s instrumental? What kind of
life is best? What is it that permits man, with all his faults, his
sordid appetites, his meannesses and gross dishonors, to hold his head
erect as one yet worthy of the tribute implied in the fact that we
have duties toward him?

An answer satisfying to all may never be reached; but to evade these
questions is to abdicate the teacher's function. Many young people are
led by the biologic teachings of the day to regard man as the utterly
helpless product of his environment. Or they are so impressed with the
obvious and immediate needs of whole masses for better food, better
homes, greater opportunities for culture, that they do not stop to ask
whether these goods are worth while in themselves, or if not, what is
the deeper purpose to which they should minister. A conception of
personality is needed, sufficiently exalted to permit the various
immediate utilities to find their due place as tributes to the ideal
excellence latent in man; and on the other hand there is need for a
view of the spiritual life free from the misuse to which that term is
put by the various cults evoked by reaction against modern mechanism.
Painstaking inquiry into the grounds upon which the assurance of human
dignity can justify itself, has never been more urgently required.[50]

=Ideals and tendencies in ethics teaching=

Let us beware of surrendering to the common but often pernicious
demand of our swift-moving America that in order to receive
consideration a new idea should prove itself capable of yielding
immediate dividends. There seems to be a certain hesitancy today among
some in our educated classes about speaking of "ideals." Ideals
connote a long look ahead. They imply a sense that there is something
perfect even though the steps toward embodying or approximating it
will be many and arduous, perhaps discouragingly hard. They betoken
the likelihood of appearing before men as the victims of ultimately
unworkable dreams. In refreshing contrast is the seeming
practicability of encouraging present tendencies. Your tendency is no
far-off projection of mere thought; it is something solid and "real,"
here and now, respected at the bank, in the newspaper office, and
other meeting places of those whose heads are hard. Tendencies turn
elections; ideals carry no such palpable witness of their power.
"Hence let us study tendencies."

This characterization is perhaps extreme, but the danger to which it
refers is all