Goodness or the passion of humanity, or Christian love, may be a motive
inducing men to keep the law, but it has no right to be called the
law-making power. And what has Christianity added to our theoretic
knowledge of morality? It may have made men practically more moral, but
has it added anything to Aristotle's Ethics?"
Certainly Christianity has no ambition to invade the provinces of the
moralist or the casuist. But the difficulties which beset the discovery
of the right moral course are of two kinds. There are the difficulties
which arise, from the blinding and confusing effect of selfish passions,
and which obscure from the view the end which should be aimed at in
action; when these have been overcome there arises a new set of
difficulties concerning the means by which the end should be attained.
In dealing with your neighbour the first thing to be understood is that
his interest is to be considered as well as your own; but when this has
been settled, it remains to be considered what his interest is. The
latter class of difficulties requires to be dealt with by the
intellectual or calculating faculty.
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