Moral responsibility

“ For, as already shown, any question of moral responsibility can only obtain where two or more lines of action are alike possible, and therefore where no necessity is laid upon the man in respect of carrying out his volitions, in whichever direction they may eventually proceed. ”

“ This we will do when we show you the nature and character of your responsibilities.
Human responsibility is, we have stated, a high and sacred thing. Like human rights, it comes from God, and should be exercised in reference to his honor and glory, in promoting the welfare of man. And God has ordained it as part of his moral economy, that no man shall live for himself alone; and no one can live for himself alone, much as he desires it and wills it. ”

“ And equally universal is the admission that the moral insight is helped and responsibility increased by every increase of light giving larger and truer knowledge of the complex and intricate connections of human life. With every broadened and clarified vision of these connections fresh obligations appear. "A defective apprehension of the relations in which we stand to God and to our fellow-men, will prevent our seeing our specific duties."60 This fact furnishes direct evidence that right conduct must be held as a certain intelligent adjustment to the relations sustained. ”

“ Further illustration of progress in Church ethics in recent times is found in the extension of the principle of individual responsibility to the domain of religion.751 It will be recalled how completely the law of collective responsibility dominates the morality of primitive peoples.752 With the growth and clearing of the moral sense the injustice of this is perceived, and the principle of individual responsibility comes to be established. ”

“ We believe that these moral faculties are the grounds of responsibility, and the highest distinctions of human nature, and that no act is praiseworthy, any farther than it springs from their exertion. ”

“ To construct a right and good is at least a process tending to responsibility, if this construction is to be for the real world in which we must live and not merely for a world of fancy or caprice. It is not the aim of this paper to give a comprehensive outline of ethical method. Four factors in the moral life will be pointed out and this analysis will be used to emphasize especially certain social and constructive aspects of our concepts of right and good. ”

“ In other words, we still don’t know how to put morality ahead of politics, science and economics. We are still incapable of understanding that the only genuine backbone of all our actions—if they are to be moral—is responsibility. Responsibility to something higher than my family, my country, my company, my success. ”

“ To me it would establish no more than a good wholesome principle upon which the wicked may act, as well as the righteous—a principle upon which the world ought to act, by the moral obligations they are under to stretch out the arm of charity to every person, to fill up their days with industry, prudence, and faithfulness, procuring means to sustain themselves, and to administer to the wants of those who are unable to administer to themselves. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Resolved, That the great duty of every human being is to secure his own highest moral development, and that he can not owe to society, or to an individual, any obligation which shall be degrading to himself. ”

“ 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! ”

“ This element of obvious usefulness is all the more to be counted on in sweetening tasks otherwise irksome, since social morality, the responsibility of man towards the life of man, will, in the new order of things, take the place of theological morality, or the responsibility of man to some abstract idea. ”

“ Every moral rule, every sentiment, as also every institution, must be tested, from period to period, to see if it works still in a practical and healthful direction to help the individual [172] to do right and for the betterment of the race. ”

“ For though, while in obeying our fallible conscience, we have thus failed to bring our whole outward action in the case into harmony with full duty, or have even done what to others about us or to God above us was wrong, we have maintained our own subjective personal moral integrity, in maintaining that which is the fundamental and essential element of all morality, the right intention and effort. ”

“ If we look into the works on ethics, from Aristotle down to our own day—take up, for instance, the work of Herbert Spencer on the Data of Ethics, or that of Leslie Stephen on the Science of Ethics—I think you will find that in no two works is there any precise agreement as to what are the primary grounds of moral obligation. ”

“ What I have to note is that, in any case, the change supposes the necessity of a corresponding morality in the growth of the instincts, the public spirit, the hatred of indolence, the temperance and self-command which would be requisite to work it efficiently. The organisation into which we are born presupposes certain moral instincts, and, moreover, necessarily implies a vast system of moral discipline. Our hopes and aspirations, our judgments of our neighbours and of ourselves, are at every moment guided and moulded by the great structure of which we form a part. ”

“ But why were you taught the theory of obligation? Not surely for the gratification of your curiosity merely, but that you might be enabled to realise the loftiness of the position occupied in the economy of human nature by Duty and the fitness of following where Duty calls. Man's highest duty to man— his highest moral obligation—is the duty of beneficence—the duty of doing good to others. The obligation not to do evil belongs to a lower stage of morals than the obligation to do good. ”

“ Even in matters which are, as it were, just within our reach, what would become of the world, if the practice of all moral duties, and the foundations of society, rested upon having their reasons made clear and demonstrative to every individual? ”

