80. THE QUESTION OF PRACTICAL UTILITY.—Why should men study philosophy? The question is a natural one, for man is a rational being, and when the worth of a thing is not at once evident to him, he usually calls for proof of its worth. Our professional schools, with the exception of schools of theology, usually pay little attention to philosophical studies; but such studies occupy a strong position in our colleges, and a vast number of persons not students in the technical sense think it worth while to occupy themselves with them more or less. Wherever liberal studies are prosecuted they have their place, and it is an honored place. Is this as it should be?
Before we ask whether any given study is of practical value, it is wise to determine what the word "practical" shall be taken to mean. Shall we say that we may call practical only such learning as can be turned to direct account in earning money later? If we restrict the meaning of the word in this way, we seem to strike a blow at liberal studies in general.
Thus, no one would think of maintaining that the study of mathematics is not of practical value—sometimes and to some persons. The physicist and the engineer need to know a good deal about mathematics. But how is it with the merchant, the lawyer, the clergyman, the physician? How much of their algebra, geometry, and trigonometry do these remember after they have become absorbed in the practice of their several callings, and how often do they find it necessary to use anything beyond certain simple rules of arithmetic?
Sometimes we are tempted to condemn the study of the classics as unpractical, and to turn instead to the modern languages and to the physical sciences. Now, it is, of course, a fair question to ask what should and what should not be regarded as forming part of a liberal education, and I shall make no effort to decide the question here. But it should be borne well in mind that one cannot decide it by determining what studies are practical in the sense of the word under discussion.
If we keep strictly to this sense, the modern languages are to the majority of Americans of little more practical value than are the Latin and Greek. We scarcely need them except when we travel abroad, and when we do that we find that the concierge and the waiter use English with surprising fluency. As for the sciences, those who expect to earn a living through a knowledge of them, seek, as a rule, that knowledge in a technical or professional school, and the rest of us can enjoy the fruit of their labors without sharing them. It is a popular fallacy that because certain studies have a practical value to the world at large, they must necessarily have a practical value to every one, and can be recommended to the individual on that account. It is worth while to sit down quietly and ask oneself how many of the bits of information acquired during the course of a liberal education are directly used in the carrying on of a given business or in the practice of a given profession.
Nevertheless, we all believe that liberal education is a good thing for the individual and for the race. One must not too much restrict the meaning of the word "practical." A civilized state composed of men who know nothing save what has a direct bearing upon their especial work in life is an absurdity; it cannot exist. There must be a good deal of general enlightenment and there must be a considerable number of individuals who have enjoyed a high measure of enlightenment.
This becomes clear if we consider the part played in the life of the state by the humblest tradesman. If he is to be successful, he must be able to read, write, and keep his accounts, and make, let us say, shoes. But when we have said this, we have summed him up as a workman, but not as a man, and he is also a man. He may marry, and make a good or a bad husband, and a good or a bad father. He stands in relations to his neighborhood, to the school, and to the church; and he is not without his influence. He may be temperate or intemperate, frugal or extravagant, law-abiding or the reverse. He has his share, and no small share, in the government of his city and of his state. His influence is indeed far-reaching, and that it may be an influence for good, he is in need of all the intellectual and moral enlightenment that we can give him. It is of the utmost practical utility to the state that he should know a vast number of things which have no direct bearing upon the making and mending of shoes.
And if this is true in the case of the tradesman, it is scarcely necessary to point out that the physician, the lawyer, the clergyman, and the whole army of those whom we regard as the leaders of men and the molders of public opinion have spheres of non-professional activity of great importance to the state. They cannot be mere specialists if they would. They must influence society for good or ill; and if they are ignorant and unenlightened, their influence cannot be good.
When we consider the life of man in a broad way, we see how essential it is that many men should be brought to have a share in what has been gained by the long travail of the centuries past. It will not do to ask at every step whether they can put to direct professional use every bit of information gained. Literature and science, sweetness and light, beauty and truth, these are the heritage of the modern world; and unless these permeate its very being, society must undergo degeneration. It is this conviction that has led to the high appreciation accorded by intelligent men to courses of liberal study, and among such courses those which we have recognized as philosophical must take their place.
81. WHY PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES ARE USEFUL.—But let us ask a little more specifically what is to be gained by pursuing distinctively philosophical studies. Why should those who go to college, or intelligent persons who cannot go to college, care to interest themselves in logic and ethics, psychology and metaphysics? Are not these studies rather dry, in the first place, and rather profitless, in the second?
