Contemporary English Ethics a Dissertation Presented Ro the University of Leipzig for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Classic Reprint)

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Excerpt from Contemporary English Ethics a Dissertation Presented Ro the University of Leipzig for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy So far we have kept well within the lines of egoism. How are we to make the passage to disinterestedness? Instead of following Hobbes' method and invoking the aid of the state for the maintenance of public morality, Mill prefers to make use of the psychological law elaborated by Hartley - the law of the association of ideas. Life would be a poor thing, very ill provided with sources of happiness, if there were not this provision of nature by which things originally indifferent, but conducive to, or otherwise associated with, the satisfaction of our primitive desires become in themselves sources of pleasure more valuable than the primitive pleasures, both in permanency, in the Space of human existence they are capable of covering, and even in intensity. This principle explains the miser's love of money: this is the spring whence ¿ows the love of power or of fame. Virtue, according to the utilitarian conception, is a good of this description. There was no ori ginal desire of it, or motive to it save its conduciveness to pleasure, and especially to protection from pain. But through the association thus formed it may be felt a good in itself, and desired as such with as great intensity as any other good, and with this difference between it and the love of money, of power, or of fame, that all of these may, and often do, render the individual noxious to the other members of the society to which he belongs, whereas there is nothing which makes him so much a blessing to them as the cultivation of the disinterested love of virtue. And, consequently, the utili tarian standard while it tolerates and approves those other acquired desires, up to the point beyond which they would be more injurious to the general happiness than promotive of it, enjoins and requires the cultivation of the love of virtue up to the greatest strength possible, as being above all things important to the general happiness) About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.