To some men, I fear it must be acknowledged, present wealth
and power and dignity are more than a sufficient recompense for any
remorse which they may continue to feel for past greed or lack of
candour or truthfulness. These considerations will serve to shew the
immense importance of moral education, alike in the family, the school,
and the state. If we are to depend on men acting rightly, and with a due
regard to wider interests than their own, we must take pains to develope
in them moral feelings sufficiently strong and sensitive to make the
reflexion on wrong or selfish acts more painful to them than the
sacrifice which is needed for dutiful and generous conduct. So far as
society, through its various instruments of law and opinion, of
education and domestic influences, can effect this object, so far will
it promote its own security and advancement.
Our adoption, then, of a tendency to promote social welfare or
well-being, as the test of conduct, is justified, I conceive, by an
examination of the internal constitution of human nature and of the
conditions which are necessary to secure the harmonious working of its
various parts. It may be objected that this test is vague in its
conception and difficult in its application. Both objections, to a great
extent, hold good. If they did not, moral theory and moral practice
would be very easy matters, but, as a fact, we know that they are by no
means easy.
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