Morality is not a list of actions and not a collection of rules that can be used like pharmaceutical or culinary recipes.
John Dewey
Where morality is established on theology, and law on divine decrees, the most immoral, unjust and shameful things can be justified and substantiated.
Ludwig Feuerbach
Morality is only the hygiene of the mind and heart.
Romain Rolland
People think that the path of universal culture is the path of morality;
but no philosophizing will bear fruit until physical knowledge is applied and everything that pertains to practical life is disseminated.
August Einsiedel
Morality is better expressed in short sayings than in long speeches and sermons.
Carl Immerman
Morality has nothing to do with religion ... religion not only does not serve as the basis of morality, but rather is hostile to it. True morality must be based on the nature of man;
Religious morality will always be based only on chimeras and on the arbitrariness of those people who endow God with a language that often fundamentally contradicts both nature and human reason.
Paul Holbach
The desire for happiness is innate in man, so it should be the basis of all morality.
Friedrich Engels
Preaching morality is easy, justifying it is difficult.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Morality should not be the goal, but the consequence of a work of art.
Benjamin Constant
The right leaves the mentality complete freedom. Morality, on the other hand, concerns the frame of mind and requires that an action be done out of respect for duty. Consequently, the course of action corresponding to the law is moral if it is determined by respect for the law.
Georg Hegel
Morality!!! What sad thoughts this word gives rise to! Morality!!! At this word, it seems to the child that he sees teachers armed with rods, a young woman imagines jealous men threatening with boiling cauldrons of hell ... an honest person recalls the many intriguers and criminals for whom morality has served as a mask at all times.
Charles Fourier
In order for my action to have moral value, my belief must be associated with it. It is immoral to do something out of fear of punishment or in order to gain a good opinion of yourself from others.
Georg Hegel
I will try to revive morality with wit, and temper wit with morality.
Joseph Addison
Morality is religion that has passed into mores.
Heinrich Heine
If rightly understood interest is the principle of all morality, then it is necessary to strive to ensure that the private interest of the individual person coincides with the interests of all mankind.
Karl Marx
Moral force cannot be created by paragraphs of law...
Karl Marx
We make a virtue out of need - this is how morality arises.
Werner Mich
Morality would be an empty science if it could not show man that his greatest interest lies in being virtuous.
Paul Holbach
To comprehend the true foundations of morality, people do not need either theology, or revelations, or gods; simple common sense is sufficient for this.
Paul Holbach
The greatest misunderstanding is to go into morality when it comes to historical facts.
Denis Diderot
Christian morality, as if deliberately invented in order to fetter human nature and enslave it to imaginary ghosts, therefore had no influence on most people.
Paul Holbach
Curiously, today politicians prefer to talk about morality, and bishops about politics.
Jonathan Lynn
Morality is genetics: evil is dominant, good is recessive.
Jean Rostand
Morality is what remains of fear when it is forgotten.
Jean Rostand
The ultimate aim of morality should be to give the greatest opportunity for the realization of ideals.
There is no other morality than the morality of the human heart, just as there is no other knowledge or other wisdom than the knowledge of one's needs and a correct idea of the paths to happiness.
Etienne Senancourt
The question of the reality of morality boils down to whether there is really a justified principle opposed to the principle of selfishness? Since selfishness requires well-being only for the individual, the opposite principle would have to extend this requirement to all.
Arthur Schopenhauer
In fact, each class and even each profession has its own morality, which they also violate whenever they can do it with impunity.
Friedrich Engels
Morality - for most it is a system to ensure their own rightness.
Robert Musil
Morality is based on the autonomy of the human spirit...
Karl Marx
Morality is "impotence in action". Whenever she enters into a struggle with some kind of vice, she is defeated.
Karl Marx
Independent morality offends the universal principles of religion, and the specific concepts of religion are contrary to morality.
Karl Marx
What is good in politics cannot be bad in morality.
Jeremy Bentham
There is no other morality than that which is based on the principles of reason and follows from the natural inclination of man to goodness.
Pierre Bayle
Morality is the grammar of religion. It is easier to do right than to do well.
Carl Burne
A non-social person cannot have morals.
There are people who always have morality ... matter, from which they never sew dresses for themselves.
Joseph Joubert
The moral is the tendency to throw out the bath with the child.
Karl Kraus
The moral says: "Don't look here!" And it suits both parties.
Karl Kraus
The lower do not rise to morality, the lower do not condescend to it.
George Shaw
There is no doubt that ... in morality ... by and large progress is being made.
Friedrich Engels
Every theory of morality has hitherto been, in the final analysis, the product of a given economic state of society.
Friedrich Engels
We live by a double morality: we profess one, but do not use it in practice, and we use the other, but profess it very rarely.
Bertrand Russell
Morality deserves a different kind of clarity. Here it is not a matter of contemplation, which nourishes the mind, but of impulses that direct the will. She needs heat and ardor more than light.
Joseph Joubert
The basis of life is also the basis for morality. Where, from hunger, from poverty, you do not have any material in your body, there is no basis and material for morality in your head, in your heart and in your feelings.
Ludwig Feuerbach
The reason why the morality of all theories diverges so far from human behavior is that in morality all people are treated as equal, while in practice they are not.
August Einsiedel
We ... reject any attempt to impose on us any kind of moral dogma as an eternal, final, henceforth unchanging moral law, on the pretext that the world of morality also has its enduring principles that stand above history and national differences.
Friedrich Engels
The principle of morality is happiness, but not happiness that is concentrated on one and the same person, but happiness distributed among different persons ...
Ludwig Feuerbach
To morality: the highest thing in it is to ensure that the guilt and suffering of this heart are buried in itself and the heart becomes the grave of the heart.
Georg Hegel
Morality gives general principles of behavior, ignoring specific circumstances.
Pierre Bayle
People need a human morality based on human nature, on experience, on reason.
Claude-Adrian Helvetius
We do not have a perfect work on moral science, but we have the most information about morality.
Stanislav Stashic
Politics is public morality, morality is private politics.
Gabriel-Bonnot Mably
This is the great value of religion for the education of character, that by enlivening in us the consciousness of God and the presence of God, it gives unity to our whole life. How necessary, but how difficult it is to maintain this feeling of unity! The more our civilization improves, the more it separates people from each other and breaks the life of each of us into different parts, little interconnected. The more complex life becomes, the more dismembered. The success of industry is based on the division of labour, the success of knowledge on the specialization of the sciences. Our life is shattered into pieces, responsibilities are also shattered. Some lie with us at home and in the family, others outside the home, in relation to people; they are all painted and numbered, sometimes in homeopathic doses, so as not to confuse us too much.
The desire to divide life into small parts, to which man has been inclined at all times, has taken possession of everyone in our time. What can now bind together our fragmented life? Nothing else is just the thought of God and His relation to our life; only this will reveal to us the true meaning of our being, will give us the opportunity through the mass of fractions, of which our life necessarily consists, to recognize the one great universal goal that animates and elevates human existence.
The whole success of our life lies in the consciousness of this basic unity, in which the mutual connection of all parts of our life becomes clear, the true significance of all the small deeds and phenomena that make up our life becomes clear. Following our deeds and deeds, the voice of the quickening spirit should be heard, reminding us that we are striving to embody the highest principle in life, to see a clear end and a clear goal in front of us. And this is possible only in God; only in the thought of God can we find the balance of earthly existence, comprehend the idea of the unity of life; only in the thought of God do we find ourselves in the midst of the innumerable fractions of life.
Faith education should be centered on the person of the Lord Jesus and on gospel teaching. But every believer belongs to the church, and church teaching is based on dogma, and therefore the basis of teaching must be dogmatic. Those who think that this basis should be predominantly moral are mistaken.
