(2) But, further, the movements of the sensibilities are themselves
either morally good or evil, and form a sphere of personal life
to which moral quality belongs. Man's affections and desires, his
loves and hatreds, his enjoyments and aversions, constitute a domain
where the ethical distinctions are to be applied. They hold and
exhibit elements of character. We may not, indeed, say that a being
of pure intellect, void of all emotion, would be utterly incapable
of character and irresponsible, but we are compelled to think that
the moral life in such case would be without what forms the highest
ethical excellence and glory of character, viz.: love, benevolence,
delight in righteousness and joy in pure affection. The regulation of
the affections and passions, the purification of the inmost "thoughts"
of what the sacred scriptures call "the heart" is vital to right
character. The capacity to love is an equipment for the moral life. It
is virtuous to love what ought to be loved. The capacity to hate is
also such an equipment--the obligation being to hate what ought to be
hated as morally wrong. Benevolence may not be, as some have contended
it is, the essence or ground of all virtue, but, unquestionably, it
is a virtue of highest rank, and the capacity for it is a prominent
element in man's moral organization. The same is true of the whole
emotional and affectional capacity in the human soul. It is part of the
constitution for true character and life.
(3) Still further, man's powers of action, in which the ethical
distinctions and choices are wrought out into their proper deeds, are
part of his organization for the true moralities of life. However
deeply the foundations of ethics may be laid in personal individuality,
the ethical life concerns more than self, and finds its largest
field in inter-human relations. Human solidarity is as real as human
individuality. Humanity is an organism, in which each person has his
place and mission. The individual's sphere of duty is not simply his
own soul, but the broad reach of all his relations to the world about
him, in which duties are developed and right conduct is required. In
all this wide sphere obligation can be met only through his endowment
with power to carry into effect, in action, his moral judgments and
convictions of right. Moral science must consider man not merely as a
knower and contemplator or lover of the right, but also as a doer of it
in righteous deeds. Hence man's moral nature, as his endowment for the
moral life, is not all brought under review until it is seen to include
the realm of his feelings and those executive powers which turn the
ethical discriminations and choices into righteous conduct.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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