Contemporary English Ethics |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
activity adjustment of acts admit affections altruism ancient Greek animal asso association attained become benevolence character common conduct conscience consequences constitution Darwin desirable consciousness determined direct disinterested distinction distinguished ditions duty egoism emotions Ethics evolution existence experience external fact faculties feeling fellowmen functions habit happiness HEDONISM hedonistic calculus higher human Ibid idea implies impulse individual intellectual intelligence judge Kant LEIPZIG London University Martineau meaning ment mental Metaphysics Mill mind moral development moral ideal moral law motive natural selection ness object organisation Origin of Species ourselves pain passions perception perfect persons philosopher pleasure possible present Primary principle Prudence psychological race rational realisation reason recognised regard relation result satisfaction scious secondary self-conscious subject self-satisfaction sensation sense sentiment social animals social instincts society species Spencer springs of action Stephen suppose sympathy tend theory things tion Utili Utilitarian variation vidual virtue
Popular passages
Page 6 - The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.
Page 7 - The only proof capable of being given that an object is visible, is that people actually see it. The only proof that a sound is audible, is that people hear it : and so of the other sources of our experience. In like manner, I apprehend, the sole evidence it is possible to produce that anything is desirable, is that people do actually desire it.
Page 7 - No reason can be given why the general happiness is desirable, except that each person, so far as he believes it to be attainable, desires his own happiness. This, however, being a fact, we have not only all the proof which the case admits of, but all which it is possible to require, that happiness is a good : that each person's happiness is a good to that person, and the general happiness, therefore, a good to the aggregate of all persons.
Page 7 - It must be admitted, however, that utilitarian writers in general have placed the superiority of mental over bodily pleasures chiefly in the greater permanency, safety, uncostliness, etc., of the former— that is, in their circumstantial advantages rather than in their intrinsic nature.
Page 14 - If Mozart, instead of playing the pianoforte at three years old with wonderfully little practice, had played a tune with no practice at all, he might truly be said to have done so instinctively.
Page 65 - Our ultimate standard of worth is an ideal of personal worth. All other values are relative to value for, of, or in a person.
Page 21 - These good and bad results cannot be accidental, but must be necessary consequences of the constitution of things, and I conceive it to be the business of Moral Science to deduce from the laws of life and the conditions of existence what kinds of action necessarily tend to produce happiness and what kinds to produce unhappiness. Having done this, its deductions are to be recognized as laws of conduct; and are to be conformed to irrespective of a direct estimation of happiness or misery.
Page 13 - If it could be proved that any part of the structure of any one species had been formed for the exclusive good of another species, it would annihilate my theory, for such could not have been produced through natural selection.
Page 52 - Every action is RIGHT, which, in presence of a lower principle, follows a higher : every action is WRONG, which, in presence of a higher principle, follows a lower.