Moral issue

“ From a few physical perils, and from a very few social evils. This is all. Over the moral world he has no control, except on his own account; and it is the moral life of human beings which is all in all. ”

“ But if seen under strong light and with their supreme import, the intuition impresses with greater force. So, too, the state of the whole moral75 nature is a reason of higher or lower moral sensibility. The more unblighted is the condition of personal life, the more is it responsive to the ethical discernment. Habitual refusal of duty, easy and indifferent familiarity with wrong-doing, or any continued enslavement of the higher nature to the lower, necessarily blunts the delicateness of the sensibilities and lowers the strength of the moral feelings. ”

“ But the question, 'Why should I be moral?' means, most naturally and usually, What inducements are there to me to do right?" The answer is that motives differ for different individuals. With some, outer social inducements, with others, the approbation and disapprobation of conscience are stronger. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The terms moral and immoral were applied by men, primarily, not to their own acts, but the acts of other men. Those acts, the effects of which they observed to be beneficial, they desired should be performed. ”

“ Caught as we are by the irresistible flux of existence, we find ourselves able so to steer our lives as to change the proportion of light and shade, to give greater value to a life that might have had less. This possibility makes our moral problem. What shall we choose and from what refrain? To what aims shall we give our allegiance? What shall we fight for and what against? ”

“ The Fable of Discretionary Freedom.—The history of the feelings, on the basis of which we make everyone responsible, hence, the so-called moral feelings, is traceable in the following leading phases. At first single actions are termed good or bad without any reference to their motive, but solely because of the utilitarian or prejudicial consequences they have for the community. ”

“ The essential element in the problem is that we are contemplating, not physical movement only, like spasms or waves, but personal deeds, as acts of moral agents.185 Of course, moral quality does not attach to the action of non-moral beings, as the striking of clocks or the barking of dogs, but to deeds of self-directing personality. ”

“ Essentially the struggle is between the view which assimilates the moral law to the positive law, and that which makes it define the heart or character; between the law which says 'do this' and the law which says 'be this.' The ultimate moral principles, understood as defining the qualities of the heart, may claim to be immutable and eternal. Love your neighbour as yourself! ”

“ 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? ”

“ Is it not moral and unmoral at once—moral in that it is the result and expression of discipline, but unmoral, and even immoral, in that by nature it contains an indifference to morality, is calculated, in fact, to make morality bend beneath its proud and unencumbered sceptre? ”

“ As in the defects of the intellectual development, so in the moral sphere, the condition varies from a complete arrest of moral development to all forms of moral perversion and even to an abnormal development of the moral and emotional susceptibility. ”

“ Out of this strife morality is breathed up like a rainbow between the sun and storm. Moreover, by adopting these views, we get rid of the necessity of postulating a moral sense, and of all the other hypothetical subsidies to which an erroneous philosophy has recourse in explaining the phenomena of man. ”

“ What we have aimed to present as a moral method is essentially this: to take into our reckoning all the factors in the situation, to take into account the other persons involved, to put ourselves into their places by sympathy as well as conceptually, to face collisions and difficulties not merely in terms of fixed concepts of what is good or fair, and what the right of each party concerned may be, but with the conviction that we need new definitions of the ideal life, and of the social order, and thus reciprocally of personality. ”

“ It is obvious that here the moral law which is above all relative duties must prevail; and that law depends on no social relation or conception of duty but on the awakened inner perception of man, the moral being. ”

“ We realize, however, that is not for us to look at this people through the lens of any small circumscribed moral code, but with kindly, hopeful views, guided by a due consideration of their normal condition. ”

“ Such difficulties of thought regarding moral distinctions, motives good and bad, conflicts of conscience, the justice and expediency of laws and governments, as usually arise as people begin to reflect seriously upon the ways of the better social life, have been considered, besides many practical questions regarding self-control, elevation of feeling and thought, and the part of wisdom in every-day affairs. ”

“ All moral laws, I wish to shew, are merely statements that certain kinds of actions will have good effects. ”

“ Nothing but a low, perverted and weak moral and ethical sense makes possible the need of an argument on this subject. It is self-evident the moment one stops to ask himself a few simple and primitive questions: "Am I willing to buy my own comfort and pleasure at the expense of those who are helpless? Am I willing to be a moral and physical pauper preying upon the rights of my children? Am I willing to be a thief and misappropriate their physical, mental and moral heritage? Am I willing to be a murderer and taint with slow poison their lives before they get them? ”

“ And I say—that allowing the most powerful effects to spring from the first grounds of a moral system;—the worst or the best,—that mine, if the best is to be so judged by the good it does and the evil it prevents, must be ranked among the best. ”

