The Principles of Ethics Volume 1 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1893 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER X. GENERAL CONCLUSIONS. 241. The title of this division--" The Ethics of Individual Life "--has excited a publicly-expressed curiosity respecting the possible nature of its contents. Nothing beyond prudential admonitions could, it was thought, be meant; and there was evident surprise that ethical sanction should be claimed for these. The state of mind thus implied is not, I believe, exceptional. Ordinary individual life, when it is such as not directly to affect others for good or evil, is supposed to lie outside the sphere of ethics; or rather, there is commonly entertained no thought about the matter. Ethics, as usually conceived, having made no formal claim to regulate this part of conduct is assumed to be unconcerned with it. It is true that now and then come expressions implying a half-conscious belief to the contrary. "You ought not to have overtaxed your strength by so great an exertion;" "you ought not to have gone so long without food;" are not unfrequent utterances. "You were quite right to throw up the situation if your health was giving way," is said to one; while on another is passed the criticism--" He is wrong in idling away his time, wealthy though he may be." And we occasionally hear insistence on the duty of taking a holiday to avoid an illness: especially in view of responsibilities to be discharged. That is to say, the words ought, right, wrong, duty, are used in connexion -with various parts of private conduct; and such uses of these words, which in other cases have ethical significance, implies that they have ethical significance in these cases also. Moreover, as pointed out in the opening chapter, there are some modes of individual life concerning which ethical convictions of the most pronounced...