The principles of moral teaching are fragile and shaky if they are not rooted in faith. Left to himself, a person is brought up by the environment, perceiving those ideas, those teachings, those examples that he sees and hears around him. In order for a person not to get lost in his impressions, habits and desires, he needs to have in his soul a hidden source of strength that will teach and help to reject evil and choose the good, distinguish between lies and truth, create for himself an inner life and clearly recognize the goal. own life.
The only source of this power is faith, and our beliefs must be precise and able to express themselves clearly and definitively in our minds. That is why dogmatic knowledge is necessary in the teaching of faith. Another is ready to say: "The whole teaching of the Gospel consists in love - and this is enough for me, and I stand before everyone with the beginning of love for all people."
But this beginning alone is not yet effective, and easily blurs into fruitless sentimentalism. It doesn't give solid results. Love alone is not enough to solve all the issues of life. Love must unite with knowledge, and this is the goal of education and the beginning of the formation of character in a person,
That is why true education must be based on religion. Only he is a good teacher who has a religious mood: it alone serves as a support for moral teaching. Otherwise, how will he establish in the soul of the student the concept of good and evil, of moral and immoral action. Punishment is not enough for this: punishment in itself is the act of brute force alone.
New attempts to establish a school, apart from religion, on moral teaching everywhere, are, and always will be, fruitless. The moral principles of the teaching will evaporate and disappear, or fade to indifference, giving way to material motives. But a teaching based on religious principles introduces the soul into a new, spiritual sphere, opens the horizons of spiritual life to it, leaves in it ideas and concepts that, even if they turn pale, cannot completely disappear, are not forgotten, and even, having turned pale, again often return to the soul, refreshing it.
The concept of a person's spiritual wholeness is supplanted by its fragmentation into separate abilities and forces, each of which develops and acts according to "they are special laws and in complete disunity with others. The idea arises of some kind of box with blank partitions: in this cage there is a place for dogma - this is in the part of grace; and next, behind the partition, you place art - this is the department of taste; there, aside, science, where no ability, except abstract thought, should penetrate; and there morality. Naturally, for that, who has become accustomed to these ideas, it is difficult to admit that all human abilities are subordinated to the highest spiritual power by the consciousness of enlightened self-control, and that, in essence, everyone has one task - to create an integral image of a moral person. which fit different abilities, and we continue to talk about the high value of personality, not noticing that we have undermined it, casting aside concept of inner wholeness. It does not seem to us at all impossible that the same person believes in one thing, knows another, admires a third ... When necessary, you can open one box and close all the others ...
Anyone who happened to follow the development of mental and spiritual abilities in a child from a very early age, he probably noticed that, first of all, his attention stops at the most general, abstract, and at the same time the most practical questions, in their direct relation to the personality. everyone. He tries to clarify for himself what God is, his attitude towards God, what Providence expresses, where good and evil come from; he listens to the first murmur of his conscience and greedily asks about the relation of the visible world to the invisible world, whose initial dark sensation manifests itself in a special feeling of horror, which sinks into the child’s soul from nowhere.
Then, as the circle of his sensations expands and new ideas, one after another, stand out from the continuous mass of phenomena, he, first of all, tries in his own way to adapt them to the concepts already acquired by him, to connect the new with the old, and that’s it. what is done to him or in his eyes, turn into a lesson for yourself.
The suddenness of these applications and the rapidity with which judgment follows each observation are often striking and point to the inner, never-ceasing work of the soul. There, on some kind of unquenchable fire, all the material acquired from outside is, as it were, melted into a new form and immediately goes into the matter of self-education. It seems that the main task lies precisely in facilitating this inner work, so that the content required for it never becomes scarce and at the same time does not suppress self-activity with its abundance.
And in the development of a whole people, the initial is in its essence assimilated and determined at the beginning. Take any education that has completed its full circle of development, and you will find at its core a system of religious beliefs. Moral concepts follow from them, under the influence of which family and social life is formed. It is impossible to imagine a whole and fresh people who would not have faith. Faith presupposes a conscious and unattained ideal, a supreme and obligatory law; and whoever has assimilated the law for himself and brought it into his life, through this very thing became higher than the world of phenomena and acquired creative power over himself: he no longer vegetates, but forms himself ... (Samarin).
The first, basic, living and active school of the Law of God is the church, i.e. temple of God, with its worship, reading and singing. Good for those who in this school learned the first lessons of faith, which later, in an artificially created school, could seem to him a heavy burden. Our Orthodox Church possesses for this invaluable treasure, which others are deprived of. There is not a single dogma, not a single great or important person or event in Old Testament and Gospel history that does not find itself - not only an echo - but also a living image in the composition of our worship. Everything will be reflected here in stichera, dogmatists, antiphons, canons, psalms and proverbs. And all this appears in the word, full of deep poetry and in connection, in the inseparable connection of the word with the singing, measured and calculated on the word. But we use this treasure so poorly that many are completely unfamiliar with it; so that these most essential, most intelligible for the people and instructive parts of our worship are neglected, for brevity in the performance of the rite, and only its skeleton is left, enlivened only by the prayer of simple souls who come to church.
It is good for those who have their own parish church serving this school of worship and doctrine, a church where the whole family from generation to generation prayed and consecrated with prayer all the important events of family life. Nowadays, with the exorbitant growth of cities, with the continuous change of the urban population, with the influx of crowds to the city centers, this significance of the parish and the parish church is drying up or completely lost.
In large cities, especially in the capitals, home churches serve as a substitute for the parish for the upper strata of society, with their ceremonial appearance, with their circumcised, often crippled worship - a miserable substitute, in the midst of which the spiritual connection of the family with the church disappears. In educational institutions with a hostel, their own church is started - it is usually assumed that students living together should form, as it were, one family that gathers in the church or near the church. But how rarely is this ideal realized in reality; - this requires a rare union in the same educational spirit of the authorities with the teaching staff and with the rector of the church, the teacher of the law: a grace-filled phenomenon is extremely rare. Enter such a church - you will see rows of disciples, mechanically gathering to certain places, go girls, like dolls, straightened to stand, you will see the authorities, soullessly standing and bored - except to observe order ...
Every school considers itself entitled to be known as a school of religious instruction when among the subjects the Law of God is in the first place. But what does it mean to teach the Law of God? Little, poor, if it means only educational sacred history and questions and answers to memory from the catechism. To teach the Law of God should mean: to teach the living faith. It is not enough to teach only how the Lord Jesus lived and taught, died and rose again: the children must feel that they cannot live without the Lord Jesus, that His words and speech must pass into their life and into their nature; so that they understand and feel what it means to bear the name of Christ, to be a Christian, what it means to walk before God, to keep the truth in their souls and the fear of God, that is, to keep their purity before God.
And the one who teaches them must remember that the children look into his eyes and not only listen to his speeches and lessons, but seek to see in him a Christian who preserves and creates the truth...
Such is the ideal. But when we turn to reality, we see in front of us textbooks with an addition of teaching aids, we see programs with a nomenclature of subjects and with the division of courses into classes. In the foreground is the sacred history of the Old and New Testaments, and from the first year in subsequent years, the schedule of the same subjects is repeated with the supposed expansion of what has already been taught, moreover, St. The gospel is part of the sacred history and is divided into "lessons" and into many questions that the examiner will offer the "test" to the children, and with which many of them will be embarrassed and in tears.
No faith can be separated from cult united with faith, that is, from worship, and especially from our Orthodox worship. Here, belief, clothed in words, images and sounds, enlivens and elevates the feeling of the heart and illuminates its truth with beauty. The teaching of the Law of God is estranged from worship and renounced from the church. But where it is inextricably linked with the church, where children, participating in church reading and singing, get used to living in the church its life and understanding and feeling the depth and beauty of the church rite, there only the teaching of the Law of God acquires the desired fullness.
