# The Philosophical Review/Volume 1/Review: Gilman and Jackson - Conduct as a Fine Art

This volume is made up of the two works which divided the prize offered in 1889 by the American Secular Union for the best essay or manual to aid and assist teachers in instructing children and youth in the "purest principles of morality without inculcating religious doctrine." Both writers are keenly sensitive to the lack of instruction in morals in the public schools; and though they might (certainly one of them would) concede that moral principles ought to rest ultimately on a religious basis, they take for granted that theistic ethics must be excluded from the curriculum of the public schools. These manuals, therefore, furnish a purely human morality. This is an arbitrary limitation, which, of course, was demanded by the conditions. But it may be noticed as a sign of the confusion of thought on these subjects that one of the writers treats (not, however, in the body of the book, but in the preface) this forced exclusion of the religious aspect of morality as the condition of putting ethics on a "scientific basis." Must ethics, then, if it is to be "scientific," be atheistic, agnostic, or religiously indifferent?
This verbal blunder does not, however, affect the substance or even the spirit of the essays. Taken as a whole they deserve unqualified praise for their solution of a very difficult problem. I say solution, not solutions, for the two books should be read together, as the publishers justly recognize in binding them in a single volume. Mr. Oilman's work is general and synthetic; Mr. Jackson's, analytic and specific; the first is expository in form, the second is a dialogue. Mr. Oilman lays down principles and expands and enforces them with appropriate illustrations. Mr. Jackson evolves a moral code from the experiences of the schoolroom, where the teacher is able to exhort and appeal as well as to interrogate and instruct. The one book is the precipitate of practical morality; the other is the process of precipitation. Both are equally helpful to teachers and parents. Mr. Jackson reveals the teacher in the act of solving concrete moral problems and generalizing his results. Mr. Oilman furnishes the materials for the undertaking in his clear expositions and admirably illustrative notes.
The work is not a text-book for the use of children in the public schools. The living man must be the teacher of morals, if the study is not to become dry and profitless. But the inexperienced instructor needs knowledge, suggestions, and example, in order to apprehend what may be done in this field and how it may be done. For such an one it would be difficult to find a more helpful volume than the one now before ​us. Nor is its utility limited to the teacher. To touch on only one point, there is probably no other writing that contains within the same compass so much insight and practical wisdom on the question of morals in the public schools as will be found in the introduction by Mr. Gilman. It would be easy to select other sections for special attention, but when all is so good, such discrimination is invidious. The book excels alike by its intrinsic merits and by its adaptation to the end proposed.
J. G. S.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1924, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 99 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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