>>>  YOU ARE VIEWING A 200 LINE SAMPLE OF EBOOK# E03503  <<<

TITLE: THE NATURE OF GOODNESS
AUTHOR: GEORGE HERBERT PALMER
EBOOK: E03503 (O'Briens Book Cellar)

THE NATURE OF GOODNESS

BY

GEORGE HERBERT PALMER
Alford Professor of Philosophy
In Harvard University

[Illustration: Tout bien ou rien]

1903

A. F. P.

BONITATE SINGULARI MULTIS DILECTAE

VENUSTATE LITTERIS CONSILIIS PRAESTANTI

NUPER E DOMO ET GAUDIO MEO EREPTAE

PREFACE

The substance of these chapters was delivered as a course of lectures
at Harvard University, Dartmouth and Wellesley Colleges, Western
Reserve University, the University of California, and the Twentieth
Century Club of Boston. A part of the sixth chapter was used as an
address before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard, and another
part before the Philosophical Union of Berkeley, California. Several
of these audiences have materially aided my work by their searching
criticisms, and all have helped to clear my thought and simplify its
expression. Since discussions necessarily so severe have been felt as
vital by companies so diverse, I venture to offer them here to a wider
audience.

Previously, in "The Field of Ethics," I marked out the place which
ethics occupies among the sciences. In this book the first problem of
ethics is examined. The two volumes will form, I hope, an easy yet
serious introduction to this gravest and most perpetual of studies.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

THE DOUBLE ASPECT OF GOODNESS

  I. Difficulties of the investigation
 II. Gains to be expected
III. Extrinsic goodness
 IV. Imperfections of extrinsic goodness
  V. Intrinsic goodness
 VI. Relations of the two kinds
VII. Diagram

CHAPTER II

MISCONCEPTIONS OF GOODNESS

  I. Enlargement of the diagram
 II. Greater and lesser good
III. Higher and lower good
 IV. Order and wealth
  V. Satisfaction of desire
 VI. Adaptation to environment
VII. Definitions

CHAPTER III

SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS

  I. The four factors of personal goodness
 II. Unconsciousness
III. Reflex action
 IV. Conscious experience
  V. Self-consciousness
  VI. Its degrees
 VII. Its acquisition
VIII. Its instability

CHAPTER IV

SELF-DIRECTION

   I. Consciousness a factor
  II. (A) The intention
 III. (1) The end, aim, or ideal
  IV. (2) Desire
   V. (3) Decision
  VI. (B) The volition
 VII. (1) Deliberation
VIII. (2) Effort
  IX. (3) Satisfaction

CHAPTER V

SELF-DEVELOPMENT

   I. Reflex influence of self-direction
  II. Varieties of change
 III. Accidental change
  IV. Destructive change
   V. Transforming change
  VI. Development
 VII. Self-development
VIII. Method of self-development
  IX. Test of self-development
   X. Actual extent of personality
  XI. Possible extent of personality
 XII. Practical consequences

CHAPTER VI

SELF-SACRIFICE

   I. Difficulties of the conception
  II. It is impossible
 III. It is a sign of degradation
  IV. It is needless
   V. It is irrational
  VI. Its frequency
 VII. Definition
VIII. Its rationality
  IX. Distinguished from culture
   X. Its self-assertion
  XI. Its incalculability
 XII. Its positive character
XIII. Conclusion

CHAPTER VII

NATURE AND SPIRIT

   I. Summary of the preceding argument
  II. Spirit superior to nature
 III. Naturalistic tendency of the fine arts
  IV. Naturalistic tendency of science and philosophy
   V. Naturalism in social estimates
  VI. Self-consciousness burdensome
 VII. Impossibility of full conscious guidance
VIII. Advantages of unconscious action

CHAPTER VIII

THE THREE STAGES OF GOODNESS

   I. Advantage of conscious guidance
  II. Example of piano-playing
 III. The mechanization of conduct
  IV. Contrast of the first and third stages
   V. The cure for self-consciousness
  VI. The revision of habits
 VII. The doctrine of praise
VIII. The propriety of praise

I

THE DOUBLE ASPECT OF GOODNESS

In undertaking the following discussion I foresee two grave
difficulties. My reader may well feel that goodness is already the
most familiar of all the thoughts we employ, and yet he may at the
same time suspect that there is something about it perplexingly
abstruse and remote. Familiar it certainly is. It attends all our
wishes, acts, and projects as nothing else does, so that no estimate
of its influence can be excessive. When we take a walk, read a book,
make a dress, hire a servant, visit a friend, attend a concert, choose
a wife, cast a vote, enter into business, we always do it in the hope
of attaining something good. The clue of goodness is accordingly a
veritable guide of life. On it depend actions far more minute than
those just mentioned. We never raise a hand, for example, unless with
a view to improve in some respect our condition. Motionless we should
remain forever, did we not believe that by placing the hand elsewhere
we might obtain something which we do not now possess. Consequently we
employ the word or some synonym of it during pretty much every waking
hour of our lives. Wishing some test of this frequency I turned to
Shakespeare, and found that he uses the word "good" fifteen hundred
times, and it's derivatives "goodness," "better," and "best," about as
many more. He could not make men and women talk right without
incessant reference to this directive conception.

But while thus familiar and influential when mixed with action, and
just because of that very fact, the notion of goodness is
bewilderingly abstruse and remote. People in general do not observe
this curious circumstance. Since they are so frequently encountering
goodness, both laymen and scholars are apt to assume that it is
altogether clear and requires no explanation. But the very reverse is
the truth. Familiarity obscures. It breeds instincts and not
understanding. So inwoven has goodness become with the very web of
life that it is hard to disentangle. We cannot easily detach it from
encompassing circumstance, look at it nakedly, and say what in itself
it really is. Never appearing in practical affairs except as an
element, and always intimately associated with something else, we are
puzzled how to break up that intimacy and give to goodness independent
meaning. It is as if oxygen were never found alone, but only in
connection with hydrogen, carbon, or some other of the eighty elements
which compose our globe. We might feel its wide influence, but we
should have difficulty in describing what the thing itself was. Just
so if any chance dozen persons should be called on to say what they

<<<  END OF SAMPLE... (THE FULL EBOOK HAS 253212 TOTAL CHARACTERS)  >>>