General principle

“ The extreme improbability that any general rule with regard to the utility of an action will be correct seems, in fact, to be the chief principle which should be taken into account in discussing how the individual should guide his choice. If we except those rules which are both generally practised and strongly sanctioned among us, there seem to be hardly any of such a kind that equally good arguments cannot be found both for and against them. ”

“ In saying this, I mean only to designate the general spirit of human law. Every principle, on its application to practice, must be limited and modified by circumstances; our reason by our common sense. ”

“ There, too, man has the belief in the sway of a general principle.—From all these examples it may be gathered how reflection is always seeking for something fixed and permanent, definite in itself and governing the particulars. This universal which cannot be apprehended by the senses counts as the true and essential. Thus, duties and rights are all-important in the matter of conduct: and an action is true when it conforms to those universal formulae. ”

“ I propose then to ask in what general form reason can be applied to the ethical life, as a source of principles to guide us in the search for our best good. A principle, we should note, is something more than a mere generalization, fact, or truth. Every principle rests indeed upon a foundation of fact ”

“ And, in general, what would be the consequence of the consistent following out of the principle that the true goal is conformity to reality? Assume that, for instance, a man in society is to regulate his actions solely according to the demands that society as a real power makes upon him, in view of his place in the social organism, and that morality thus expresses simply the requirements that the individual must meet if he is to remain a successful member of this social organism. Then, to get your moral code, you are to examine the facts of social life. ”

“ To discover general principles belongs to the progressive aspect of the mind, which is most strongly developed in men; to. preserve and apply the general principles which are already established belong to the conservative side of the mind, and for this women, as they have been made by the evolution of the race, have and should have a peculiar aptitude. ”

“ General rules.—People go to philosophers for general principles. And since philosophers are human, they are kept busy supplying the market with general principles. But what sense is there in them? None at all. ”

“ This remarkable man, whose system of thought will long remain one of the landmarks in the history of philosophical speculation, does, in the treatise in question, lay down an universal first principle as the origin and ground of moral obligation ”

“ This new tinge to modern minds is a vehement and passionate interest in the relation of general principles to irreducible and stubborn facts. All the world over and at all times there have been practical men, absorbed in ‘irreducible and stubborn facts’: all the world over and at all times there have been men of philosophic temperament who have been absorbed in the weaving of general principles. It is this union of 4passionate interest in the detailed facts with equal devotion to abstract generalisation which forms the novelty in our present society. ”

“ In passing thus to the province of Psychology, we assume a human means of distinction, and the principle of Authority loses its force. Or if it be said that we should receive this principle of Authority because it answers to a need of our nature, we may ask how we know that the need is one that should be satisfied? ”

“ Our First Principle interprets it as the reason of humanity organizing and instituting its needs and ideals in its onward stumbling to and fro between its own true character and its passing caricature. ”

“ In life, again, we have ends to attain. And with regard to these we ponder which is the best way to secure them. The end here represents the universal or governing principle: and we have means and instruments whose action we regulate in conformity to the end. ”

“ In short, they want a common principle to cement, and motive to spirit them: for, the bare acting upon a principle from the dictates of a good conscience, or prospect of serving the publick, will not go very far under the present dispositions of mankind. ”

“ Taking, as our limits necessarily oblige us to take, a broad survey of the principle, and the results of the principle disclosed by experience, we cheerfully pronounce both to be positively and undeniably good. ”

“ But what can be less consistent than what they say, namely, that when they have obtained the knowledge of the chief good they then return to nature, in order to seek in it the principle of action, that is to say, of duty? For it is not the principle of action or duty which impels them to desire those things which are according to nature ”

“ The practice of asking what things are virtues or duties, without distinguishing what these terms mean; the practice of asking what ought to be here and now, without distinguishing whether as means or end—for its own sake or for that of its results; the search for one single criterion of right and wrong, without the recognition that in order to discover a criterion we must first know what things are right and wrong; and the neglect of the principle of ‘organic unities’—these sources of error have hitherto been almost universally prevalent in Ethics. ”

“ By a consciously self-realising principle is meant a principle that is determined to action by the conception of its own perfection, or by the idea of giving reality to possibilities which are involved in it and of which it is conscious as so involved; or, more precisely, a principle which at each stage of its existence is conscious of a more perfect form of existence as possible for itself, and is moved to action by that consciousness. ”

“ Every system, as we have seen, must be founded in principle—a principle rooted in the active powers, resting down upon the main-springs of the soul, so as to be moved forward by all the mental energies combined. ”

“ This power is the law; it is, or ought to be, the collection of the will of society, reunited to fix the conduct of its members, to direct their action in such a mode, that it may concur to the great end of his association—the general good. ”

“ But each of the maxims can be taken to the heart and conscience of the individual, to become a principle of each man’s own character and conduct, and then to reappear, retranslated into social action, according to the wisdom of the time or the wisdom of the man or the wisdom of the Church. ”

“ Accordingly, writers on Moral Philosophy have mostly felt the necessity not only of referring all rules of conduct, and all judgments of praise and blame, to principles, but of referring them to some one principle ”

“ If the mind be not engaged by argument to make this step, it must be induced by some other principle of equal weight and authority; and that principle will preserve its influence as long as human nature remains the same. What that principle is may well be worth the pains of enquiry. ”

