The Ultimate Belief (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1916. Excerpt: ... Ill THE MORAL ACTIVITY HAVING spoken of the three activities of the spirit in general, I shall now speak of each of them in particular, and first of the moral activity. The moral activity is practical. It is concerned with action and with those states of mind which lead to action. A state of mind is judged and tested morally according to the action which is likely to result from it. It is, in fact, judged as part of the process of action and seen as one with that process. The moral activity consists in doing what is right for its own sake; and thought, so far as it is subject to the moral activity, is part of doing. There is a desire of the spirit to do what is right, and all processes of the mind may be controlled by that desire. But the final satisfaction of that desire is in action, not in thought; and, however right thought may be, it cannot be satisfied morally except in action. The spirit is profoundly dissatisfied, filled with a sense of impotence, if right thinking is accompanied by wrong action. For in that case the thinking is baulked of its proper results in action. There is a process begun rightly but finished wrongly, or rather not finished at all, for the wrong action is not a part of the process, but a contradiction of it. Now in other philosophies many different reasons are given why men should do what is right, and there is much questioning as to how men can know what is right. Sometimes, indeed, right is discovered to be not right at all, but something else, such as enlightened self-interest, or the interest of the whole human race. And these philosophies are always in difficulties to explain why, if right is not really right but something else, men should feel that peculiar emotion which they do feel about right; why they should so pass...