Moral Philosophy: Ethics, Deontology and Natural Law — John Shaqi
Moral Philosophy: Ethics, Deontology and Natural LawRickaby, Joseph
Philosophy
Moral Philosophy: Ethics, Deontology and Natural Law
Rickaby, Joseph
Ethics
5. Another instance. A man is a long way on to seeing, though he does
not quite see, the claims of the Church of Rome on his allegiance and
submission. He suspects that a little more prayer and search, and he
shall be a Roman Catholic. To escape this, he resolves to go
travelling and give up prayer. This is _affected ignorance_. Another
has no such perception of the claims of Catholicism. He has no
religion that satisfies him. He is aware speculatively of the
importance of the religious question; but his heart is not in religion
at all. With Demas, he loves the things of this world. Very attractive
and interesting does he find this life; and for the life to come he is
content to chance it. This is _crass ignorance_ of religious truth.
Such a man is not a formal heretic, for he is not altogether wilful
and contumacious in his error. Still neither is it wholly involuntary,
nor he wholly guiltless.
6. _Passionate desire_ is not an affection of the will, but of the
sensitive appetite. The will may cooperate, but the passion is not in
the will. The will may neglect to check the passion, when it might: it
may abet and inflame it: in these ways an act done in passion is a
voluntary act. Still it becomes voluntary only by the influx of the
will, positively permitting or stimulating: it is not voluntary
precisely as it proceeds from passion: for voluntary is that which is
of the will. It belongs to passion to bring on a momentary darkness in
the understanding: where such darkness is, there is so much the less
of a human act. But passion in an adult of sane mind is hardly strong
enough, of itself and wholly without the will, to execute any
considerable outward action, involving the voluntary muscles. Things
are often said and done, and put down to passion: but that is not the
whole account of the matter. The will has been for a long time either
feeding the passions, or letting them range unchecked: that is the
reason of their present outburst, which is voluntary at least _in its
cause_. Once this evil preponderance has been brought about, it is to
be examined whether the will, in calm moods, is making any efforts to
redress the evil. Such efforts, if made, go towards making the effects
of passion, when they come, involuntary, and gradually preventing them
altogether.
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