However, even where it is estranged from the church, the program of the Law of God contains the doctrine of worship, also divided into many questions. Such a teaching is dead in itself, and in children's minds and in the mouth of a teacher it becomes an unbearable torment for children when they are asked questions about the details of church vessels and vestments, the celebration of the sacraments and various church rites ...
Educational institutions are growing and filling up, and at the same time, the programs of subjects that must be taught and exhibited in full list in certificates and diplomas, which are the ultimate goal of teaching, are expanding, swelling and smelling. Teachers are needed - and they are trained in numerous teachers' institutes and seminaries. All this is painted in order, marked out and approved by the states, and all this flaunts in exhibitions, from time to time arranged for show to the whole society.
And all this is a ringing cymbal and rattling copper, if all this is devoid of the spirit of life and is not held together by the only true, the only strong connection of any upbringing and training with a consciousness of duty in any business, no matter what one prepares for. This consciousness of duty must permeate the entire structure of the educational institution, from the authorities to the last of the students: where it is not there, the whole system is cracking at the seams and little by little falls apart; where it does not exist, there is no spiritual connection either between the members of the teaching staff, or between them and the students; there is no interest in the educational work, there is not in any of the teachers and students that love for their school, on which every school lives, grows and strengthens from generation to generation.
Both upbringing and teaching become only mechanics, and therefore, lies and deceit, and its fruits, bitter for the soul, bitter for the growing generations, no matter how brilliant the final results of teaching in the form of commendable certificates and help of their places, ranks and distinctions. Much is now heard about love in education and training, but what does this love that talks about itself mean when it is not based on the same consciousness of duty, is not guided by it and is not strengthened?
From the very beginning, in a child, especially in a youth, this consciousness of duty must be brought up, at every work that is part of education, at every action that is part of education. But he should be steadily educated: neither the rule nor the command is sufficient in itself for this, because it has no spiritual basis. The teacher's business is to give work to the mind, understanding and skill of each student - and his business is to demand that each work be done conscientiously, to the extent that everyone is able to understand and do. He must make sure what is understood and what is not understood, and what is not understood must be corrected in the mind of the student in order to inform him and strengthen in him the habit of thinking about what he does, and the desire to do it - regularly and satisfactorily, so that everyone can understand and appreciate his work. Only under this condition does the work gain interest for the one who does it.
If the teacher understands his entire assessment of the work only as a bare number of marks, a reprimand or a penalty, not caring about what trace this or that will leave in the mind of the student, the student remains in the same place of stupefaction or protest, without moving forward, and the teacher himself manifests in itself only a doll, mechanically wound up and mechanically moving.
Thus the mechanical school days and hours pass one after another, filled with irritation and boredom, until they lead to the critical epoch of each school year - to the equally mechanical examination - to the web, which the big fly breaks, while the small flies become entangled in it. Nevertheless, both big and small somehow make the whole path of teaching, receiving certificates - e sempre bene.
But what are the results of this whole operation carried out on the mass of the growing generation? The result is a generation flabby, frail, without a sense of duty, therefore, without the will, without the ability to do a certain thing; only those who are capable of separating themselves from the masses do not know where to direct their ability, and for the most part direct it only towards the material improvement of their life and towards obtaining any profit. It is good for one of them who manages to fall into the hands of a knowledgeable, experienced and warm-hearted person, who wants and will be able to put him to work and educate him in practice. But what did the school give him, what did the school prepare him for, which provided him with a patent - to seek his own destiny in all four directions?
The sense of duty has nothing to look for legal grounds in the concept of right and obligation. Its roots are in the organic nature of man and family. It originates in the union of husband and wife, parents and children, in the common life of the family and in the common household. In this sphere, there are direct principles of mutual care, mutual service, care of the elders for the younger, order and obedience, serviceability and conscientiousness in work: everyone knows his place and his work. Where a simple family is well-organized, there a sense of duty arises and develops naturally, uniting with the court of conscience, and little by little the habit of doing what is due is formed.
When a child moves from a family to school, the school must strengthen and further develop both this feeling and this habit with its entire system, and, above all, with the example of those who direct school teaching and upbringing. To accustom children to the order of conscious and conscientious labor means to serve to create individual personalities in a mixed mass and to the formation of characters - a great thing and a great service to society and the state.
If the school does not satisfy this main goal, if the people who lead it look at their work as a craft and do not treat their actions conscientiously, then the school can give children only bad habits instead of good ones, and is able to ruin the good inclinations of character taken from the family. .
What is sown in the elementary school goes with the children to the secondary school and grows in it - to strengthen good or bad habits. Strengthened in the consciousness of duty, in the distinctness of labor, in the preservation of order, the school leads the new generation of young people graduating from it into a strong force - they will become the builders not only of their own destiny, but of the destiny of the whole society in the successive change of workers entering the common field of labor .
There has never been as much concern as in our time about the organization of education and upbringing; but what does she refer to? On the multiplication and supply of educational institutions, on the production of teachers, on compulsory measures for the compulsory education of children, on finding funds for the maintenance of schools. In the midst of these cares and efforts, there is often little freedom and leisure for thinking about how children should be treated when we get them to school, how and what to teach them. When arranging the school, we assume that all this has already been thought out and arranged by the specialists in charge of the educational departments.
It would seem that the main object of care is precisely the children for whom the school is arranged. Caring for children is caring for ourselves, for the whole society, for a generation that is growing: we need to prepare it for life and work and prepare it better than we ourselves were prepared.
Children come to school and sit down and wait to see what will happen to them. The teacher appears and carries with him a book and a pointer. This pointer replaces the training system at all times. Children are told what they need to know and then asked. And what a child's soul is, the teacher does not care when he mechanically conducts his business: in every soul there is a depth into which the longer you peer, the more mysteries are revealed in it.
But an adult person, approaching children, usually applies to them the mindset of his adult mind, and not the mindset of a child, and this mindset is quite special.
The child begins by looking, noticing and collecting into himself. The adult mind wears out what is ready and acquired from its store. The child's mind works with images and draws its conclusions from direct observation and experience. That is why education should strive to protect and educate in the child's mind this receptivity of observational ability and readiness to raise questions about what he wants to know: this is the root of interest in revitalizing teaching and the first guarantee of all success - and not only at school. time, but for life.
But this ability is not only not supported, but suppressed by our usual system of education, blindly applying to it at the first steps the so-called school discipline. Why? Alas! because the usual system sets itself the main goal of achieving in due time a known, supposed and prescribed result. However, everything that suppresses in a person the desire and ability to be interested, to seek and ask, is contrary to the main task of education - to strengthen a person so that he becomes necessary for life and for business. If a young man takes out of school and a little of the educational material, education has not been in vain when he takes out of school a sensitive mind and requests that require an answer.
Blessed Augustine, discussing the doctrine, says: "A golden key is useless when it is not necessary to a lock, and a simple wooden key is not all good when it comes to a lock." This word involuntarily comes to mind when you look at our multi-subject and broad programs, applied indifferently to a whole mass of students: many of them do not unlock the locks with a large key. And our programs are of decisive importance, and when a prudent teacher would apply them with understanding, he would not be praised, but condemned in an examination.
And how many schools there are in the remote corners of Russia, where these locks are unlocked only with a simple wooden key, and a large patented key cannot penetrate there. And it will not help matters when only proprietary keys are required everywhere.
