On Compromise

Name: On Compromise
Author: Morley, John

Morley, John

Compromise (Ethics)

Now, we are not at all concerned to dispute such positions as that
Feeling is the right starting-point of moral education; that in forming
character appeal should be to the heart rather than to the
understanding; that the only basis on which our faculties can be
harmoniously ordered is the preponderance of affection over reason.
These propositions open much grave and complex discussion, and they are
not to our present purpose. We only desire to state the evil of the
notion that a man is warranted in comforting himself with dogmas and
formularies, which he has first to empty of all definite, precise, and
clearly determinable significance, before he can get them out of the way
of his religious sensibilities. Whether Reason or Affection is to have
the empire in the society of the future, when Reason may possibly have
no more to discover for us in the region of morals and religion, and so
will have become _emeritus_ and taken a lower place, as of a tutor whose
services the human family, being now grown up, no longer
requires,--however this may be, it is at least certain that in the
meantime the spiritual life of man needs direction quite as much as it
needs impulse, and light quite as much as force. This direction and
light can only be safely procured by the free and vigorous use of the
intelligence. But the intelligence is not free in the presence of a
mortal fear lest its conclusions should trouble soft tranquillity of
spirit. There is always hope of a man so long as he dwells in the region
of the direct categorical proposition and the unambiguous term; so long
as he does not deny the rightly drawn conclusion after accepting the
major and minor premisses. This may seem a scanty virtue and very easy
grace. Yet experience shows it to be too hard of attainment for those
who tamper with disinterestedness of conviction, for the sake of
luxuriating in the softness of spiritual transport without interruption
from a syllogism. It is true that there are now and then in life as in
history noble and fair natures, that by the silent teaching and
unconscious example of their inborn purity, star-like constancy, and
great devotion, do carry the world about them to further heights of
living than can be attained by ratiocination. But these, the blameless
and loved saints of the earth, rise too rarely on our dull horizons to
make a rule for the world. The law of things is that they who tamper
with veracity, from whatever motive, are tampering with the vital force
of human progress. Our comfort and the delight of the religious
imagination are no better than forms of self-indulgence, when they are
secured at the cost of that love of truth on which, more than on
anything else, the increase of light and happiness among men must
depend. We have to fight and do lifelong battle against the forces of
darkness, and anything that turns the edge of reason blunts the surest
and most potent of our weapons.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 13: Burton's _Lift of Hume,_ ii. 186-188]

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

Opening the text

On CompromiseMorley, John

Philosophy

On Compromise

Morley, John

Compromise (Ethics)

Now, we are not at all concerned to dispute such positions as that
Feeling is the right starting-point of moral education; that in forming
character appeal should be to the heart rather than to the
understanding; that the only basis on which our faculties can be
harmoniously ordered is the preponderance of affection over reason.
These propositions open much grave and complex discussion, and they are
not to our present purpose. We only desire to state the evil of the
notion that a man is warranted in comforting himself with dogmas and
formularies, which he has first to empty of all definite, precise, and
clearly determinable significance, before he can get them out of the way
of his religious sensibilities. Whether Reason or Affection is to have
the empire in the society of the future, when Reason may possibly have
no more to discover for us in the region of morals and religion, and so
will have become _emeritus_ and taken a lower place, as of a tutor whose
services the human family, being now grown up, no longer
requires,--however this may be, it is at least certain that in the
meantime the spiritual life of man needs direction quite as much as it
needs impulse, and light quite as much as force. This direction and
light can only be safely procured by the free and vigorous use of the
intelligence. But the intelligence is not free in the presence of a
mortal fear lest its conclusions should trouble soft tranquillity of
spirit. There is always hope of a man so long as he dwells in the region
of the direct categorical proposition and the unambiguous term; so long
as he does not deny the rightly drawn conclusion after accepting the
major and minor premisses. This may seem a scanty virtue and very easy
grace. Yet experience shows it to be too hard of attainment for those
who tamper with disinterestedness of conviction, for the sake of
luxuriating in the softness of spiritual transport without interruption
from a syllogism. It is true that there are now and then in life as in
history noble and fair natures, that by the silent teaching and
unconscious example of their inborn purity, star-like constancy, and
great devotion, do carry the world about them to further heights of
living than can be attained by ratiocination. But these, the blameless
and loved saints of the earth, rise too rarely on our dull horizons to
make a rule for the world. The law of things is that they who tamper
with veracity, from whatever motive, are tampering with the vital force
of human progress. Our comfort and the delight of the religious
imagination are no better than forms of self-indulgence, when they are
secured at the cost of that love of truth on which, more than on
anything else, the increase of light and happiness among men must
depend. We have to fight and do lifelong battle against the forces of
darkness, and anything that turns the edge of reason blunts the surest
and most potent of our weapons.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 13: Burton's _Lift of Hume,_ ii. 186-188]

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

On Compromise

On Compromise

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