The Principles of Ethics: In Two Volumes

General Preface

Ethics_V1_A-050.indd 23 1/16/12 12:40 PM GENERAL PREFACE The divisions of which this work consists have been published in an irregular manner. Part I was issued in 1879; Part IV in 1891; Parts II and III, forming along with Part I, the first volume, were issued in1892; and Parts V and VI, concluding the second volume, have now, along with Part N, been just issued. The reasons for this seemingly eccentric order of publication, primarily caused by ill health, will be found stated in the respective prefaces; which, by those who care to understand why the succession named has been followed, should be read in the order: Preface to Part I; then that to Part IV; Preface to Vol. I; and then that to Vol. II. The preservation of these respective prefaces, while intended to account for the anomalous course pursued, serves also to explain some repetitions which, I fancy, have been made requisite by the separate publication of the parts: the independence of each having been a desideratum. Now that the work is complete, it becomes possible to prefix some general remarks, which could not rightly be prefixed to any one of the installments. The ethical doctrine set forth is fundamentally a corrected and elaborated version of the doctrine set forth in Social 23 Ethics_V1_A-050.indd 24 1/16/12 12:41 PM 24 General Preface Statics, issued at the end of1850. The correspondence between the two is shown, in the first place, by the coincidence of their constructive divisions. In Social Statics the subject matter of morality is divided into parts which treat respectively of Private Conduct, Justice, Negative Beneficence, and Positive Beneficence; and these severally answer to Part III, Part IV, Part V, and Part VI, constituting the constructive portion of this work: to which there are, however, here prefixed Part I, The Data, and Part II, The Inductions; in conformity with the course I have pursued throughout The Synthetic Philosophy. In Social Statics one division only of the ethical system marked out was developed-justice; and I did not, when it was written , suppose that I should ever develop the others. Besides coinciding in their divisions, the two works agree in their cardinal ideas. As in the one so in the other, man, in common with lower creatures, is held to be capable of indefinite change by adaptation to conditions. In both he is regarded as undergoing transformation from a nature appropriate to his aboriginal wild life, to a nature appropriate to a settled civilized life; and in both this transformation is described as a molding into a form fitted for harmonious cooperation. In both, too, this molding is said to be effected by the repression of certain primitive traits no longer needed, and the development of needful traits. As in the first work, so in this last, the great factor in the progressive modification is shown to be sympathy. It was contended then, as it is contended now, that harmonious social cooperation implies that limitation of individual freedom which results from sympathetic regard for the freedoms of others; and that the law of equal freedom is the law in conformity to which equitable individual conduct and equitable social arrangements consist. Morality, truly so called, was described in the original work as formulating the law of the "straight man"; and this conception corresponds with the conception of absolute ethics, set forth in this work. The theory then was, as the theory still is, that those mental products of sympathy constituting what is called the "moral sense," arise as fast as men are disciplined into social life; and Ethics_V1_A-050.indd 25 1/16/12 12:41 PM General Preface 25 that along with them arise intellectual perceptions of right human relations, which become clearer as the form of social life becomes better. Further, it was inferred at that time as at this, that there is being effected a conciliation of individual natures with social requirements; so that there will eventually be achieved the greatest individuation along with the greatest mutual dependence-an equilibrium of such kind that each, in fulfilling the wants of his own life, will spontaneously aid in fulfilling the wants of all other lives. Finally, in the first work there were drawn essentially the same corollaries respecting the rights of individuals and their relations to the state, that are drawn in this last work. Of course...