“ What is called 'moral sentiment' is merely a weaker form of that interest in social well-being which, when wrought into a man's habits and strong enough to determine action, we call virtue. So far as this interest is brought into play on the mere survey of action, and serves merely to determine an approbation or disapprobation, it is called moral sentiment. ”

“ Therefore, an exaggeration of moral sentiments, resting on a false basis, would have the positive result of striking a fatal blow at our social morality, slowly built up during hundreds or thousands of years. ”

“ As moral agents, for whom alone exist all the predicaments of merit and demerit, praise and blame, effort and failure, vice and virtue, we are impotent and lost;—we are saved through that in us which is passive and involuntary; we are saved through our affections, it is as beings acted upon and influenced that we are saved! ”

“ Instead of analyzing the moral sense into its components and describing the mental stuff of which it is composed, instead of tracing its genesis and studying the forces that have produced it, they wax eloquent over its importance and universality. As preachers they are admirable. But the foundation they provide for morality is slippery. ”

“ To this fixed conception of a difference between Better and Worse, or, when carried to the extreme, between good and evil in conduct, we all, it seems to me, instinctively and, therefore, rightly, attach the term of Moral sense;—the sense, for instance, that it would be better if the members of this Society who are usually automatically absent were, instead, automatically present ”

“ 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? ”

“ But, may it not be said, that every system of ethics must, or ought, to terminate, in plain and general maxims for the use of life? and, though in such anxioms no discovery is made, does not the beauty of the moral theory consist in the premises, and the chain of reasoning that leads to the conclusion? ”

“ To get such a sane and far-sighted moral perspective; to see the acts of our fellow men with a proper valuation; to be able to point out the insidious dangers of conduct which is not yet as generally rebuked as it ought to be; and at the same time to emancipate ourselves and others from the mistaken and merely arbitrary precepts that are intermingled with our genuine morality, and so attain the largest possible freedom of action, such should be the outcome of a thorough study of ethical principles and ideals. ”

“ For, if there be no such moral Law, previously given, which our hearts and consciences approve, and to which our common nature assents, we can never see the fitness of any means, as conducive to a moral end; we can entertain no just and clear notions of moral action, properly so called ”

“ 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? ”

“ We are aware of the attempts which have been made to invest our emotions with the stamp and attribute of morality: but, in addition to the testimony of our own experience, we have the highest authority for holding that none of the natural feelings or modifications of the human heart partake in any degree of a moral character. ”

“ It is implied in the logical presuppositions to all moral responsibility. Among such presuppositions, as conceded by all, are intelligence to know, and freedom to conform to these relations. These prerequisites are essential to the very conception of moral action and amenability. It is the universal sense of the race that creatures that cannot know themselves and the relations they sustain, and are without free-will to fulfil them, are morally irresponsible and incapable of virtue or vice. To them the moral realm becomes a blank, and the moral judgments173 become impossible. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For what should hinder his doing it, if he will? if he does but once set a resolution, no fear but he will make it good!
4. But this ignorance never so strongly glares, as in those who are termed, men of learning. If a natural man be one of these, he can talk at large of his rational faculties, of the freedom of his will, and the absolute necessity of such freedom, in order to constitute man a moral agent. He reads, and argues, and proves to a demonstration, that every man may do as he will; may dispose his own heart to evil or good, as it seems best in his own eyes. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Certainly, no one can deny that the present misery and degradation in society is a moral wrong, and [Pg 542] that it is our duty to seek some method by which it may be removed as speedily as possible. ”

“ But the important truth to observe is not the particular details of their haphazard origin but the causes of their survival. Overlaying the countless originating causes of moral ideals are two main preservation—causes, two constant factors which retain certain of the innumerable impulses for one reason or other momentarily dominant. These are of extreme significance for a comprehension of the function of morality in life. ”

“ The moral qualities of human nature are good and evil. An analysis founded in this truth, however general, can alone ascertain the true character, and foretell the effects of any form of government, or of any social measure. ”

“ Let us explain. The moral world, as we said, is a whole, and has two sides. There is an outer side, systems and institutions, from the family to the nation; this we may call the body of the moral world. ”

“ Our consideration of the great truth of the distinction between right and wrong which marks human life in all ages and places, and of the existence and nature of the moral faculty discerning and enforcing this distinction, leads up to an inquiry into the aggregate complex of endowments which are essential to moral agency. The great fact of moral agency is implied and made certain in what has already been brought into view. But the pre-supposition of such moral agency is manifestly the moral agent, with all the requisite endowments for the sublime reality of ethical life. ”