Moral Science: A Compendium of Ethics

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American Book Company, 1869 - 337 pages
 

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Page 245 - Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do.
Page 245 - ... to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjection, will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it. In words a man may pretend to abjure their empire: but in reality he will remain subject to it all the .while.
Page 288 - 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 136 - From this fundamental law of nature, by which men are commanded to endeavour peace, is derived this second law; that a man be willing, when others are so too, as far forth, as for peace, and defence of himself he shall think it necessary, to lay down this right to all things; and be contented with so much liberty against other men, as he would allow other men against himself.
Page 292 - The internal sanction of duty, whatever our standard of duty may be, is one and the same — a feeling in our own mind ; a pain, more or less intense, attendant on violation of duty, which in properly cultivated moral natures rises, in the more serious cases, into shrinking from it as an impossibility.
Page 3 - Ethics, gives an account of the questions or points brought into discussion, and handles at length the two of greatest prominence, the Ethical Standard and the Moral Faculty. The second division— on the Ethical Systems — is a full detail of all the systems, ancient and modern. MIND AND BODY. Theories of their Relations. By ALExANDER BAIN, LL.
Page 241 - the doing good to mankind, in obedience to the will of God, and for the sake of everlasting happiness.
Page 307 - 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 recognised as laws of conduct; and are to be conformed to, irrespective of a direct estimation of happiness or misery' Perhaps an analogy will most clearly show my meaning.
Page 139 - That which gives to human actions the relish of justice is a certain nobleness or gallantness of courage, rarely found, by which a man scorns to be beholden for the contentment of his life to fraud or breach of promise.

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