Problems of Conduct: An Introductory Survey of EthicsDrake, Durant
Philosophy
Problems of Conduct: An Introductory Survey of Ethics
Drake, Durant
Ethics
On goodness of character: Dewey and Tufts, Ethics, chap. XII. F.
Paulsen, System of Ethics, book II, chap, I, secs. 3, 5. Leslie
Stephen, Science of Ethics, chap. VII.
The Kantian theory: Kant's Metaphysic of Morality. A good edition in
English is Abbott's Kant's Theory of Ethics. There are many discussions
of his theory. An interesting recent one is Felix Adler's, in Essays
Philosophical and Psychological in Honor of William James; see also
the chapter of Dewey and Tufts, Ethics, above mentioned; Paulsen, System
of Ethics, book II, chap. V, secs. 3, 4; American Journal of Psychology,
vol. 8, p. 528. On responsibility: Mezes, op. cit, pp. 29-35.
Sutherland, op. cit, vol. II, chap. XVIII. Alexander, Moral Order
and Progress, book III, chap, III, sec.
CHAPTER X
THE SOLUTION OF PERSONAL PROBLEMS
PERSONAL morality is the way to live the most desirable, the
most intrinsically valuable, life-in the long run, and in view of the
inescapable needs and conditions of human welfare; the way to
avoid the snares and pitfalls of impulse and attain those sweetest
goods that come only through effort and sacrifice of lesser goods.
That is what morality is, with reference to the single individual alone,
and that is ample justification for it. A recent writer phrases it as
follows: "I would define goodness as doing what one would wish
one had done in twenty years-twenty years, twenty days, twenty
minutes, twenty seconds, according to the time the action takes
to get ripe Perhaps when we stop teasing people and take
goodness seriously. and calmly, and see that goodness is
essentially imagination that it is brains, that it is thinking down
through to what one really wants goodness will begin to be more
coveted. Except among people with almost no brains or imagination
at all, it will be popular." [Footnote: Gerald Stanley Lee. Cf. also G.
Lowes Dickinson, The Meaning of Good, p. 141. Of morality he
says: "Its specific quality consists in the refusal to seize some
immediate and inferior good with a view to the attainment of one
that is remoter but higher".] The difference between the moral and
the immoral man is not that the latter allows himself to enjoy pleasant
and exciting phases of experience which the former denies himself
for the sake of some good lying outside of experience, but that the
latter indulges himself in any agreeable sensation that he chances
to desire, while the former conflict with greater, being content not
with any goods that may come to hand, but only with the attainable
best. [Footnote: Cf. G. Santayana, Reason in Science, pp. 252-53:
"Happiness is hidden from a free and casual will; it belongs rather
to one chastened by a long education and unfolded in an
atmosphere of sacred and perfected institutions. It is discipline that
renders men rational and capable of happiness, by suppressing without
hatred what needs to be suppressed to attain a beautiful naturalness."]
What are the inadequacies of instinct and impulse that necessitate
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