Seekers of education seek to be educated. But what is education? To enter into education, it is not enough to pass a well-known course and pass an examination. It is necessary to acquire the inclinations of real knowledge and take out of school both the desire and the ability to further cultivate it in oneself.
Lack of education is usually confused with ignorance, that is, the lack of concepts about the objects of knowledge. This is natural ignorance, which we meet among ordinary village people who do not see the light and have not gone through school. But in this natural ignorance there is still a fertile soil, when knowledge touches it.
Much worse, much more hopeless is the lack of education that comes from semi-education. Such semi-education, nourished by the reading of newspapers and the flying works of current literature, is especially widespread in our time and constitutes an ulcer of social life. Disordered reading conveys to the undisciplined mind only general views and current opinions: it in itself only confuses thought and excites one claim to knowledge. Only real knowledge helps a person to distinguish and evaluate the current opinions in truth and to form for himself a firm right: an opinion.
It is desirable to turn natural ignorance into education; but a man who is simply ignorant, conscious of his ignorance, has no pretensions to reason about what he does not know; but when we bring a person out of this state into semi-education, we put him into the worst ignorance: in him a false pretension to knowledge develops, and he strives to reason about anything, having neither knowledge nor experience. Real knowledge, however, educating a person, makes him able to say “I don’t know” about what he does not know, and restrains him from disorderly reasoning outside the limits of his knowledge.
It is in vain to think that the teacher is formed by knowledge, that knowledge creates the teacher. Knowledge is necessary: the teacher must know what he is called to teach, but the teacher's learning is not the main thing. The teacher forms a sympathetic unity with nature, with the life and life of the children whom he is called to teach. A good teacher lives one life with his school. No method, no system of education in itself will help the success of teaching if the teacher applies the same standard of teaching to all the children with whom he deals. Each child - in itself - by its own nature and essentially differs from the other. The stupid teacher memorized one formula and repeats it to everyone.
But a living teacher understands that in every child he is dealing with a living soul: each has his own thoughts and interests, and each is capable of responding only to such speech as is understandable to her; but, in addition, the whole school as a whole has its own soul and lives its own life, and looks into the eyes of the teacher with open eyes. In order to master it, to speak to it, the teacher must respond to these requests, arousing and maintaining an inquisitive interest in everyone and everyone. And what he teaches, what he talks about, he must know so firmly and imagine so clearly that he can at any moment answer all the questions with which the children respond in the lesson and to his speech.
When such a living connection has been formed between the teacher and the school, the teacher's teaching and upbringing action on the students, like any action of the spirit, is something hidden, not accessible to external verification. An inspector or observer, during an external examination of the school, is unable to penetrate it. Therefore, it sometimes happens that the observer, judging the state and success of the school by the external measure of the examination, is very mistaken and cannot discern good and success where they are hidden in the inner life.
The teacher put a thought into the child's head, and the boy understands the teacher's speech addressed to him; but when it is required to state it to an outsider in the form of an answer to his question, he is confused and does not know how to answer - it is necessary that this thought rush through his head and take root before he is able to express it to understanding. This condition, unfortunately, is not recognized by the external measure of the examination, and therefore it often requires from children what they cannot give - but which sometimes only gives the mechanical action of an incomprehensible memory.
We tend to attribute effective power to the teaching method. But the application of this or that method can have only one mechanical effect, if the student does not understand why he needs this or that lesson. A student can be forced to study only when he begins to understand why he is studying: in this sense, real teaching consists in leading the student to knowledge. To do this, a good teacher turns to two spiritual qualities on which all knowledge is based: curiosity and observation. These qualities a good teacher will find in the soul of everyone, if he takes the trouble to peer into it. It is possible to assimilate the teaching only through internal assimilation: only the external is powerless for this. And usually, unfortunately, we have only the external: the mind of the student is presented as a chest of drawers with many drawers and corners that need to be filled with facts: it is assumed that they will remain in the mind forever and that each room serves as their repository, from which you can retrieve when any required knowledge. And when it's time for the exam, all these boxes open for show; but a little time will pass, and all these reserves will disappear without a trace, because the knowledge was mechanical, done, and not vital.
Socrates was a great teacher - and how many learned people since his time have borrowed their teaching from him. But in the sense of our school teaching, he would be unsuitable. He did not fill his students with any knowledge. Speaking about himself, he called himself a mental midwife, that is, he helped human minds to resolve ideas, wear out ideas from himself. Socrates created the art of asking questions, which to this day bears the name of the Socratic method; but the answers to his questions were already hidden in the mind of the one to whom the question was asked. However, none of his students would be able to answer the school exam: the exam requires knowledge. And Socrates possessed an amazingly subtle art to set minds in motion with his questions, to arouse in them a work that forced them to test ideas and concepts in themselves. And thus, without teaching anything, Socrates brought out students who themselves could learn everything.
Blessed Augustine (in his confession), describing the years of school teaching, says: “We loved to play to our heart’s content, and for that we were pointed out by people who did the same thing as we; only trifles among big people are called deeds, and when the children are the same are engaged, they are punished for that by the elders. There is no doubt that often trifles among great people are called deeds. You see, people are extremely busy, and when you ask, they say they are busy with business; but half of what they do turns out to be one game of trivia. This is how we, adults, sometimes talk about the affairs and occupations of other people; but children's eyes are not worse than ours, they notice everything, look at everything. You teach a child, give instructions and lessons, and he looks at you and judges you as you are, and not according to your words.
An examination in the sense of testing is a necessary and useful thing. In this sense, it excites and supports the conscious energy of both teacher and student! But in reality, the exam ceases to be a test and turns into a mechanical measure of the material placed in the head and memory of the student as knowledge. In this sense, the exam becomes a disaster for the school business. Then to lead the whole class through the examination becomes the main goal and the main subject of instruction: the main concern of both the teacher and the student is that the exam be passed safely, and the teacher involuntarily strives to reduce as much as possible the nervous tension of the whole operation by brief and quick questions addressed to the student's memory.
At the same time, the main goal of education is completely forgotten - the mental development of the student. On the last days of the course, all the tension of both the teacher and the students is concentrated in order to fit into the heads of all the amount of educational material that should appear on the exam as knowledge. The special cares of the educational authorities begin to protect the fidelity of the so-called test from all sorts of tricks on the part of the students, all sorts of mechanical precautions are invented for this, and restrictions on the freedom of the student during the exam; and on the part of the disciples, means are devised to answer the proposed questions without difficulty or with the least difficulty. Meanwhile, in the whole class, day and night, the so-called cramming of educational material on the programs and examination tickets takes place, and, finally, by the morning of the appointed day, the entire exhausted crowd gathers for the trial. The matter ends - sometimes only towards nightfall - with the triumph of some and the bitter sobbing of others, while some of the latter become the first, and the former the last. Tell me to ask - on what basis - it will be difficult to answer.
They will say: on the basis of answers to tickets taken from the program of teaching the subject. This program usually tries to embrace all parts of the subject, both in general terms and in all details, while it is assumed that all this has been passed through, that all this must be understood and assimilated, and that all this must be inscribed in the memory of each student .. .
In the examination system, everything seems to be designed to keep the students in nervous tension, and not to give them time to change their minds and exchange, so that they can use all their strength, especially memory, without rest to prepare for the exam. But when training took place during the course of a year with the true goal of the mental development of students, it would be necessary, on the contrary, to leave them several free days before the exam, so that they could calmly identify themselves in their information, consciously distinguishing the essential from the insignificant details and prepare themselves for the real test. .
Poor kids! The exam is also difficult for them in the home environment of the school, when its only purpose is to check whether they have absorbed all the knowledge, or, better, all those subjects and questions that are set in the program, within the allotted time and by the allotted day. . It is like pouring a precious liquid from a large bottle into small vessels set aside; Has all the great vessel been poured out, and whether all the small vessels have been filled...
