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without knowing anything about the physiological processes which supply the objective basis for food values. Now, the processes of history, the efforts of men to build up social institutions, the groping of men toward justice, truth, and human companionship, these recognized wants and ideals, are related to ascertainable needs and functions of human nature just as food values are related to the scientifically knowable structures and functions of the human body. There is no appeal here save to the facts.

But this is only half the task. We need an objective basis not merely for our knowledge as to the needs and functions of human nature; we need also to enquire into the way in which, at any given time and place, these needs are being supplied. At the present time, certainly, if not throughout man's history, the resources available for the satisfaction of human wants exist in the form of, or are bound up with, the organized life of society. They are, in the broadest sense of the term, social institutions. Once more to revert to our analogy, social institutions are related to those human necessities and requirements which it comes within the scope of ethics to ascertain, just as food resources are related to the physiological requirements of the body. The consequence is that ethics becomes an inquiry into the adequacy of existing social institutions to satisfy the requirements of human nature as they may be known to exist at any given time. Ethics thus becomes the focussing point not only for the psychological sciences, but for the historical and social sciences as well. Obviously, one cannot plunge at once into the social resources of civilization, the existing social capital, without a preliminary knowledge of the way in which this capital, these ideas and institutions, have come to be what they are.

There are one or two possible misunderstandings of the implications of such a conception of ethics as I have

tried to set forth. Ethics is an inquiry into the nature of human needs and values, and also into the adequacy with which the available social resources, i.e., social institutions, are meeting these needs. The desirability of pursuing such an inquiry arises from the necessity of securing an intelligent control over the future development of civilization. This means a deliberate renunciation of laissez faire and of optimistic confidence in the invisible hand. It implies an increasing social control, based upon knowledge, of the various ways in which human wants are supplied. That it means a large increase, all along the line, of some form of socialism, I have personally no doubt whatever. But such an extension of intelligent, social control over an area which hitherto has been left to the free play of individual selfinterest will be tolerable only on one condition, that, namely, such control be really based upon knowledge, that the knowledge be widely diffused, and that it be continually subject to the correction of experience. The success of the extension of organized knowledge from the mastery of nature to the mastery of ourselves and of our destiny will depend upon the extent to which all controlled functions, individuals and groups, shall understand the basis, in objective facts, for the existence of such control. It is only the diffusion of knowledge that will enable individuals to participate in a social purpose which organizes and directs the development of human relations and institutions. Moreover, the knowledge which shall serve to organize the life of men in society must shed every vestige of dogma and of sheer authority; it must be experimental. And there will need to be a much wider diffusion among men of the experimental temper, of the willingness to be tolerant, and to submit ideas to the test of experience, than has hitherto been the case. Providing these conditions are fulfilled, I see not the slightest reason for fearing that the application of knowledge to the control of human society would mean

the authoritative regimentation and Prussianizing of civilization, the coming of the servile state, which has so often seemed the only alternative to individualism and the invisible hand.

I may be permitted to say a word as to the proper attitude and spirit which should go with the study and teaching of ethics thus understood. If the central thing in ethics be, as I have said, the appraising of human needs and the adequacy with which they are being supplied by the existing structures of civilization, then it will not be strange if serious defects and opportunities for improvement are brought home to the mind of the student. There is a pathology of civilization as well as an anatomy and a physiology. But while this is soindeed if it were otherwise there would be no occasion for any study of ethics at all—it should go without saying that nothing whatever in the shape of propaganda belongs in the ethics classroom, except the propaganda of openmindedness and intellectual integrity. I mention this here because I have been surprised to find those who have thought that the teaching of philosophy, and accordingly of ethics, implied the attempt to make disciples and to convert one's students. to the beliefs which oneself holds dear. Where, as in ethics, the problems discussed are those which stir men's feelings, which involve the fate of established interests and institutions, it is all the more imperative that habits of critical analysis and rigidly objective observation should be inculcated and fostered.

Since I have touched upon the teaching of ethics, and since my audience is in part an academic one, I may, in closing, say a word about the function of the university in furthering the increase of our knowledge of human life, and in making possible the application of such knowledge to the practical affairs of men. There are three functions in this matter which it is essential for a university to perform, especially a state university

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in a democratic society. The first of these is the organization and fostering of all studies directed upon the present problems of civilization. Effectively to accomplish this, there must be intellectual coöperation upon the widest possible scale. Traditional lines of cleavage between the studies dealing with the life of man in society must be overcome. There will need to be built up a comprehensive yet flexible mechanism for bringing together and making accessible the existing store of knowledge, the intellectual capital, bearing upon the problems of society. Scholars and workers in every branch of this field must be trained to see the bearing of their specialized pursuits upon the problem as a whole.

But secondly, there will be an increasing need in the society of the future not only of men who are investigators and organizers of knowledge, but of men charged with the business of converting theory into practice. These are the men who in one capacity or another will perform useful social functions in a professional and scientific spirit. They will be civil officers, public servants, captains of industry, teachers, and many others. The possibilities here are without limit. Whenever any body of knowledge comes into existence which should be utilized in the fulfilment of a social function, there will be the nucleus for a vocational or professional school. The only alternatives are quackery and demagogy. I believe that there are already opportunities here upon which our universities should seize. A School of Politics, to train men for all branches of public and social service could, to great advantage, be organized at once in the University of California.

But there is a third function, and, in my judgment, the most important. The best efforts of the university should be directed to diffusing among all students who come to the university a knowledge of the existing problems of civilization, and some idea of what it would mean

to solve these problems in an intelligent and enlightened manner, rather than to allow things to drift until the only resort is the barbarian appeal to arms and to force. The university should ask of all its students that, at some place in their college career, they obtain an elementary knowledge of the human and social order in which they will have to live, and which they will help to shape. No matter what the future vocation of the student is to be, whether engineer, doctor, business man or laboring man, there is one vocation required of all alike, the vocation of living as an intelligent and alert member of society, awake to its problems and vitally interested in the reasonable solution of those problems. I am convinced that the university could reasonably ask all its students to take at least one course having for its aim a survey of present civilization and of the historical processes which have made our social world what it is. Of course, such an undertaking would be exposed to all the dangers of superficiality and of dilettantism. But if the university cannot offer such organized knowledge to all its students, the university confesses its failure to meet the requirements of citizenship in a democratic society. But there is more that the university might accomplish. There are large numbers of students who would welcome not only a single course but a well organized curriculum centering around the problems of human nature and of society as they exist at the present time. Such a curriculum would bring within its scope the fields of history and anthropology, psychology and philosophy, economics and political science. It would be designed to acquaint the student with the historical and psychological roots of the existing fabric of civilization, the ideas and institutions which make up our social environment. No such curriculum exists at present, at least in this university. Instead we have many diverse and specialized courses, most of them, no doubt, valuable and important. But each one of these courses would gain

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