Now it is
important to ask whether this feeling is uniformly felt on the
occurrence of the same acts, or whether it ever varies, so that acts,
for instance, which are at one time viewed with satisfaction, are at
another time regarded with indifference or with positive
dissatisfaction. It would seem as if no man who reflects on ethical
subjects, and profits by the observation and experience of life, could
possibly answer this question in any other than one way. There must be
very few educated and reflective men who have not seen reason, with
advancing years, to alter their opinion on many of, at least, the minor
points of morality in which they were instructed as children. A familiar
instance occurs at once in the different way in which most of us view
card-playing or attendance at balls or theatres from the much stricter
views which prevailed in many respectable English households a
generation ago. On the other hand, excess in eating and drinking is
regarded with far less indulgence now than it was in the days of our
fathers and grandfathers. On these points, then, at least, and such as
these, it must be allowed that there is a variation of moral sentiment,
or, in other words, that the acts condemned or approved by the moral
sanction are not invariably the same. Moreover, any of us who are
accustomed to reason on moral questions, and can observe carefully the
processes through which the mind passes, will notice that there is
constantly going on a re-adjustment, so to speak, of our ethical
opinions, whether we are reviewing abstract questions of morality or the
specific acts of ourselves or others.
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