But how much harder it is for them when this test is carried out by a commission that gathers at the school on the appointed day and is composed of representatives of various bodies that monitors the verification of power! What excitement precedes this fateful day, especially when the school is located somewhere in a remote village, where you will not reach soon, and where you sometimes have to wait for days for a collision. Strict judges sit down, none of whom know either the school or the children - and none of them have time to get acquainted with the inner world of the school and enter in any way into its life - they are in a hurry to finish here and move to another place. And in the face of them, what fear, what embarrassment - for the teacher, the teacher, the children, who are waiting for the answer of the certificate and this or that privilege, for the privilege is everywhere connected with the exam. And among the strict judges there are many who have an understanding of the subject of study and examination. Why should they know - they have a program and a series of questions in front of them - it is worth offering any question and then hearing how the child answers, and when he stumbles, interrupt him with questions that come to mind.
Blessed is the school where such an ordeal is measured and successfully passed! But how much crying happens sometimes after him at school and to the children and the teacher!
A common exercise and test in education is to write essays on given topics. This is an extremely necessary and useful thing when it is carried out reasonably, which is not always the case. First of all, it is necessary to choose topics adapted to the degree of development of each student, to subjects about which he has an idea, and finally, to his interest and taste, to what extent both are noticed. If the topics are chosen thoughtlessly or expressed vaguely, the work will be hard and fruitless.
Another teacher approaches his students with the following requirement: express your thoughts in an essay, and then judge the essay by how, in his opinion, and what thoughts are expressed in the essay. However, it is not easy in each case to make out what thoughts this or that student may have about this or that subject. They tell him: read books and then think about it. But what books? This requires intelligent guidance, and if there is none, then from random and indiscriminate reading, the head begins only with thousands of incoherent words, phrases and concepts. Moreover, meaningful reading requires time, a certain leisure, and where can a student get both in the mass of subject lessons according to the program?
But what does it mean for a student to think, everyone thinks and argues about this differently. And to teach him to think is the first thing, it would seem, at school. To think, that is, to give an account of how concepts and images fit together, and how everything comes out of one another as a consequence and cause, and how an exact and definitive concept is expressed in a word. Whoever has the habit of thinking in this way can correctly express in his word the thought about the object of thinking. The most precious ability, both for a person and for the whole society, to think and judge sensibly, should be conceived and brought up in the school.
They say that the school exists for teaching, not for education. It is not true. On this false basis, educational institutions are established, filled with a mass of students distributed by class, the teacher deals with an impersonal mass - and it does not matter to him whom he teaches and whom he asks, but what matters is only what answer is given to the formal questions of the program and how many students have passed successfully through the exam and obtained the rights associated with the success figure.
It is not surprising that pupils leave such a school with joy and take out of it dissatisfaction with the school or even disgust with it.
No, teaching without education is impossible, because character must be educated on teaching, interest in the subject of teaching is based on teaching, the habit of conscientious and conscious performance of work is formed on teaching; tidiness and external customs of life and treatment of people are brought up on the doctrine. In a rational system of education, every student is a unit, a person from whom the teaching must be extracted and brought into development those abilities and inclinations that turned out to be in him.
Where this is absent, there remains only mechanics and teaching and education, mechanics without content. Where it is, there the teaching is attached to the school and brings love and gratitude out of it.
But where there is a good teacher, what a great task he has to peer into the soul of a child and a youth, and work on it, and penetrate into the mystery of every soul with which he deals, discover in it complex and subtle threads of motives and inclinations, recognize high and noble her aspirations. Is it not in this sense that it was said from ancient times: maxima debetur pueris reverential1.
Speaking of general education courses, are we clearly aware of the purpose and tasks of what is called general education? These tasks are usually resolved by a set of subjects, drawing up programs that determine the educational content of each subject, and scheduling them for courses.
All this organization belongs to the so-called educational or class literature, which consists of a mass of textbooks, endlessly being born, a mass with which study tables and bookstores are littered. The compilers of these books mostly operate with a set of carved rules and formulas, located in one system or another under various technical names, in order to decompose all this into different corners of the student's memory and extract it from there on demand. The expressive model of all this literature are countless grammars, strewn with a multitude of technical terms, rows of names that mean everything, features and turns of verbal speech, all ways of expressing thoughts and concepts with a word. And all this could simply be assimilated by explanation and use to each student, without a severe test of memory; but when the teacher is dealing with a mass of forty or more students, he has to wield one memory with the help of a textbook. Is it possible for a particularly gifted and animated teacher to cope with this complex network of names and rules, to guide through it the interest of verbal art and the light of simple understanding?
Many sciences are indicated in the distribution of courses and hours of teaching, and there is no doubt that this knowledge is necessary. Definitive and precise concepts are needed about history and geography, about the earth and physical forces and phenomena, about the laws of numbering, about culture and literature, concepts animated by interest. But for all that, something must serve as the main subject, the essential knowledge that the student must take out of the school of general education, an instrument with which he can reliably enter the work of higher education.
This is, firstly, the normal development of religious knowledge and mood, in connection with the church - the spiritual, moral basis of life and activity. Another - and very essential - is verbal art and knowledge. A good school is one that teaches its students to think and express thoughts in words clearly, precisely and definitively.
If a person who has completed a course of education is not able to understand the exact meaning of the words of his native language, and uses them in his speech, randomly and unconsciously, he cannot be considered sufficiently educated; and when the majority is deprived of this skill in speech, hence comes that confusion of concepts both in private and in public life, which is so clearly reflected in our time.
With the exorbitant development of the sciences and scientific culture in our time, many new concepts, new words and new terms have entered the literary speech, repeated without an exact consciousness both in oral and written speech. And so it turns out that the most precious asset of the spirit - the native word, loses its spiritual meaning - and its strength and beauty is blurred in the meaninglessness of stupid interpretations and disorderly writings; and instead of the art of writing in one's native language (instead of what constitutes style everywhere in the cultural environment), an easy and accessible art of wielding a phrase is spreading to every uncultured mind. Bad habits of light writing are formed, which infect both teachers and through them the school. Those who cherish the true principles of education cannot be indifferent to this disease that is corroding the school education of new generations.
The ancient languages (now expelled from the school) could render an invaluable service in this respect; they and. it was called in the old days, when school teaching was in the hands of skillful teachers who were experts in both the ancient and native language.
Their merit lies in the fact that in them the thought is expressed with particular definiteness and power, and the word and the concept corresponding to the word are distinguished by extreme precision. As a result, the study of Hellenic and Latin speech is the best school for the knowledge of one's native language and for the art of expressing one's own language definitively and harmoniously.
Whoever loves his native language should cherish these very qualities in it, and strive to feel and understand the depth and beauty of the word in his native language. Expressing Latin speech in his native language, the student is forced to think and look for the exact expression of the same thought and the same concept in the properties of his language, and so little by little he learns to comprehend the meaning and beauty of the word and the beauty of the order that constitutes the verbal clothing of thought. Thus, Hellenic and Latin speech, languages that are not used in living speech and are therefore considered dead, are precisely why they are able to revive the warehouse of a new living speech in a young spirit. This very deadness of speech in ancient languages gives them a special pedagogical significance. The speech of a living language is studied, since the child perceives the living speech of his mother by unconscious imitation, which gradually acquires the ability to speak - the mechanical action of memory, instinctively collecting material for the expression of impulses and thoughts. But the ability to speak by itself does not yet give the ability to deal intelligently with the word. It is known that the teaching of new living languages is successfully accomplished not through grammar, but through living speech, that is, also by imitation and memory, and memory, accumulating only material, is still powerless to comprehend it. On the contrary, the classical speech of the ancient language encourages the student to think more and more consciously over every word and construction with every step, and learn in his own "language to look for the exact expression of concepts and the art of making speeches clearly, powerfully and beautifully. It goes without saying that when the teacher is operating mechanically by mere memory, and the study of ancient languages becomes fruitless.
