The Scientific Basis of Morals, and Other Essays — William Kingdon Clifford
The Scientific Basis of Morals, and Other Essays 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 : The Scientific Basis of Morals, and Other Essays Author : William Kingdon Clifford Release date : October 12, 2015 [eBook #50189] Most recently updated: October 22, 2024 Language : English Other information and formats : www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/50189 Credits : Produced by Jeroen Hellingman and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net/ for Project Gutenberg (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) *** START OF HUMBOLDT LIBRARY. [No. 55. ☞ Supplied to the Trade , Returnable , by the News Companies . THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF MORALS, AND OTHER ESSAYS. BY William Kingdon Clifford, F.R.S. CATALOGUE OF THE LIBRARY. (Continued from last page of cover.) Nos. 50, 51. Money and the Mechanism of Exchange. By W. Stanley Jevons, F.R.S. 52. The Diseases of the Will. By Th. Ribot. Translated from the French by J. Fitzgerald, A.M. 53. Animal Automatism, and Other Essays. By Prof. T. H. Huxley, F.R.S. 54. The Birth and Growth of Myth. By Edward Clodd, F.R.A.S. Covers for the Library , to hold firmly any number of copies from one to twelve, Price, 60 cents; to Subscribers, 35 cents. J. FITZGERALD, PUBLISHER, 20 LAFAYETTE PLACE, NEW YORK. HUMBOLDT LIBRARY OF Popular Science Literature . No. 55.] NEW YORK: J. FITZGERALD. [ Fifteen Cents. April, 1884. Entered at the New York Post-Office as Second-Class Matter. $1.50 per Year. (12 Numbers.) THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF MORALS, AND OTHER ESSAYS; Viz. : Right and Wrong ; The Ethics of Belief ; The Ethics of Religion . By WILLIAM KINGDON CLIFFORD, F.R.S. I. ON THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF MORALS. By Morals or Ethic I mean the doctrine of a special kind of pleasure or displeasure which is felt by the human mind in contemplating certain courses of conduct, whereby they are felt to be right or wrong , and of a special desire to do the right things and avoid the wrong ones. The pleasure or displeasure is commonly called the moral sense; the corresponding desire might be called the moral appetite. These are facts, existing in the consciousness of every man who need be considered in this discussion, and sufficiently marked out by these names; they need no further definition. In the same way the sense of taste is a feeling of pleasure or displeasure in things savory or unsavory, and is associated with a desire for the one and a repulsion from the other. We must assume that everybody knows what these words mean; the feelings they describe may be analyzed or accounted for, but they cannot be more exactly defined as feelings. The maxims of ethic are recommendations or commands of the form, ‘Do this particular thing because it is right,’ or ‘Avoid this particular thing because it is wrong.’ They express the immediate desire to do the right thing for itself, not for the sake of anything else: on this account the mood of them is called the categorical imperative. The particular things commanded or forbidden by such maxims depend upon the character of the individual in whose mind they arise. There is a certain general agreement in the ethical code of persons belonging to the same race at a given time, but considerable variations in different races and times. To the question ‘What is right?’ can therefore only be answered in the first instance, ‘That which pleases your moral sense.’ But it may be further asked ‘What is generally thought right?’ and the reply will specify the ethic of a particular race and period. But the ethical code of an individual, like the standard of taste, may be modified by habit and education; and accordingly the question may be asked, ‘How shall I order my moral desires so as to be able to satisfy them most completely and continuously? What ought I to feel to be right?’ The answer to this question must be sought in the study of the conditions under which the moral sense was produced and is preserved; in other words, in the study of its functions as a property of the human organism. The maxims derived from this study may be called maxims of abstract or absolute right; they are not absolutely universal, ‘eternal and immutable,’ but they are independent of the individual, and practically universal for the present condition of the human species. I mean by Science the application of experience to new circumstances, by the aid of an order of nature which has been observed in the past, and on the assumption that such order will continue in the future. The simplest use of experience as a guide to action is probably not even conscious; it is the association by continually-repeated selection of certain actions with certain circumstances, as in the unconsciously-acquired craft of the maker of flint implements. I still call this science, although it is only a beginning; because the physiological process is a type of what takes place in all later stages. The next step may be expressed in the form of a hypothetical maxim,—‘If you want to make brass, melt your copper along with this blue stone.’ To a maxim of this sort it may always be replied, ‘I do not want to make brass, and so I shall not do as you tell me.’ This reply is anticipated in the final form of science, when it is expressed as a statement or proposition: brass is an alloy of copper and zinc, and calamine is zinc carbonate. Belief in a general statement is an artifice of our mental constitution, whereby infinitely various sensations and groups of sensations are brought into connection with infinitely various actions and groups of actions. On the phenomenal side there corresponds a certain cerebral structure by which various combinations of disturbances in the sensor tract are made to lea