Problems of Conduct: An Introductory Survey of EthicsDrake, Durant
Philosophy
Problems of Conduct: An Introductory Survey of Ethics
Drake, Durant
Ethics
bit of beauty that tells of attainment, of peace, of perfection. That
is a proof to him of the beauty in the midst of which he lives,
inexhaustible, hardly discerned; it carries him beyond itself into
the ideal world of which it is a sample and illustration; unconsciously
during the duties of the day he lives in the light of that vision,
and everything is sweetened and blessed thereby.
Can we maintain a steady under glow of happiness?
Happiness--happiness sufficient to make life well worth living is,
for most men at least, at most times, a real possibility. To be won
it has but to be sought vigorously enough. It is to be sought,
however, not primarily by changing one's environment but by
changing one's self; not by acquiring new things, but by acquiring
a new attitude toward things; not by getting what could make one
happy, but by learning to be happy with what one can get. THE
KINGDOM OF HEAVEN IS WITHIN YOU! This is not merely a
moralist's theory, or an empirical observation; it is a scientific fact.
We may restate the matter in psychological language by saying
that happiness and unhappiness are responses of the organism
to its environment, reactions upon a stimulus, our attitude of
welcome or dissatisfaction toward the various matters of our
experience. True, we often think of the quality of pleasantness
as inhering in the things we enjoy, and speak of troubles and
sorrows as objective. But this is only a shorthand way of describing
experience. In reality the pleasure we feel in eating when we are
hungry or in seeing a friend we love is something added to and
different from the taste sensations, or the complex visual perceptions
and memory images the friend arouses in us. So a cutting or burning
sensation, the thought of a friend's death, or of our failure, on the one
hand, and our unhappiness thereat on the other hand, are two distinct
things, closely bound together in our minds but separable.
The separation is, indeed, difficult to bring about, because the age
long struggle for existence has made unhappiness at physical pain
and pleasure at the healthy exercise of our organs or satisfying of our
appetite instinctive and immediate, that we may avoid what is harmful
to life and pursue what is useful. All our cravings and longings and
regrets have this biological value; they are the machinery by which
nature spurs us on to better adjustment to the conditions of life.
And in learning to do without the spur we must learn not to need it.
Discontent is better than laziness, remorse better than callous
selfishness, suffering under extreme cold better than recklessly
exposing the body till it is weakened. But as soon as we have reached
that stage of rationality where we can choose the better way and stick
to it without the stinging goad of pain, the pain is no longer
necessary and we may safely learn to weed it out.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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