As to the first point, I should stoutly maintain that if they are dry, it is somebody's fault. The most sensational of novels would be dry if couched in the language which some philosophers have seen fit to use in expressing their thoughts. He who defines "existence" as "the still and simple precipitate of the oscillation between beginning to be and ceasing to be" has done his best to alienate our affections from the subject of his predilection.
But it is not in the least necessary to talk in this way about matters philosophical. He who is not a slave to tradition can use plain and simple language. To be sure, there are some subjects, especially in the field of metaphysics, into which the student cannot expect to see very deeply at the outset of his studies. Men do not expect to understand the more difficult problems of mathematics without making a good deal of preparation; but, unhappily, they sometimes expect to have the profoundest problems of metaphysics made luminous to them in one or two popular lectures.
Philosophical studies are not dry, when men are properly taught, and are in a position to understand what is said. They deal with the most fascinating of problems. It is only necessary to pierce through the husk of words which conceals the thoughts of the philosopher, and we shall find the kernel palatable, indeed. Nor are such studies profitless, to take up our second point. Let us see what we may gain from them.
Let us begin with logic—the traditional logic commonly taught to beginners. Is it worth while to study this? Surely it is. No one who has not tried to introduce the average under-graduate to logic can realize how blindly he uses his reasoning powers, how unconscious he is of the full meaning of the sentences he employs, how easily he may be entrapped by fallacious reasonings where he is not set on his guard by some preposterous conclusion touching matters with which he is familiar.
And he is not merely unconscious of the lapses in his processes of reasoning, and of his imperfect comprehension of the significance of his statements; he is unconscious also of the mass of inherited and acquired prejudices, often quite indefensible, which he unquestioningly employs as premises.
He fairly represents the larger world beyond the walls of the college. It is a world in which prejudices are assumed as premises, and loose reasonings pass current and are unchallenged until they beget some unpalatable conclusion. It is a world in which men take little pains to think carefully and accurately unless they are dealing with something touching which it is practically inconvenient to make a mistake.
He who studies logic in the proper way is not filling his mind with useless facts; he is simply turning the light upon his own thinking mind, and realizing more clearly what he has always done rather blindly and blunderingly. He may completely forget the
"Barbara, Celarent, Darii, Ferioque prioris,"
and he may be quite unable to give an account of the moods and figures of the syllogism; but he cannot lose the critical habit if he once has acquired it, and he cannot but be on his guard against himself as well as against others.
There is a keen pleasure in gaining such insight. It gives a feeling of freedom and power, and rids one of that horrid sense that, although this or that bit of reasoning is certainly bad, it is impossible to tell just what is the matter with it. And as for its practical utility, if it is desirable to get rid of prejudice and confusion, and to possess a clear and reasonable mind, then anything that makes for this must be of value.
Of the desirability that all who can afford the luxury of a liberal education should do some serious reading in ethics, it seems hardly necessary to speak. The deficiencies of the ethics of the unreflective have already been touched upon in Chapter XVIII.
But I cannot forbear dwelling upon it again. What thoughtful man is not struck with the variety of ethical standards which obtain in the same community? The clergyman who has a strong sense of responsibility for the welfare of his flock is sometimes accused of not sufficiently realizing the importance of a frank expression of the whole truth about things; the man of science, whose duty it seems to be to peer into the mysteries of the universe, and to tell what he sees or what he guesses, is accused of an indifference to the effect which his utterances may have upon the less enlightened who hear him speak; many criticise the lawyer for a devotion to the interests of his client which is at times in doubtful harmony with the interests of justice in the larger sense; in the business world commercial integrity is exalted, and lapses from the ethical code which do not assail this cardinal virtue are not always regarded with equal seriousness.
It is as though men elected to worship at the shrine of a particular saint, and were inclined to overlook the claims of others. For all this there is, of course, a reason; such things are never to be looked upon as mere accident. But this does not mean that these more or less conflicting standards are all to be accepted as satisfactory and as ultimate. It is inevitable that those who study ethics seriously, who really reflect upon ethical problems, should sometimes criticise the judgments of their fellow-men rather unfavorably.
Of such independent criticism many persons have a strong distrust. I am reminded here of an eminent mathematician who maintained that the study of ethics has a tendency to distort the student's judgments as to what is right and what is wrong. He had observed that there is apt to be some divergence of opinion between those who think seriously upon morals and those who do not, and he gave the preference to the unthinking majority.
Now, there is undoubtedly danger that the independent thinker may be betrayed into eccentricities of opinion which are unjustifiable and are even dangerous. But it seems a strange doctrine that it is, on the whole, safer not to think, but rather to drift on the stream of public opinion. In other fields we are not inclined to believe that the ignorant man, who has given no especial attention to a subject, is the one likely to be right. Why should it be so in morals?
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