wise know well to what an extent it is symbolical of a new era of human development, on the threshold of which era we now confidently stand.
What is this psychological method which has so silently become established, and what has it to do with the acquisition of an ethical technique? It is the method of analysis, experiment, and constructive scepticism, which treats all phenomena objectively, that is, by leaving out the personal equation, and by asking not how do we preconceive that things should appear, but only how do they appear with our personal bias in abeyance.
Such a method, which, by the way, is the essence of psychological science, is very difficult to achieve. Indeed, for many it is constitutionally impossible. The history of physical science records how great were the struggles of men to become objectively-minded even toward their external environment, struggles which have only recently become successful. Witness the fact that for many centuries the alchemists sought for the philosopher’s stone, a mineral which they falsely preconceived to have the power of transmuting lead into gold; witness the fact that the science of anatomy was for generations denied its birth on account of pious prejudice and taboo; and witness even today that many physical objects are said to be bewitched when they fail to operate as expected, and that luck at cards is still stoutly affirmed by otherwise estimable people. Indeed, there are thousands of farmers in the United States who appeal to the methods of divination in planting their crops and shingling their houses. Consequently, it is plain that if the power to become objectively-minded toward the physical world is so rarely attained, it is even more difficult to become detached and un-self-conscious toward the mental and social behavior of our fellow-men. Nevertheless, this method of detachment, of looking at old things with new eyes, is just what hundreds of teachers of psychology are training thousands of students every year to employ; and its salutary effects are being felt in every corner of the civilized world.
To some persons all this may come as a surprise, since the criticism has already been publicly uttered that the study of psychology tends to make one incurably introspective. On these grounds alone the self-styled hard-headed business man often hastily classifies psychology among the foibles of women and poets. This, however, is simply another error due to hostile preconceptions. For even though some psychologists have fallen into the practice of cultivating Psyche for her own sake, yet their method originated from distinctly other motives. Psychology, it is true, when cultivated by persons constitutionally possessed of an introversive bias, may not always eradicate that bias, any more than will the putting of an army rifle into the hands of a timid man make him forthright into a model top-sergeant.