SIR,—I congratulate Mr. J. R. M. Whitehorn on his letter
from Rugby School and especially endorse his emphasis on the primary importance of the cultivation of the intellect in the education of youth. The march of time shows the increasing dominance of man over his environment and this is due to the application of his intellectual powers to the elucidation of the natural laws. Most men will concede that this growing mastery has made for the increase of man's happiness ; heaven knows there is plenty of room for more, but it is surely a fact that where civilisation is most advanced the lot of the common man is a vastly happier one. Man is what he is as distinct from the lower animals because he has a thinking organ and since the increasing use of that has conferred many material benefits upon him it is natural that he should cultivate it and apply his reasoning powers wherever he may find fields wherein they may operate.
The first essential intellectual principle is respect for truth and since an education in the principles of science places that in the foremost place, and more and more of our youth are being trained in scientific subjects, it is natural that respect for truth grows. But truth is based on the evidence of facts, and facts are among the hardest things in the world to be assured of. The young scientist is taught to put the believed facts on which he bases his theory and practice through the sternest of inquisi- tions and he finds that preliminary examination to be essential. He applies that inquisition to the ethical field and he finds the foundations of Christian dogma to be of the shakiest. But that finding has no relation whatever to the validity of Christian ethics which in fact are common to many religions and long antedated the beginning of Christianity.
Can, then, a foundation for ethics be fOund apart from Christian dogma? I believe it can and that the first stone is the fact that in man there is somehow inherent a respect for truth, a knowledge that it is a " good," and it is on that that the man of scientific education builds his temple, and who shall say that the foundation is not stable?—Yours, &c.,
Clive House, 25 Warwick Road, Coventry. W. FRASER ANNAND.
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