The Project Gutenberg EBook of Progressive Morality, by Thomas Fowler

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Title: Progressive Morality
An Essay in Ethics

Author: Thomas Fowler

Release Date: April 15, 2004 [EBook #12035]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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PROGRESSIVE MORALITY

_FOWLER_

[Illustration]

PROGRESSIVE MORALITY

AN ESSAY IN ETHICS

BY

THOMAS FOWLER, M.A., LL.D., F.S.A.

PRESIDENT OF CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE

WYKEHAM PROFESSOR OF LOGIC IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

1884

PREFACE.

These pages represent an attempt to exhibit a scientific conception of
morality in a popular form, and with a view to practical applications
rather than the discussion of theoretical difficulties. For this purpose
it has been necessary to study brevity and avoid controversy. Hence, I
have made few references to other authors, and I have almost altogether
dispensed with foot-notes. But, though I have attempted to state rather
than to defend my views, I believe that they are, in the main, those
which, making exception for a few back eddies in the stream of modern
thought, are winning their way to general acceptance among the more
instructed and reflective men of our day.

It is necessary that I should state that this Essay is independent of a
much larger work, entitled the 'Principles of Morals,' on which I was,
some years ago, engaged with my predecessor, the late Professor Wilson.
Owing to the declining state of his health during the latter years of
his life, that work was, at the time of his death, left in a condition
which rendered its completion very difficult and its publication
probably undesirable. For the present work I am solely responsible,
though no one can have been brought into close contact with so powerful
a mind as that of Professor Wilson, without deriving from it much
stimulus and retaining many traces of its influence.

It has long been my belief that the questions of theoretical Ethics
would be far less open to dispute, as well as far more int