Showing papers in "The International Journal of Ethics in 1895"

Reform in Education

Abstract: Ethical Society, \" as the essence of courage is to stake one's life on a possibility, so the essence of faith is to believe that the possibility exists.\" These, then, are my last words to you: Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact. The \" scientific proof \" that you are right may not be clear before the day of judgment (or some stage of Being which that expression may serve to symbolize) is reached. But the faithful fighters of this hour, or the beings that then and there will represent them, may then turn to the faint-hearted, who here decline to go on, with words like those with which Henry IV. greeted the tardy Crillon after a great victory had been gained: \" Hang yourself, Crillon! we fought at Arques, and you were not there.\" WILLIAM JAMES.

The Juvenile Offender, and the Conditions which Produce Him

Abstract: and acquired fitness for it. The number of people who will be left between the rapidly-receding trust in revelation and the slowly-advancing trust in philosophy is unpleasantly large. Whitechapel in particular will probably lose its faith in revelation sometime before it adopts, with any approach to unanimity, any form of idealistic philosophy. And the idea of a large number of people with nothing to hope for in the future, and not much to live for in the present, is not a very cheerful prospect, either for them or for society. But we shall gain nothing by not facing the facts. If the supply of bread runs short, we shall gain nothing by distributing stones. Such a course may have two positively evil effects. It may persuade the ungrateful recipients, not only that there is a deficiency of food, but that there is no such thing as food at all. And it may prolong the scarcity, or even render it perpetual, by turning men's minds to quarries rather than to wheat-fields, as the source from which may arise some satisfaction for their desires. J. ELLIS MCTAGGART. TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.

Free-Will and Responsibility

Abstract: THE question of free-will and necessity is often spoken of as incapable of solution, and the controversy on the subject is supposed to be interminable. Milton* regards a discussion on free-will as a fitting occupation for the more speculative of his fallen angels,-a refined form of eternal punishment. On the theological aspects of the question, of which Milton was chiefly thinking, I do not intend to say much at present,-the seeming contradiction between the Omnipotence and Omniscience of God on the one hand and the freedom of the individual human being on the other. I do not think that, even in the special region of theological controversy, that question bulks as largely as it did in the seventeenth century. The doctrines of predestination and election nowadays occupy comparatively little thought even among those whose religious ideas are mostly due to Calvinistic theology. I do not suppose that, apart from a few old-fashioned students, many of those who are most zealous about what they call \" evangelical truth,\" consider the differences that separate Wesleyans from Calvinistic Methodists, Presbyterians, Baptists, and Congregationalists. One does not hear of Arminianism as a dangerous heresy at the present time: on the contrary, the de-

The Necessity of Dogma

Abstract: struction, cannot move it from the pier until some ordinary man goes into the hold and carries on the laborious work of the stoker, and for the man who has spent his millions in the construction of the magnificent machine to attempt to crush or to own the stoker is a violation of every principle of ethics. The stoker is entitled not only to the very best treatment of the man who owns the machine, but to his sincere regard and respect, and until this principle is recognized, through the claim of the stoker for the respect of the man who has built the ship and the freely accorded claim on his part, there will be no settlement and no adjustment of labor troubles. CARROLL D. WRIGHT. WASHINGTON, D. C.

The Evolution of Religion

Abstract: As the nineteenth century draws to a close, its watchword of \" Evolution\" is proclaimed in new regions. And though the new regions are in one sense old,-for Evolution was a principle of speculation before it became a theorem of Natural History,-yet their conquest or reconquest, as we may choose to regard it, completely transfigures the law which too often we merely identify with \" Darwinism.\" In metaphysics in the philosophy of religion, even within the realm of zoology itself, the evolutionary idea is being tested and adjusted anew; and it is an aspect of this process which demands our attention to-day. If we ask ourselves how the principle of Evolution can aid us, and is aiding us, in bringing home to our minds the nature of Religion, the answer is, in general, that just as in other spheres it is Evolution which enables us to grasp the unity of the organic or inorganic world, so it is Evolution by which alone we can genuinely apprehend the unity of human nature and of man's highest consciousness. And as an instrument for this purpose the idea of evolution operates in two complementary ways. . First, it enables us to interpret the lower phases of mind by the higher, and so to replace classification by life-history. Secondly, it enables us to appreciate the conflict of form and substance, which follows from the presence of the mind, as a many-sided whole, within every mould or outline which gives the general name to a distinct period in religious development. I will explain the two modes of operation. I. Wherever the study of evolution reveals a connected chain of forms, from low to high, there is a strong tendency

"Rational Hedonism"-A Rejoinder

Abstract: MR. MACKENZIE complains of the ambiguity of the definition of pleasure upon which I rely, and says that if I take feeling in Dr. Ward's sense, the definition in question involves petitio principii, because \" it is a disputed point whether feeling in that sense is ever judged to' be desirable at all.\" Feeling, in Dr. Ward's sense, is simply pleasure and pain; and I accept the word in that sense, only explaining that it is concrete pleasantness of conscious states which I regard as the ethical end, and not any \" abstract\" and isolated constituent of consciousness which, though distinguishable (and necessarily distinguished in thought and language) from the other constituents, is not separable from them. (Similarly beauty is an artistic end, though not realizable apart from paint and canvas, etc.)t It seems to me that certain ethical writers do most undoubtedly lay down that pleasant feeling in this sense is desirable, and pain undesirable. Indeed, is not the fundamental complaint of \"' Idealist\" against Hedonist moralists this, that the Hedonists do judge pleasant feeling and absence of painful feeling to be the ultimately desirable end of action? Is it not, for instance, beyond dispute that Bentham and Herbert Spencer believe this? And the same is true of Clarke and Butler, who are generally classed as Intuitionists. Could anything be more unequivocal than Butler's assertion