“ 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. ”

“ The issue of this may either be an apparent suspension of the moral growth of the individual, or a clearer apprehension of the spirit underlying the letter of the obligations laid on him by society, which makes his rational recognition of duty, when arrived at, a much more valuable influence in promoting the moral growth of society. ”

“ It is always imposed from outside. The authority of parents, the authority of the law of the land, and the authority of God are all alike in this, that the seat of the authority is external to the agent himself. Now a duty is a moral duty only when it is self-imposed. A duty is my duty only when I recognise that, whatever external sanctions it may possess, it is laid upon me by myself. My conscience acknowledges that it is a duty for me, and my will imposes it upon me as a line of action that ought to be carried out. The duty is an obligation laid upon the self by the self. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Besides, independently of their intrinsic merits, whether intellectual or moral, the necessities of their daily life serve to impress them with respect for the great rules of morality, which in most cases were framed for their own protection. ”

“ As I consider virtue and vice to consist in action, and not in opinion, and as this action has its seat in the will, and not in the conscience, I shall confine my inquiries chiefly to the influence of physical causes upon that moral power of the mind, which is connected with volition, although many of these causes act likewise upon the conscience, as I shall show hereafter. The state of the moral faculty is visible in actions, which affect the well-being of society. ”

“ But if we judge conduct, as I think we ought, by its power of promoting what we consider a good life or a good society, we cannot expect such simplicity in our moral precepts, and we must expect all of them to be subject to exceptions. ”

“ Hodeslea, Eastbourne, November 5, 1892.
Dear Sir,
I well remember the interview to which you refer, and I should have replied to your letter sooner, but during the last few weeks I have been very busy.
Moral duty consists in the observance of those rules of conduct which contribute to the welfare of society, and by implication, of the individuals who compose it.
The end of society is peace and mutual protection, so that the individual may reach the fullest and highest life attainable by man. ”

“ Rash indeed, would be the man, who, if required to dispense, not only with law and usage, but with all religious faith, all distinctions as to the moral worth of types of conduct, all sense of duty, all pride and self-reverence, should undertake to build an orderly and stable society on the spontaneous sympathies and social instincts of men. ”

“ When we are governed by this motive, which the men of the world would deride as the figment of an enthusiastic imagination, our benevolence becomes one of the established laws of our moral system, which admits of no suspension or diversion, without occasioning a shock to our sense of right and wrong. ”

“ This system of ethics maintains that we have from nature social affections which lead us into friendly fellowship with our kind, and incline us to consult the interests of others, no less than private feelings, which excite us to promote our own personal advantage. It holds that we grow up to be the moral agents that we are through an innate sense of duty, which at once approves of our conduct when we do right, and disapproves of it when we do wrong. ”

“ 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? ”

“ By appealing directly to the individual conscience, and making religion a matter of personal concern and of moral conviction, it raised the value of each individual as a responsible moral agent, and placed the dignity of every man as a social monad on the firmest possible pedestal. ”

“ I consider morality merely as it respects society; for if we superadd the obligations of a divine command, we blend it with religion; an article in which Christians have an infinit advantage over savages.
Considering moral duties as founded solely on the constitution of society, and as having for their sole end the happiness of social beings, many of them will vary in their nature and extent, according to the particular state and circumstances of any society. ”

“ By far the greater part of the morality of every age and country has reference to the welfare of society. Even in the most superstitious, sentimental, and capricious despotisms, a very large share of the enactments, political and moral, consist in protecting one man from another, and in securing justice between man and man. ”

“ Reason, too, in harmony with these laws, shows that the true dignity of Humanity is in the moral and intellectual nature, and that the labors of Justice and Benevolence, directed by intelligence and abasing that part which is in common with beasts, are the highest forms of human conduct. ”

“ This superior something further, which is a possible law or ought to the individual man, does not depend for its existence on his choice or opinion. Either there is no morality, so says the moral consciousness, or moral duties exist independently of their position by this or that person: my duty may be mine and no other man’s, but I do not make it mine. If it is duty, it would be the duty of any person in my case and condition, whether they thought so or not: in a word, duty is ‘objective,’ in the sense of not being contingent on the opinion or choice of this or that subject. ”

“ While the result of the contest is so honourable [207] and advantageous to us and to posterity, it is to be lamented that those moral and religious duties so essential to the order of society and the permanent happiness of mankind, have been too much neglected. To recover them into practice, the life and conduct of every good man should be a constant example. ”