For the present work I am solely responsible,
though no one can have been brought into close contact with so powerful
a mind as that of Professor Wilson, without deriving from it much
stimulus and retaining many traces of its influence.
It has long been my belief that the questions of theoretical Ethics
would be far less open to dispute, as well as far more intelligible, if
they were considered with more direct reference to practice. This little
book will, I trust, furnish an example, however slight and imperfect, of
such a mode of treatment.
C.C.C.
_July_ 25, 1884.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
Introduction. The Sanctions of Conduct.
CHAPTER II.
The Moral Sanction or Moral Sentiment. Its
Functions and the Justification of its claims
to Superiority.
CHAPTER III.
Analysis and Formation of the Moral Sentiment.
Its Education and Improvement.
CHAPTER IV.
The Moral Test and its Justification.
CHAPTER V.
Examples of the Practical Application of the Moral
Test to existing Morality.
PROGRESSIVE MORALITY.
* * * * *
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION. THE SANCTIONS OF CONDUCT.
All reflecting men acknowledge that both the theory and the practice of
morality have advanced with the general advance in the intelligence and
civilisation of the human race. But, if this be so, morality must be a
matter capable of being reasoned about, a subject of investigation and
of teaching, in which the less intelligent members of a community have
always something to learn from the more intelligent, and the more
intelligent, in their turn, have ever fresh problems to solve and new
material to study.
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