Elements of Morals. Paul Janet
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Paul Janet
Elements of Morals
With Special Application of the Moral Law to the Duties of the Individual and of Society and the State
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4064066158613
Table of Contents
APPENDIX [175] TO CHAPTER VIII.
PREFACE.
The Eléments de Morale, by M. Paul Janet, which we here present to the educational world, translated from the latest edition, is, of all the works of that distinguished moralist, the one best adapted to college and school purposes. Its scholarly and methodical arrangement, its clear and direct reasonings, its felicitous examples and illustrations, drawn with rare impartiality from the best ancient and modern writers, make of this study of Ethics, generally so unattractive to young students, one singularly inviting. It is a system of morals, practical rather than theoretical, setting forth man’s duties and the application thereto of the moral law. Starting with Preliminary Notions, M. Janet follows these up with a general division of duties, establishes the general principles of social and individual morality, and chapter by chapter moves from duties to duties, developing each in all its ramifications with unerring clearness, decision, and completeness. Never before, perhaps, was this difficult subject brought to the comprehension of the student with more convincing certainty, and, at the same time, with more vivid and impressive illustrations.
The position of M. Paul Janet is that of the religious moralist.
“He supplies,” says a writer in the British Quarterly Review,[1] in a notice of his Theory of Morals, “the very element to which Mr. Sully gives so little place. He cannot conceive morals without religion. Stated shortly, his position is, that moral good is founded upon a natural and essential good, and that the domains of good and of duty are absolutely equivalent. So far he would seem to follow Kant; but he differs from Kant in denying that there are indefinite duties: every duty, he holds, is definite as to its form; but it is either definite or indefinite as to its application. As religion is simply belief in the Divine goodness, morality must by necessity lead to religion, and is like a flowerless plant if it fail to do so. He holds with Kant that practical faith in the existence of God is the postulate of the moral law. The two things exist or fall together.”
This, as to M. Janet’s position as a moralist; as to his manner of treating his subject, the writer adds:
“… it is beyond our power to set forth, with approach to success, the admirable series of reasonings and illustrations by which his positions are established and maintained.”
M. Janet’s signal merit is the clearness and decision which he gives to the main points of his subject, keeping them ever distinctly in view, and strengthening and supplementing them by substantial and conclusive facts, drawn from the best sources, framing, so to say, his idea in time-honored and irrefutable truths.
The law of duty thus made clear to the comprehension of the student, cannot fail to fix his attention; and between fixing the attention and striking root, the difference is not very great.
C. R. C.
ELEMENTS OF MORALS.
CHAPTER I.
PRELIMINARY NOTIONS.
SUMMARY.
Starting point of morals.—Notions of common sense.
Object and divisions of morals.—Practical morality and theoretical morality.
Utility of morals.—Morals are useful: 1, in protecting us against the sophisms which combat them; 2, in fixing principles in the mind; 3, in teaching us to reflect upon the motives of our actions; 4, in preparing us for the difficulties which may arise in practice.
Short résumé of theoretical morality.—Pleasure and the good.—The useful and the honest.—Duty.—Moral conscience and moral sentiment.—Liberty.—Merit and demerit.—Moral responsibility.—Moral sanction.
All sciences have for their starting-point certain elementary notions which are furnished them by the common experience of mankind. There would be no arithmetic if men had not, as their wants increased, begun by counting and calculating, and if they had not already had some ideas of numbers, unity, fractions, etc.; neither would there be any geometry if they had not also had ideas of the round, the square, the straight line. The same is true of morals. They presuppose a certain number of notions existing among all men, at least to some degree. Good and evil, duty and obligation, conscience, liberty and responsibility, virtue and vice, merit and demerit, sanction, punishment and reward, are notions which the philosopher has not invented, but which he has borrowed from common sense, to return them again cleared and deepened.
Let us begin, then, by rapidly enumerating the elementary and common notions, the analysis and elucidation of which is the object of moral