The Scientific Basis of Morals, and Other Essays: Viz.: Right and Wrong, The Ethics of Belief, The Ethics of ReligionClifford, William Kingdon
Philosophy
The Scientific Basis of Morals, and Other Essays: Viz.: Right and Wrong, The Ethics of Belief, The Ethics of Religion
Clifford, William Kingdon
Ethics
It is easy to conceive that murder and theft and neglect of the young
might be considered wrong in a very simple state of society. But
we find at present that the condemnation of these actions does not
stand alone; it goes with the condemnation of a great number of other
actions which seem to be included with the obviously criminal action,
in a sort of general rule. The wrongness of murder, for example,
belongs in a less degree to any form of bodily injury that one man
may inflict on another; and it is even extended so as to include
injuries to his reputation or his feelings. I make these more refined
precepts follow in the train of the more obvious and rough ones,
because this appears to have been the traditional order of their
establishment. 'He that makes his neighbor blush in public,' says
the Mishna, 'is as if he had shed his blood.' In the same way the
rough condemnation of stealing carries with it a condemnation of
more refined forms of dishonesty: we do not hesitate to say that it
is wrong for a tradesman to adulterate his goods, or for a laborer
to scamp his work. We not only say that it is wrong to tell lies,
but that it is wrong to deceive in other more ingenious ways; wrong
to use words so that they shall have one sense to some people and
another sense to other people; wrong to suppress the truth when that
suppression leads to false belief in others. And again, the duty of
parents toward their children is seen to be a special case of a very
large and varied class of duties toward that great family to which we
belong--to the fatherland and them that dwell therein. The word duty
which I have here used, has as definite a sense to the general mind
as the words right and wrong; we say that it is right to do our duty,
and wrong to neglect it. These duties to the community serve in our
minds to explain and define our duties to individuals. It is wrong to
kill any one; unless we are an executioner, when it may be our duty
to kill a criminal; or a soldier, when it may be our duty to kill the
enemy of our country; and in general it is wrong to injure any man in
any way in our private capacity and for our own sakes. Thus if a man
injures us, it is only right to retaliate on behalf of other men. Of
two men in a desert island, if one takes away the other's cloak, it
may or may not be right for the other to let him have his coat also;
but if a man takes away my cloak while we both live in society, it
is my duty to use such means as I can to prevent him from taking away
other people's cloaks. Observe that I am endeavoring to describe the
facts of the moral feelings of Englishmen, such as they are now.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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