Morality as a Religion: An exposition of some first principles — John Shaqi
Morality as a Religion: An exposition of some first principlesSullivan, W. R. Washington (William Robert Washington)
Religion
Morality as a Religion: An exposition of some first principles
Sullivan, W. R. Washington (William Robert Washington)
Conduct of life; Ethics; Religion and ethics
Now, if to bar this conclusion it were argued that so far from the
moral law being an expression of mind, supreme or otherwise, it was
merely the generalised experience of mankind which had discovered that
certain acts were attended by pleasurable or useful results, and
certain other acts by painful and mischievous consequences, which had
led men to describe the first class as good and the second as evil, one
might reply that herein we have stated a truth but not the whole truth.
To us the fact that good living and well-being are so intimately
associated, and that "the way of the transgressor is hard," is only one
more evidence of the main contention of our school. Surely, if man
awakes to the discovery that the laws, neither of nature, health, nor
of private or public life, can be violated with impunity, more than
ever is he convinced that the universe is, in Emerson's singularly
expressive phrase, "so magically woven" that man must come to ruin if
he sets himself to systematically disregard them. The word "woven" is
an illumination in itself, showing how the warp of constant nature and
life and the woof of man's conduct are meant to work and must work
harmoniously together. And if this be indeed so, if we adopt Bentham's
language and call "pleasure and pain our sovereign masters," what have
we but a further indication that things are so ordained, that the
universe is so constructed, so to speak, that you cannot get the good
out of it unless you conform to moral law--in other words, that in the
long run wrong, virtue and happiness are reconciled? Well, but the
ordering of things, the ordaining of a course of things, what is this
but the work of intelligence? And therefore Bentham, no less than
Kant, contributes his quota to the universal conclusion that the moral
law implies theism in the sense explained. Wherefore, it may be added,
there is no reason whatsoever why a rational ethic such as has been
sketched should not avail itself of the unquestionable services of
experience in determining what is and what is not in conformity with
morality. If a man sees the world as one, and all intelligence as one,
he will be assured beforehand that things are so constituted that
mischief cannot permanently or ultimately befall him if he lives what
he knows to be _the life_. And, therefore, the considerations of pain
and pleasure, utility and mischievousness, are extremely serviceable
criteria whereby we are assisted in that codification of morality, in
that determining of what is good and what is evil, only it must ever be
pointed out that they are not the ultimate explanation or basis of
morality, which is built, not on any hedonistic or utilitarian
foundation, but on the reason in us, in the universe, which commands us
to live as offspring of that reason, or as Paul puts it from his point
of view, as "children of the light".
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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