Another tool of verbal science for a Russian person is our Church Slavonic language - a great treasure of our spirit, a precious source and inspirer of our folk speech. Its strength, expressiveness, depth of thought reflected in it, the harmony of its consonances and the construction of all speech create its inimitable beauty. And in this language, its creators, brought up on the beauty and power of Hellenic speech, gave us the books of Holy Scripture. But even here, of course, if all science is based on memory and on the study of grammatical forms, then it turns out to be fruitless.
A pleasant view is a school building built somewhere in a city or in a large village, on a passing street, equipped with desks, educational similarities and all school supplies. Life moves around, his books, there are sometimes public meetings.
Another thing is a school lurking somewhere in a corner, far from any road, sometimes far from habitation, cut off from all traffic, sometimes far from the churchyard or church itself. Alas! there are many such corners in vast boundless Russia - everything around is empty - a forest or a steppe, or a swamp, or a desert lake - and you can’t get anything from anywhere, there’s no cow or chicken anywhere else - and the very water is obtained with difficulty from afar . It is rare that someone will come here, and having stopped by, they are in a hurry to leave for a crowded place. However, when here, too, some kind person started a school in a poor, cold hut, and here life begins - and children converge here, sensing the school, along impassable roads, through snow and mud, when there is any opportunity to get here.
And in these corners it is not uncommon for an unintentionally visiting traveler to find school life in full swing, when a young teacher came to such a school, who was attracted here by love for children, pity for their poverty and darkness, and an ardent desire to build children's souls. Then a whole swarm of children gather around her, whom you cannot drive away from school, because in it they find the first rays of light from darkness, draw their first interests in the flowering of spiritual life, meet tender love, care and affection.
Labor in such a school is a great feat of the soul, a feat that exhausts, but also nourishes souls, a feat of which the female soul is capable. Here one must live in poverty, in hunger and cold, sometimes for whole months without hot food, and share this life with the poor, who live in hunger and cold. Sensing warmth and light, children rush there from all sides, but how can they get to school and from a nearby place, when they have nothing but a shirt and tattered rags, no dresses, no shoes, and they have to get to school from afar, through snowy snowdrifts and bad weather, off-road. Happiness, when from somewhere a kind heart sends help with a benevolent hand - to clothe the naked or feed the hungry children.
When somewhere in a remote village such a teacher starts up in such a school, sometimes the whole village comes to life. Both day and evening the miserable house is filled; in the evenings, parents sometimes come after the children to listen to the teacher read to the children, how they begin to sing under her guidance, and if she manages to form a choir for a wretched rural church and a good priest happens, the whole church will be transformed, and in the midst of hopeless anguish and emptiness, in which the village is immersed in winter, the torch of a prayerful mood, the torch of spiritual interest, is lit.
When a person, exhausted by the emptiness and vulgarity of city life, the vulgarity and emptiness of speeches resounding everywhere, sometimes has to look into such remote corners, lost in the middle of forests and swamps in snowdrifts, and discover there these ascetics and ascetics, sorrowful folk darkness and poverty, seeking to bring a living soul to the light - he is ready to exclaim in tenderness: Lord! You hid this from the wise and prudent and revealed it to babies!
Thank God! There are many blind corners in Russia, closed from the big world, where they live - known only to the world toilers, having nothing, but enriching many - people's sadness and enlighteners, miserable priests, ignoble in consistories, simple teachers from the people, who have been working in the ignoble for decades. the school they started, and especially the teachers, who with a compassionate female soul comprehended the secret of doing good for a good goal in life.
Touching and instructive is the daily life of such a teacher, from early morning until late at night, in the circle of children who cannot be turned away from school, where they find light and warmth and motherly care for themselves. The morning is all about lessons, the evening is all about reading, singing, working with the same children. Living in need herself, she thinks about how to warm and cover the poor and the need of children - and everyone runs to her with their needs, and her own - not rubles, but kopecks, she spends to cover penny needs, begging from whom she can help to children. A holiday comes - her thoughts about how to arrange a festive joy for them, and collecting from everywhere, she prepares a Christmas tree for them, arranges reading and singing, enlivening the whole village with children's fun.
Anyone who knows the Russian countryside can imagine the position of a rural teacher. Somewhere in a place of well-organized life, school work is arranged according to the rank of educational institutions. At a certain hour, children come to lessons, at a certain hour they leave, the teacher is free and the school is empty. Not so in the countryside, and even in the deaf and deserted village, with which vast Russia is full. Here children cling to school all day long until evening, and when they are not at school, how many of them happen to come to the environment of home life, where there is a study corner, and the care of father and mother, and food at the right time! For many children, the school is the home that they saw for the first time in their lives, and so for them the teacher is both a mother and a nurse, if she herself has something to feed herself!
And often she herself has nothing to feed herself and there is hardly anything to wear - her dwelling is cold and you have to ask everywhere to get firewood, to get lighting in the evening. And around her there are often poor people, from whom it is impossible to get, and children without warm clothes and without shoes, and often her school is separated from crowded housing by a distant space and impenetrable snows. She often had to wait for her meager salary for months, until it reached her from remote points of the school administration. And happiness when she finds a kind and diligent priest near her, a pitiful peasant neighbor, an attentive boss. Otherwise, a difficult struggle awaits her with ignorance, with indifference, sometimes with hostility - all those from whom she longed for help and assistance.
What - not only patience - but what love and pity for the poor and ignorance must be kept in one's soul in order to endure months and years of life in such an environment, in such a strain of spiritual strength. After all, a good teacher does not deal with a mass of children, but she knows each one especially, like Vanya, Kolya, Sasha, Katya, Masha, etc., and deals with each soul in a special way, and each bears her own special nature and her own need and care. And so it is not surprising that, like a candle that gives light, but also burns out itself, the teacher in a few years is exhausted and burns out. This is the kind of work that numerous female souls in our time can strive for, languishing in the search for a living work for themselves and a life goal. And in this case, how much hard work, but also comforting consciousness.
The idea of making the elementary school a stepping stone to higher education is a false idea, and sets the elementary school an artificial goal and an impossible task.
The vocation of the elementary school is to give the boy or girl the first elements of intellectual and moral culture and then leave them in the place and environment to which they belong: after that, each of them in particular depends on the inclination and ability to seek improvements and occupations. outside of their environment.
This task is of particular importance to us, since the vocation of our elementary school is to act in an environment that is not at all a cultured rural population, and to excite and educate in the child's mind and in the child's soul the elements of natural curiosity and religious and moral feelings lurking in each.
Moreover, if it were supposed to build something like a staircase leading from the elementary school to the courses of secondary and higher education, it would be necessary, in accordance with this goal, to organize the elementary school course itself, introduce new subjects into it, expanding and complicating the programs: and this it would be both materially and technically unfeasible, therefore, in execution it would turn out to be only lies and violence.
It is in vain to establish universities for the purpose of higher education if they cannot be immediately placed under the leadership of authoritative experts of science, but are subjected to the mere control of an external authority. If the purpose of the university is only to prepare people for this or that kind of social or state activity, it is devoid of essential significance - to be the house of pure science, the laboratory of scientific research, to gather people to the representatives of science for the sake of science.
The university in its true meaning should serve society as the highest authority for the analysis, testing and verification of all ideas that arise in society.
