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"It is the purpose of this book to show, how from the needs of animal life as they rose and developed, there sprang, at first with inexpressible slowness, but imperceptibly quickening as it advanced, that moral instinct which, with its concomitant intelligence, forms the noblest feature as yet visible on this ancient earth of ours. The inquiry thus to be undertaken will, as I hope, be wholly without prejudice to those grander and deeper questions of philosophy that lie beneath it and beyond it--questions which, though ever near at hand, pressing on the heart even of the child if he be of thoughtful mood, yet preserving to the ripest years a sense of wistful fascination, must none the less be answered always in a manner more or less uncertain and speculative. For to finite sense the infinite must stand apart, and these wider speculations therefore lie outside the purposed scope of my investigations, wherein appears alone the growth of our moral instincts from their humble source among the lower animals. With absolutely unbroken continuity that development will be traced through lowliest savage to the noblest of men, always as a biologic process; nor shall I make the least attempt to correlate it with any possible scheme of the universe. How these ethical conceptions may shape as fragments of an all-embracing thought may offer a field for discussion vaster and more sublime, but one that is absolutely and necessarily remote from the range of this inquiry"--

Ethics, Evolutionary.

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Moral Science is vigorously reproached for its failures. It is thought to have little or no claim to be called a science, and to need at once new foundations and new methods. Without denying entirely the force of these criticisms, we must yet regard them as springing from a very inadequate view of the topic. Science is thought of as a kind of exact, almost mathematical, knowledge; and every field of inquiry which does not and can not yield such results is dismissed to limbo. This sentiment narrows knowledge stupidly, and wastes life foolishly. We can not express the terms of our being, nor the career of any human soul, the simplest, in a formula; and that we can not involves all the superiority of the moral world. Yet a light is none the less a light because it needs often to be trimmed and fed. We are to discuss morals, but we are to discuss them as morals, and search for knowledge in the measure and the manner that the facts admit of. Our knowledge will not lose in value because it touches such a variety of circumstances, and touches us in turn so constantly and at so many points. Nor will it have less dignity because it lacks the limitations of simple physical forces. We seek insight, and insight is too variable, comprehensive and grand an act to expire finally in a formula. If we insist, then, on judging Moral Science by tests taken from other departments of knowledge, we may easily disparage the results hitherto reached; but if, with a wiser application of the inductive method, we allow this field of inquiry to remain under its own peculiar limitations, and judge it in recognition of its own nature, we shall be satisfied, first, that conclusions of great value have already been reached; and, secondly, that real progress is being made, if not all the progress one would desire". (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).

Ethics, Evolutionary.

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Ethics, Evolutionary.

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Ethics, Evolutionary.

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Ethics, Evolutionary.