DECISIONS OF PRINCIPLE

4.7.2 It is here that the most fundamental moral decisions of all arise; and it is
here, if only moral philosophers would pay attention to them, that the most
characteristic uses of moral words are to be found. Shall I bring up my children
exactly as I was brought up, so that they have the same intuitions about morals
as I have? Or have circumstances altered, so that the moral character of the father
will not provide a suitable equipment for the children? Perhaps I shall try to
bring them up like their father, and shall fail; perhaps their new environment
will be too strong for me, and they will come to repudiate my principles. Or I
may have become so bewildered by the strange new world that, although I still
act from force of habit on the principles that I have learnt, I simply do not know
what principles to impart to my children, if, indeed, one in my condition can
impart any settled principles at all. On all these questions, I have to make up my
mind; only the most hide-bound father will try to bring up his children, without
thinking, in exactly the way that he himself was brought up; and even he will
usually fail disastrously.
Many of the dark places of ethics become clearer when we consider this dilemma
in which parents are liable to find themselves. We have already noticed that,
although principles have in the end to rest upon decisions of principle, decisions
as such cannot be taught; only principles can be taught. It is the powerlessness of
the parent to make for his son those many decisions of principle which the son
during his future career will make, that gives moral language its characteristic
shape. The only instrument which the parent possesses is moral education -- the
teaching of principles by example and precept, backed up by chastisement and
other more up-to-date psychological methods. Shall he use these means, and to
what extent? Certain generations of parents have had no doubts about this
question.