Progressive Morality: An Essay in Ethics — Thomas Fowler
You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org . If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. Title : Progressive Morality: An Essay in Ethics Author : Thomas Fowler Release date : April 1, 2004 [eBook #12035] Most recently updated: October 28, 2024 Language : English Other information and formats : www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12035 Credits : Produced by Shawn Cruze and PG Distributed Proofreaders. Produced from images provided by the Million Book Project *** START OF A., LL.D., F.S.A. PRESIDENT OF CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE WYKEHAM PROFESSOR OF LOGIC IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD 1884 PREFACE. These pages represent an attempt to exhibit a scientific conception of morality in a popular form, and with a view to practical applications rather than the discussion of theoretical difficulties. For this purpose it has been necessary to study brevity and avoid controversy. Hence, I have made few references to other authors, and I have almost altogether dispensed with foot-notes. But, though I have attempted to state rather than to defend my views, I believe that they are, in the main, those which, making exception for a few back eddies in the stream of modern thought, are winning their way to general acceptance among the more instructed and reflective men of our day. It is necessary that I should state that this Essay is independent of a much larger work, entitled the 'Principles of Morals,' on which I was, some years ago, engaged with my predecessor, the late Professor Wilson. Owing to the declining state of his health during the latter years of his life, that work was, at the time of his death, left in a condition which rendered its completion very difficult and its publication probably undesirable. For the present work I am solely responsible, though no one can have been brought into close contact with so powerful a mind as that of Professor Wilson, without deriving from it much stimulus and retaining many traces of its influence. It has long been my belief that the questions of theoretical Ethics would be far less open to dispute, as well as far more intelligible, if they were considered with more direct reference to practice. This little book will, I trust, furnish an example, however slight and imperfect, of such a mode of treatment. C.C.C. July 25, 1884. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. Introduction. The Sanctions of Conduct. CHAPTER II. The Moral Sanction or Moral Sentiment. Its Functions and the Justification of its claims to Superiority. CHAPTER III. Analysis and Formation of the Moral Sentiment. Its Education and Improvement. CHAPTER IV. The Moral Test and its Justification. CHAPTER V. Examples of the Practical Application of the Moral Test to existing Morality. PROGRESSIVE MORALITY. * * * * * CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. THE SANCTIONS OF CONDUCT. All reflecting men acknowledge that both the theory and the practice of morality have advanced with the general advance in the intelligence and civilisation of the human race. But, if this be so, morality must be a matter capable of being reasoned about, a subject of investigation and of teaching, in which the less intelligent members of a community have always something to learn from the more intelligent, and the more intelligent, in their turn, have ever fresh problems to solve and new material to study. It becomes, then, of prime importance to every educated man, to ask what are the data of Ethics, what is the method by which its general principles are investigated, what are the considerations which the moralist ought to apply to the solution of the complex difficulties of life and action. And still, in spite of these obvious facts, ethical investigation, or any approach to an independent review of the current morality, is always unpopular with the great mass of mankind. Though the conduct of their own lives is the subject which most concerns men, it is that in which they are least patient of speculation. Nothing is so wounding to the self-complacency of a man of indolent habits of mind as to call in question any of the moral principles on which he habitually acts. Praise and blame are usually apportioned, even by educated men, according to vague and general rules, with little or no regard to the individual circumstances of the case. And of all innovators, the innovator on ethical theory is apt to be the most unpopular and to be the least able to secure impartial attention to his speculations. And hence it is that vague theories, couched in unintelligible or only half-intelligible language, and almost totally inapplicable to practice, have usually done duty for what is called a system of moral philosophy. The authors or exponents of such theories have the good fortune at once to avoid odium and to acquire a reputation for profundity. In the following pages, I shall attempt (1) to discriminate morality, properly so called, from other sanctions of conduct; (2) to determine the precise functions, and the ultimate justification, of the moral sentiment, or, in other words, of the moral sanction; (3) to enquire how this sentiment has been formed, and how it may be further educated and improved; (4) to discover some general test of conduct; (5) to give examples of the application of this test to existing moral rules and moral feelings, with a view to shew how far they may be justified and how far they require extension or reformation. As my subject is almost exclusively practical, I shall studiously avoid mere theoretical puzzles, such as is pre-eminently that of the freedom of the will, which, in whatever way resolved, probably never influences, and never will influence, any sane man's conduct. Questions of this kind will always excite interest in the sphere of speculation, and speculation is a necessity of the cultivated human intellect; but it does not seem to me that they ca