Morales

“ We have seen even the most general and obvious principle of individual morality, the subordination of the passions to the reason, flatly contradicted by certain would be reformers, who, without stopping to consider the teachings of universal experience, rationally sanctioned as they are by the scientific study of human nature, have tried to establish, as the fundamental doctrine of their improved morality, the systematic domination of the passions! ”

“ The surmounting of morality, in a certain sense even the self-mounting of morality-- let that be the name for the long-secret labour which has been reserved for the most refined, the most upright, and also the most wicked consciences of today, as the living touchstones of the soul. ”

“ We are here, of course, purposely considering, not actual and arbitrary morality, but the essentials upon which all moralities are based. We shall deal more fully as we proceed with those psychic and emotional factors which do, in fact, colour and distort all moral values. To return to our analogy—we may say then, that a conventional moral rule stands for the credit of national morality, much as a five-pound note stands for the credit of national wealth. ”

“ If it be this morality which I have defined, that makes us what we are, ought we not to labor strenuously for the happiness of our race? If it be this morality that makes us reasonable; that enables us to distinguish good from evil, the useful from the hurtful; that makes us sociable, and enables us to live in society to receive and repay mutual benefits; we ought at least to respect all those who are its friends. ”

“ Among so many baser influences, the general and obvious interests of society have of course had a share, and a large one, in the direction of the moral sentiments: less, however, as a matter of reason, and on their own account, than as a consequence of the sympathies and antipathies which grew out of them: and sympathies and antipathies which had little or nothing to do with the interests of society, have made themselves felt in the establishment of moralities with quite as great force. ”

“ To regulate Mens manners; to purge and refine them from the Dregs, and Corruptions of Vice; to keep their Passions within due bounds, and to make them the Servants, not the Masters of right Reason, has in all Ages been esteemed a piece of the highest Prudence, and a great perfection of Humane Nature. Hence the Moralist himself deservedly derives all his Glory. ”

“ Which developments are truly realisations of "the moral capability of man," and so tend to the attainment of ultimate good, and which developments are expressions of those capacities which seek an apparent good only and are to be classed as evil, as impediments to the realisation of the good,—these have to be discriminated; and is it so clear that from the mere record of human deeds we are able to draw the distinction? Do we not need some criterion of goodness to guide our judgment? ”

“ The most that can be said for the contradictory principles which are urged by moralists of different schools as universal duties is, in general, that they point out actions which, for persons of a particular character and in particular circumstances, would and do lead to a balance of good. ”

“ I propose therefore to begin our inquiry into the detail of goodness—into the particular kinds of conduct which the man wishing to do good for the sake of its goodness is entitled to count good—by considering what is of permanent moral value in the institutions of civil life, as established in Europe; in what way they have contributed and contribute to the possibility of morality in the higher sense of the term, and are justified, or have a moral claim upon our loyal conformity, in consequence. ”

“ The dispute of the moralists has reference, not to any characteristic of the qualities in conduct which we cognize as moral, but to the mode in which they are cognized. Our conception of such qualities involves the conception of absoluteness in them, and it is only by that notion of absoluteness that they are distinguished from the other qualities which appear in human conduct, such as wisdom, prudence, ingenuity, and the like. ”

“ Hence the view of Morality depicted in our last lecture as that of the Third Age here as everywhere precisely reverses the fact, and makes that its only Virtue which is in reality the only Vice, and that its only Vice which is in truth the only Virtue. ”

“ Is it possible that any man of common sense can believe, that moral principles which are so important to the best interests of human society, should be placed upon such an immoral and vindictive foundation? Can any one imagine that a being, so destitute of moral justice and benevolence himself, could serve as a solid basis on which to rest these qualities in human nature? ”

“ Just how much they will have kept or changed of the deliquescent morality of to-day, when in a hundred years or so they do distinctively and powerfully emerge, I cannot speculate now. They will certainly be a moral people. They will have developed the literature of their needs, they will have discussed and tested and thrashed out many things, they will be clear where we are confused, resolved where we are undecided and weak. ”

“ They insist that there has been no moral growth in human nature, as a whole, to accompany the evolution of rational faculties and powers; and that, while human conduct has been gathering its potent gains of prudence, ingenuity, skillfulness, and the like—which are qualities relative to means and ends—it has gained, on the whole, in the absolute qualities of rightness and goodness, either nothing at all or less. ”

“ Because strongly impure inclinations often usurp the name of virtue, was it a reason for disinterested inclinations in the noblest heart to be also rendered suspicious? Because the moral epicurean had willingly relaxed the law of reason, in order to fit it as a plaything to his customs, was it a reason to thus exaggerate harshness, and to make the fulfilment of duty, which is the most powerful manifestation of moral freedom, another kind of decorated servitude of a more specious name? ”

“ The proposition for which I am contending is simply that there is such a thing as a natural history of morals, a defined and regular order, in which our moral feelings are unfolded; or, in other words, that there are certain groups of virtues which spring spontaneously out of the circumstances and mental conditions of an uncivilised people, and that there are others which are the normal and appropriate products of civilisation. ”