The history of all the oldest universities shows that they originally arose from a free association of scientists, lovers of science, united in a corporation for a scientific purpose. And now the success of the university, and the correct organization of its life and activities, certainly depends on:
- 1) from the mutual spiritual connection of scientific interest between the professors of science that make up the corporation;
- 2) from the spiritual connection of the professor with the student, by virtue of which the latter perceives from the former the interest and method of scientific research;
- 3) from mutual communication between students in the spirit of friendly fellowship and mutual assistance.
Where these three conditions are absent, only the name of the university remains.
What is learning? Its elements are drawn from life; its goal is to educate a person, to prepare him for life and activity. But it often turns out in practice that it is precisely this teaching that distances a person from life, distracts him from life, leading him, instead of knowing about life, to ignorance of life or to a false conception of life.
Any teaching, in its essence, is a distraction - a distraction from life, as simple as possible, provisions and rules, and life is not only not simple, but extremely complex. We acquire more or less knowledge from this or that science, as if this science were something existing in itself. But the world lives and moves by itself, in the infinity of various phenomena, regardless of all distractions. These abstractions, to which we resort for our convenience in science, and all the separate branches into which our knowledge is divided, do not contain an integral and self-sufficient truth.
Science is necessary: everyone must go through the teaching for his education, but science alone is not enough for life.
Let us imagine a person who has completed all the courses of study, who has completed higher education. He leaves, say, a university with a wealth of abstract ideas drawn from science: but both these ideas and the language of these ideas are something alien and incomprehensible to an ordinary person "living among his people" in his circle - something detached from life with its complexity and diversity. His speeches may be clever, but in order to understand them, one must go through the same science courses with him.
Doesn’t it follow from this that every teaching complicates a person’s relationship to real life, and that everyone who has gone through school still has to improve his teaching by simplifying it, that is, to descend with it, in order to verify it, into real life. Only reality can revive him, sprinkling after dead water with life.
Science reveals to us the laws of mankind, but for life we still need to know a living person. Only then will it be revealed to us how it is possible to apply to the given conditions of life and work those principles which science has given us. Here it turns out that the essential goal of mental education is to maintain and develop in a person constant curiosity and observation: if it has led a person to the conviction that, having completed all his courses, he already knows everything for life, such education deceptively. Only here, when we enter into reality, does the time for real science come. Here we must learn, each around ourselves, from everything that surrounds us in life. Here, and wherever we have to live, if our mind is kept alive and inquisitive, new ideas will arise in us, new points of view will be opened to us, new questions will be born one after another, which will help us to put the same science acquired in school. And we will see how the theories, astonished and read by us - political, economic, social, etc., are refracted in the environment of life, as we get to know it, and to what extent and under what conditions they can be applied to reality.
This is a decisive demand of life, but many do not think about it or forget it, remaining with an unreasonable and deceptive consciousness that they know everything for life and there is nothing to learn. A young man who has grown up in his homeland among his people, when he gets into a big city, is inclined to completely abandon the consciousness of the needs and requirements of the life in the midst of which he grew up, and then higher education transfers him to the world of distractions and theoretical views. If, however, he remains in this world and there, far from real life, affirms his activity, what truth will come from it for life!
Let us remember the ancient admonition: know thyself. In application to life, this means: know your environment in which you need to live and act, know your country, know your nature, your people with their soul and way of life and needs and needs. That's what we should all know, and what most of us don't know. But what a blessing it would be for us and for the whole society if we tried to know all this - at least in that place, in that region, in that corner of the region where fate placed us ...
1 children should be treated with the greatest respect (lat.).
459Two things always fill the soul with new and stronger wonder and reverence, the more often and longer we think about them - this is the starry sky above me and the moral law in me.
Immanuel Kant
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421Only with strong, ideal aspirations can people fall morally low.
L. Tolstoy
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266An ascetic makes need out of virtue.
Friedrich Nietzsche
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227A sense of morality helps us understand the essence of morality and how to evade it.
Mark Twain
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210Sinlessness in its purest form is a husk, Idle from the meaning of life, After all, morality, which did not know sin, Is just simple luck.
I. Huberman
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202Morality is not a list of actions and not a collection of rules that can be used like pharmaceutical or culinary recipes.
John Dewey
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190Morality is the mind of the heart.
Heinrich Heine
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182Higher morality requires some freedom for immorality as well.
V. Solovyov
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177The morality of peoples depends on respect for women.
Wilhelm Humboldt
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176True morality neglects morality.
B. Pascal
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176No one can be completely free until everyone is free. No one can be perfectly moral until everyone is still moral. No one can be perfectly happy until everyone is still happy.
Herbert Spencer
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171Preaching morality is easy, justifying it is difficult.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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171Ethics is the aesthetics of the soul.
Pierre Reverdy
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170Morality has always been the last refuge of people who are indifferent to art.
Oscar Wilde
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156Ethics is an attempt to give universal validity to some of our desires.
Bertrand Russell
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156In chaste persons By mysterious currents Sour in vain love juice Goes into kefir of moralizing.
I. Huberman
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154Moral people are the most vengeful people.
L. Shestov
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152A person must be moral freely, which means that he must also be given some freedom to be immoral.
Vladimir Solovyov
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150Morality grows stronger when the flesh grows decrepit.
Molière
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148Ethics can be either active, creative or passive, repentant, an ethic of intolerance towards oneself and others, which can only delve into so-called sins, and at times it is shameful to be right.
Karol Izhikovsky
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148People of higher morality do not consider themselves moral, therefore they have higher morality.
Lao Tzu
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148Virtue is its own reward.
Ovid
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142Morality does not teach how to become happy, but how to become worthy of happiness.
Immanuel Kant
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140To be a patriot, one must hate all nations except one's own, to be a religious person - all sects except one's own, to be a moral person - all falsehood except one's own.
Lionel Strachey
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139Christian morality is tailored for growth. Unfortunately, people have stopped growing.
Felix Hwalibug
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136The best punishment for virtue is virtue itself.
Aneurin Bevin
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136Even death can be consent and therefore a moral act. The animal dies, the person must hand over his soul to its Creator.
Henri Amiel
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136With the help of a moral sense, a person distinguishes good from bad, and then decides how to act. What are the results of the choice? Nine times out of ten he chooses to do bad things.
Mark Twain
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135All publications and even books about morality, about how to behave in society, do not bring any benefit. Those who read them, that is, those who are educated, do not need them, moral freaks do not read them.
V. Zubkov
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134Act according to such a maxim, which at the same time may itself become a universal law.
Immanuel Kant
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132Own moral uncleanliness is a sign of contempt for oneself.
Apuleius
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132Do not forget that the Lord's Prayer begins with a request for daily bread. It is difficult to praise the Lord and love your neighbor on an empty stomach.
Woodrow Wilson
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132Immorality is the morality of those who have a better time than we do.
Henry Louis Mencken
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Morality must be a bitter fruit if we give it to wives and sisters.
The morality of peoples depends on respect for women.
The highest goal of human aspirations is a highly moral character.
Morality should be the polar star of science.
If your moral principles make you sad, know that your moral principles are no good.
Morality has not fallen. Morality has changed position.
The morality of a nation is comparable to a toothache: the worse it is, the more painful it is to touch it.
Theoretical morality, which reveals itself in mere systems and words, but does not speak of itself as a deed, as a fact, emerging only from the contemplation of the mind, but not having deep roots in the heart - such morality is worth immorality.
Of all immoral relations in general, treating children as slaves is the most immoral.
Chic Morality Quotes
We recognize a person by his character, but we should recognize him by his moral character. However, a less moral person is recognized not by morality, but, on the contrary, by many other individual traits, which, apparently, represents his character.
