G. A. Johnston

“ When we judge that a certain play is clever, we have in mind some standard of cleverness in relation to which we make our judgment. But, though we all constantly make such judgments, we should find it very difficult to define exactly what our standard is. How many people could state the average height of an Englishman, or define the standard of dramatic cleverness? We regularly use standards which we have never attempted to formulate.
The same thing is true of moral judgment. From our earliest years we have been making judgments on our own or other people's actions and character. ”

“ Social convention supplies the standard to which most of the growing child's judgments conform. There is no more conventional creature than the adolescent. He adopts his manners and customs from current convention, he follows it with minute care in the colour of his tie and the way in which he parts his hair. In fashions and manners the boy and girl are exceedingly sensitive to its decrees. They would not dream of questioning its authority. In more distinctly moral matters, too, social convention seems to be the infallible criterion of goodness and badness. ”

“ When feelings are fanned into passions, and slumbering animosities break out in a great war, it becomes almost impossible to be impartial in our moral judgments. The Uhlan cuts off the ears of his dead enemy: we can find no words to express our horror at such an abominable action. ”

“ A man's feelings are his, and though he can describe them to others, they cannot really share them. Men differ in nothing so much as their feelings. A man's feelings are secret: he knows that nobody in the world knows all about his feelings, and he cannot assume that he knows all about any other person's feelings. Now the standard of moral judgment must be public; it must be common to all men, and alike for all men. ”

“ So long as the child comes in contact only with her private opinion, her judgments will have for him, as soon as he has realised the futility of his own independent judgments, the force of absolute law. But suppose one day mother makes a moral judgment, and father (also a being having authority) makes another, inconsistent with mother's, the child begins to suspect the soundness of mother's moral judgments. ”

“ Our feelings are responsible for leading us into such ridiculous inconsistencies. Moral judgment should always seek to be impartial and disinterested. It can be so, only when it is definitely rational. Only when we deliberately reflect can we counteract the perverting influences of feeling. ”

“ The child imitates his elders in everything; he copies their language, their gestures, their actions, and even subtle nuances of character of which they may have been unconscious until they saw them mirrored in the child. The child also imitates the moral judgments that are passed upon him. The tendency to copy his parents' moral judgments is very marked if the child has a younger brother and sister. His parents tell him that he is naughty when he cries. Therefore he tells baby that he is naughty when he cries. The same moral judgment is passed on the same kind of action. ”

“ The best way to investigate the meaning of the standard is to trace the origin and growth of moral judgment in the child. As soon as the child becomes aware of the existence of persons, it begins to perceive that moral judgments are passed upon it by these other persons. ”

“ He feels that the man who treats his enemy generously is good, and he feels that the man who tells lies and cheats at cards is bad. Thus he comes to feel moral approval for all actions of a certain kind, whether performed by him or by others; and moral disapproval for all actions of another kind, whether they are his own or somebody else's. For instance, he feels moral approval for all acts of conspicuous bravery, whether these deeds are done by himself or others; and he has a feeling of moral disapprobation for all deliberate lies, whether they are told by him or by others. ”

“ As we have seen, conscience is simply the self regarded as passing moral judgments, and conscience has absolute authority because it is the rational self. The free and rational self is, in the fullest sense, the author of its actions and its judgments. ”

“ He feels good when he treats generously a man who has injured him, he feels satisfied when he has done his duty in business, he feels a rush of compassion when he assists a penniless orphan, he feels bad when he tells a lie or cheats at cards, and he feels angry and disgusted when he allows laziness to overcome his conviction that he ought to be at work. ”

“ Now ethics demands that what is right in one place must be right under similar circumstances everywhere. The standard of moral judgment must be the same everywhere. Ethics can never rest in the fact that "there ain't no Ten Commandments" east of Suez. Ethics maintains that, if the Ten Commandments are a true expression of the moral standard, they must be true universally. ”

“ We do not merely mean that we have certain feelings towards Cromwell: we mean that on rational grounds, of which we can give a reasonable account, we definitely judge that his action was wrong. Moral judgments are objective: they are not simply the expression of private likes and dislikes.
(2) Moral judgments imply universality. True moral judgments are universally true. Of course, we may make mistakes in our moral judgments, just as we may make mistakes in other departments of rational activity. ”

“ If a long multiplication sum be given out to a class of small boys, the answers they get will probably not all agree. But every boy will admit that there is one and only one right answer. Similarly, we believe that in every actual situation, only one action is possible which is right ”

“ But the child also has a natural tendency to originate, to initiate, to invent. Hence he applies the moral judgments which he has learned by imitation to actions other than those to which they were originally attached. ”