“ And thus the ideal was formed of the sanctity of human life, and society was regarded only as a means for this end, all its arrangements and institutions being of necessity submitted to the moral judgment of the individual mind, and approved only so far as they came up to the ideal. It must, indeed, be confessed that there are survivals from earlier stages of moral growth which cast a strange and ironical reflection upon man's claim to wisdom and advancement, and cause his practice to fall lamentably short of even so early and obvious an ideal as the sanctity of life. ”

“ It must have been done, or conceived as possible to be done, and have been accounted good, irrespectively of the being done from this which we ultimately come to regard as the highest motive. In other words, a prior morality, founded upon interests which are other than the pure interest in being good, and governed by rules of conduct relative to a standard of goodness other than that which makes it depend on this interest, is the condition of there coming to be a character governed by interest in an ideal of goodness. ”

“ Another, and, as it seems to me, a striking proof that what we call Morality is entirely the growth of social life, is, that, as it appears to me, we recognise no such principle in our conduct towards other beings. ”

“ And he proceeds to ask the question, "How can there be any such intrinsic difference between the objects willed as justifies the distinction which 'moral sense' seems to draw between good and bad action, between virtue and vice? And if there is such a difference, in what does it consist?" [2] Now we may define a good action as the sort of action which proceeds from a good man; or we may define a good man as a man who performs good actions. ”

“ Our morality, we shall hear, ‘is a practical matter.’ And I should have thought it indeed a practical consideration, whether our chief good be realizable or no, whether it be πρακτὸν καὶ κτητὸν ἀνθρώπῳ, or exist only in the heads of certain theorists. ”

“ In place of a partial and reserved morality for a small number of men, let us substitute a universal morality, intelligible to all the inhabitants of the earth, and of which all can find the principles in nature. ”

“ Somewhat hastily, as our limits have required, we have pursued the definition of our ideal through the imperfect forms of individualism. And now what must it be that the moral insight, with its Universal Will, demands of the possible future moral humanity, not as the negative task of preparing the way for goodness, but as the positive ideal task of the community in which the moral insight is attained? ”

“ The moral progress of the individual, born and bred under such a system of conventional morality, consists (1) in the adjustment of the self-seeking principle in him to the requirements of conventional morality, so that the modes in which he seeks self-satisfaction are regulated by the sense of what is expected of him. ”

“ If morality means anything it means keeping bounds, respecting implications, respecting implicit bounds. If individuality means anything it means breaking bounds—adventure.
"Will you be moral and your species, or immoral and yourself? We've decided to be immoral. ”

“ They concerned the powers and possibilities of man in the crowning endowments of his nature, and in the highest ascent of their evident intention and adaptation. They touched the great problems of personal and social welfare in the most vital relations and decisive interests. So the old sages became moralists and their great themes were the themes of virtue and duty. Not very deeply, however, did they, for centuries, succeed in penetrating the rational principles of the moral life and the authority of the moral judgments. ”

“ We have now to meet the second and far more important question: Do there exist truths concerning morality, taught by nature herself, and is there moral truth, independent of all ecclesiastical, political, in fact every kind of social authority? ”

“ For if the objective and transcendent character of the ethical distinction be denied, morality necessarily drops down into, at best, a temporary biological provision for the utilities of this ephemeral life, or, at worst, into a deep fraud of our faculties, estopping the use of our freedom by a phantom bugbear of moral distinctions. ”

“ But now observe the immensely important influence which the formation of ideals exercised upon the moral constitution. It was this which enabled men, amid the pressure and conflicts of life, to vindicate their primeval claims to themselves, and to establish an independent moral existence in the midst of society, as they had at first established an independent physical existence in the midst of the universe. ”

“ All moral laws, I wish to shew, are merely statements that certain kinds of actions will have good effects. The very opposite of this view has been generally prevalent in Ethics. ‘The right’ and ‘the useful’ have been supposed to be at least capable of conflicting with one another, and, at all events, to be essentially distinct. ”

“ This answer instantly raises the fourth question, But what is the best and noblest manner of living reasonably? Answer, By so regulating our moral nature, which is made up of reason and the passions, that reason shall govern and passion obey; in other words, by so regulating our moral nature as to develop the virtues: for the virtues arise out of the governance which reason exercises over the passions. This answer calls forward the fifth question, But how is this adjustment to be effected? by what means are the moral virtues to be developed? Answer, By means of custom. ”

“ Of the transition periods which we have described as taking place under the religion which we call moral, the first known to us is marked at its opening by the appearance of the Book of Job, the first fierce collision of the new fact with the formula which will not stretch to cover it.
The earliest phenomenon likely to be observed connected with the moral government of the world is the general one, that on the whole, as things are constituted, good men prosper and are happy, bad men fail and are miserable. ”

“ And it may be admitted that, in some cases at least, it is right and proper that a man’s motives should thus influence our judgment. But the question is: What sort of moral judgment is it right and proper that they should influence? ”

“ They would appear as various expressions of the fact that the moral order acts not capriciously or like a human being, but from the necessity of its nature, or, if we prefer the phrase, by general laws,—a necessity or law which of course knows no exception and is as ‘ruthless’ as fate. ”

“ As to moral philosophy, they have the same disputes among them as we have here. They examine what are properly good, both for the body and the mind; and whether any outward thing can be called truly good, or if that term belong only to the endowments of the soul. ”