Progressive Morality

Progressive Morality

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Title: Progressive Morality An Essay in Ethics
Author: Thomas Fowler
Release Date: April 15, 2004 [EBook #12035]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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PROGRESSIVE MORALITY
FOWLER
[Illustration]
PROGRESSIVE MORALITY
AN ESSAY IN ETHICS
BY

THOMAS FOWLER, M.A., LL.D., F.S.A.
PRESIDENT OF CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE
WYKEHAM PROFESSOR OF LOGIC IN THE UNIVERSITY OF
OXFORD
1884

PREFACE.
These pages represent an attempt to exhibit a scientific conception of
morality in a popular form, and with a view to practical applications
rather than the discussion of theoretical difficulties. For this purpose it
has been necessary to study brevity and avoid controversy. Hence, I
have made few references to other authors, and I have almost altogether
dispensed with foot-notes. But, though I have attempted to state rather
than to defend my views, I believe that they are, in the main, those
which, making exception for a few back eddies in the stream of modern
thought, are winning their way to general acceptance among the more
instructed and reflective men of our day.
It is necessary that I should state that this Essay is independent of a
much larger work, entitled the 'Principles of Morals,' on which I was,
some years ago, engaged with my predecessor, the late Professor
Wilson. Owing to the declining state of his health during the latter
years of his life, that work was, at the time of his death, left in a
condition which rendered its completion very difficult and its
publication probably undesirable. For the present work I am solely
responsible, though no one can have been brought into close contact
with so powerful a mind as that of Professor Wilson, without deriving
from it much stimulus and retaining many traces of its influence.
It has long been my belief that the questions of theoretical Ethics would
be far less open to dispute, as well as far more intelligible, if they were
considered with more direct reference to practice. This little book will,
I trust, furnish an example, however slight and imperfect, of such a
mode of treatment.
C.C.C.

July 25, 1884.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.
Introduction. The Sanctions of Conduct.

CHAPTER II.
The Moral Sanction or Moral Sentiment. Its Functions and the
Justification of its claims to Superiority.

CHAPTER III.
Analysis and Formation of the Moral Sentiment. Its Education and
Improvement.

CHAPTER IV.
The Moral Test and its Justification.

CHAPTER V.
Examples of the Practical Application of the Moral Test to existing
Morality.

PROGRESSIVE MORALITY.
* * * * *

CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION. THE SANCTIONS OF CONDUCT.
All reflecting men acknowledge that both the theory and the practice of
morality have advanced with the general advance in the intelligence
and civilisation of the human race. But, if this be so, morality must be a
matter capable of being reasoned about, a subject of investigation and
of teaching, in which the less intelligent members of a community have
always something to learn from the more intelligent, and the more
intelligent, in their turn, have ever fresh problems to solve and new
material to study. It becomes, then, of prime importance to every
educated man, to ask what are the data of Ethics, what is the method by
which its general principles are investigated, what are the
considerations which the moralist ought to apply to the solution of the
complex difficulties of life and action. And still, in spite of these
obvious facts, ethical investigation, or any approach to an independent
review of the current morality, is always unpopular with the great mass
of mankind. Though the conduct of their own lives is the subject which
most concerns men, it is that in which they are least patient of
speculation. Nothing is so wounding to the self-complacency of a man
of indolent habits of mind as to call in question any of the moral
principles on which he habitually acts. Praise and blame are usually
apportioned, even by educated men, according to vague and general
rules, with little or no regard to the individual circumstances of the case.
And of all innovators, the innovator on ethical theory is apt to be the
most unpopular and to be the least able to secure impartial attention to
his speculations. And hence it is that vague theories, couched in
unintelligible or only half-intelligible