Chic maxims and quotes about morality
In the field of morality, one should not show one's virtue on insignificant occasions: one does not brag about virginity.
Good politics is no different from sound morality.
If geometry were as contrary to our passions and interests as morality, then we would also argue against it and violate it in spite of everything.
The whole morality of a man lies in his intentions.
Man is born to work; labor constitutes his earthly happiness, labor is the best guardian of human morality, and labor must be the educator of man.
A person cannot be happy if his heart is agitated by disorderly desires; if the well-being of a neighbor arouses envy in him; greed makes him solicit someone else's, and ambition and hatred deprive him of peace of mind. From this follows the part of education which has as its subject the education of the heart and which scientists call moral education.
Only by destroying most religions can the foundations of sound morality be laid in states.
Moral education must develop the will.
There are people who treat morality as some architects treat houses: comfort comes first.
The power of moral influence is beyond all forces.
With regard to morality, only the following words of the sages of antiquity are the only true ones: to be moral means to live according to the customs of one's country.
Chic Ideas and Quotes About Morality
True morality is developed only in the school of misfortune; permanent happiness can easily become a fatal abyss for virtue.
True self-interest is achieved only by moral behavior.
Art has a moral effect not only because it gives pleasure through moral means, but also because the pleasure delivered by art is itself the path to morality.
Our respect for the general rules of morality is, in fact, a sense of duty.
For our happiness to be complete, we need the affection and help of the people around us; the latter will agree to love and respect us, to help us in our plans, to work for our happiness only to the extent that we are ready to work for their well-being, this necessary connection is called a moral duty, a moral obligation.
True eloquence neglects eloquence, true morality neglects morality.
Heroism that does not contradict good morality touches people little: only heroism that destroys morality arouses both surprise and delight in people.
The moral qualities of a person must be judged not by his individual efforts, but by his daily life.
It is a moral duty to resist any coercion to an immoral act.
If one cannot see in children the ideal of moral perfection, then at least one cannot but agree that they are incomparably more moral than adults.
At first, maternal education is most important, because morality should be planted in the child as a feeling.
Chic thoughts and quotes about morality
Morality is the soul of history.
Zealots of moral purity are overcome by dirty fantasies.
To be ashamed of one's immorality is one of the rungs of that ladder, at the top of which one is also ashamed of one's own morality.
It is not enough to define morality by being faithful to one's convictions. We still need to constantly raise the question in ourselves, are my beliefs true?
Wherever God is recognized, there is a cult, and where there is a cult, the natural order of moral duty is violated, and morality falls.
Morality is the mind of the will.
Only that which coincides with your sense of beauty and with the ideal in which you embody it is moral.
The more accidental our morality, the more necessary it is to take care of legality.
Genius is just as impossible without taste as character is without morality.
There are many kinds of education and development, and each of them is important in itself, but moral education should stand above all of them.
Absolute morality: everything is forbidden.
Morality is that part of philosophy which is much more interpreted and least of all practiced.
Every immorality stems from the collision of the good with the pleasant, the passions with the mind, and has its source in the strength of sensual impulses and the weakness of the moral will.
One must be clear mentally, clean morally and tidy physically.
Chic Advice and Quotes About Morality
Morality is the direction of the will towards common, universal goals. He who acts for a private purpose is immoral. He is moral whose goal can be set as the goal of all rational beings.
Genuine morality is directly poetic, and poetry, in turn, is indirectly moral.
One of the highest principles of true morality is respect for human dignity in every person, without distinction, first of all for the fact that he is a man, and then only for his personal dignity.
By the name of morality we mean not only outward propriety, but also the whole inner basis of motivation.
Morality is affirmed among the people by a combination of spiritual, natural and political laws. Everything has an influence on it, and therefore it is composed of the totality of the correct actions of citizens according to all these various ratios.
Submission to truth, independent of personal interests and desires, is all honesty, all morality.
Morality must appear in the form of beauty.
In the field of morality, movement is not based on the pleasure of moving alone; there must also be a goal: to deny achieving perfection, that is, reaching the goal, would mean simply making movement impossible.
Morality is the mind of the heart.
Heinrich Heine
Ethics is the philosophy of good will, and not just good action.
Immanuel Kant
Morality is not a teaching about how we should make ourselves happy, but about how we should become worthy of happiness.
Immanuel Kant
Morality does not teach how to become happy, but how to become worthy of happiness.
Immanuel Kant
Ethics is an attempt to give universal validity to some of our desires.
Bertrand Russell
Morality is the basis of all human values.
Albert Einstein
Morality is not a list of actions and not a collection of rules that can be used like pharmaceutical or culinary recipes.
John Dewey
Ethics is the aesthetics of the soul.
Pierre Reverdy
Morality has always been the last refuge of people who are indifferent to art.
Oscar Wilde
The morality of peoples depends on respect for women.
Wilhelm Humboldt
Immorality is the morality of those who have a better time than we do.
Henry Louis Mencken
True ethics begins where the use of words ceases.
Albert Schweitzer
Two things always fill the soul with new and stronger wonder and reverence, the more often and longer we think about them - this is the starry sky above me and the moral law in me.
Immanuel Kant
The highest possible stage of moral culture is when we realize that we are able to control our thoughts.
Charles Darwin
Everything that is beautiful is moral.
Gustave Flaubert
A person must be moral freely, which means that he must also be given some freedom to be immoral.
Vladimir Solovyov
The morality of a person is visible in his attitude to the word.
Lev Tolstoy
Ethics is either active, creative or passive, repentant, ethics of intolerance towards oneself and others, which can only delve into the so-called sins; and sometimes shameful to be right.
Karol Izhikovsky
The moral qualities of a person must be judged not by his individual efforts, but by his daily life.
Blaise Pascal
No one can be completely free until everyone is free. No one can be perfectly moral until everyone is still moral. No one can be perfectly happy until everyone is still happy.
Herbert Spencer
Ethical behavior should be based on sympathy for people, education and social connections; a religious background is not needed at all.
Albert Einstein
Morality arose along with vice.
Wilhelm Humboldt
Act according to such a maxim, which at the same time may itself become a universal law.
Immanuel Kant
Arthur Schopenhauer
The strong trample on morality. Weak morality caresses. The one whom morality pursues always stands between the strong and the weak.
Akutagawa Ryunosuke
All religions base morality on obedience, that is, on voluntary slavery.
Alexander Herzen
Even death can be consent and therefore a moral act. The animal dies, the person must hand over his soul to its Creator.
Henri Amiel
Do not forget that the Lord's Prayer begins with a request for daily bread. It is difficult to praise the Lord and love your neighbor on an empty stomach.
Woodrow Wilson
Christian morality is tailored for growth. Unfortunately, people have stopped growing.
Felix Hwalibug
Preaching morality is easy, justifying it is difficult.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Virtue is its own reward.
Ovid
Morality must be a bitter fruit if we give it to wives and sisters.
Alexander Sventohovsky
An ascetic makes need out of virtue.
Friedrich Nietzsche
When a person is unhappy, he becomes moral.
Marcel Proust
The best punishment for virtue is virtue itself.
Aneurin Bevin
To be a patriot, one must hate all nations except one's own; to be a religious man - all sects except one's own; to be a moral person - all falsehood except his own.
Lionel Strachey
Conscience usually torments not those who are guilty.
Erich Maria Remarque
Perhaps conscience is the source of morality, but morality has never been the source of what conscience considers good.
Akutagawa Ryunosuke
We always think of a moral position as vertical, and an immoral position as horizontal. "Weshalb?" - I'll ask in the language of Freud.
Stanislav Jerzy Lec