“ Men, in society, have found it essential, for mutual benefit, that the powers of Individuals, over the general causes of good, should be fixed by certain rules; that is, Laws. Acts done in conformity with those rules are called Just Acts ”

“ But the degree of perfection to which any power or individual is to be developed is determined, morally, by the principle of equilibrium. Moreover, we may recognize degrees of perfection in individuals who are, nevertheless, not to be classified as of less or greater moral value. ”

“ Process (2) , which may be called a reconciliation of reason with itself, because it is the appropriation by reason as a personal principle in the individual of the work which reason, acting through the media of other persons, has already achieved in the establishment of conventional morality, is the condition of the third stage in which the moral progress of the individual consists; viz. the growth of a personal interest in the realisation of an idea of what should be, in doing what is believed to contribute to the absolutely desirable, or to human perfection, because it is believed to do so. ”

“ As the theoretic Reason had in itself categories, a priori distinctions, so practical Reason has in turn the moral law in general, the further determinations of which are constituted by the notions of duty and right, lawful and unlawful ”

“ I am not forgetting that we act, as a rule, not from principle or with the principle before us, and I wish the reader not to forget that the principle may be there and may be our basis or our goal, without our knowing anything about it. And here, of course, I am not saying that it has occurred to every one to ask himself whether he aims at a whole, and what that is ”

“ Whether moral and social phenomena are really exceptions to the general certainty and uniformity of the course of nature; and how far the methods, by which so many of the laws of the physical world have been numbered among truths irrevocably acquired and universally assented to, can be made instrumental to the formation of a similar body of received doctrine in moral and political science. ”

“ II.—For this, as for the former questions, we must take some principle, on the strength of which we may fashion the arguments of the truth which is to be expounded. For what does it profit to labour, even-258- in speaking truth, unless we start from a principle? For the principle alone is the root of all the propositions which are the means of proof. ”

“ They have accumulated a vast body of universally accepted knowledge; and the conceptions of man and of society, of morals and of law, based upon that knowledge, are every day more and more, either openly or tacitly, acknowledged to be the foundations of right action. ”

“ Their new thought, which gave foundation to their moral ideals, was the thought of the perfect equality of all men in the presence of the universal Reason, to which all alike ought to conform. Everyone, they said, ought to be rational; everyone ought to try to extend the empire of reason. ”

“ Which must be distinguished from a principle: no original bent obtains the latter appellation, but what belongs to the whole species. A principle makes part of the common nature of man: a disposition makes part of the nature of this or that man. A propensity comprehends both ”

“ The categorical imperative which declares an action to be objectively necessary in itself without reference to any purpose, i.e., without any other end, is valid as an apodeictic (practical) principle. ”

“ THERE is nothing more important for individuals or bodies of people than clearly defined and well settled principles. To stand the test, and be of any importance to the world, the principles of an individual or a body of people, must be correct, and of vital importance. ”

“ It is in recognition of these eternal laws that I speak, these principles will stand forever and the people that puts them into daily practice, will abide with the principles, but the people who violate them must go down. ”

“ From this he singles out the principles and distinctions which are of general applicability, and employs the powers and resources of a most precise and analytic mind to give to those principles and distinctions a philosophic basis, grounded in the universal reason of mankind, and not in mere technical convenience. ”

“ Finally, in order to fortify moral decisions, we must avail ourselves of the assistance derived from the logical cultivation of maxims, from the systematic unification of the same, and from their constant application in life. ”

“ All the doctrines which ascribe absolute goodness to particular forms of government, particular social arrangements, and even to particular modes of education, without reference to the state of civilization and the various distinguishing characters of the society for which they are intended, are open to the same objection—that of assuming one class of influencing circumstances to be the paramount rulers of phenomena which depend in an equal or greater degree on many others. ”

“ Because a group of beings are capable each of conceiving an absolute good of himself and of conceiving it to be good for himself as identical with, and because identical with, the good of the rest of the group, there arises for each a consciousness that the common good should be the object of action, i.e. a duty, and a claim in each to a power of action that shall be at once secured and regulated by the consciousness of a common good on the part of the rest, i.e. a right. ”

“ In the moral sphere, with which alone we are concerned, right means always the relation of the universal to the particular will. The emphasis is on the universal. Possibility of discrepancy with a conscious subject makes law here command. ”

“ We ought to think of this, in order that we may be ready day by day for the performance of any duty required of us; we ought to know the principles so perfectly that we can apply them to the performance of every duty and feel and know that we are right—understand them for ourselves that we may be capable of applying them both in this life and in that which is to come. ”

“ What, then, shall be, the common standard that shall decide which is the man that thinks with the greatest justice? What the scale by which to measure who has the best regulated imagination? What balance shall be found sufficiently exact to determine whose knowledge is most certain, when he agitates subjects, which experience cannot enable him to examine, that escape all his senses, that have no model, that are above reason? ”

“ The truth of these particularities and the concrete unity of their formalism is the content of the universal, essential and actual, will,—the law and underlying essence of every phase of volition, the essential and actual good. It is thus the absolute final aim of the world, and duty for the agent who ought [pg 116] to have insight into the good, make it his intention and bring it about by his activity. ”

“ In the sacred fact of obligation you touch the immutable, and lay hold, as it were, on the eternities. At the very centre of your being, there is a fixed element, and that of a kind or degree essentially sovereign. A standard is set up in your very thought, by which a great part of your questions are determined, and about which your otherwise random thoughts may settle into order and law. ”