Elements of Moral Philosophy (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: a few licentious sophists would not ascend to break the general harmony. This consent of mankind in first principles, and this endless variety in their application, which is one among many valuable truths which we may collect from our present extensive acquaintance with the history of man, is itself of vast importance." Dr. Paley has, it is true, presented an imposing array of vices and crimes practised in some age or country, and countenanced by public opinion; but, in doing this, he has most manifestly mistaken the exceptions for the rules which govern human sentiments and conduct. This might be made very clear by a careful analysis of the subject; but it may be still more satisfactory to permit Dr. Paley to destroy his own position, by citing his authority against himself. " The direct object of Christianity," says this valuable writer, " is to supply motives and not rules, sanctions and not precepts. And these," continues he, " were what mankind stood most in need of. The members of civilized society can, in all ordinary cases, judge tolerably well how they ought to act; but, without a future state, or, which is the same thing, without credited evidence of that state, they want a motive to their duty; they want at least strength of motive sufficient to bear up against the force of passion, and the temptation of present advantage, "f This observation rests entirely on the admission, that men substantially concur in their views of practical morals. Again, he says, still more decisively, " that moralists, from whatever different principles they set out, commonly meet in their conclusions; that is, they enjoin the same conduct, prescribe the same rules of duty, and, with a few exceptions, deliver upon dubious cases the same determinations." Here we have the clear and decisi...