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MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd., LONDON.
THE METHODS OF ETHICS
BY
HENRY SIDGWICK
KNIGHTBRIDGE PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
SEVENTH EDITION
London
MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited
NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1907
[The Right of Translation is reserved.]
First Edition 1874.
Second Edition 1877.
Third Edition 1884.
Fourth Edition 1890.
Fifth Edition 1893.
Sixth Edition 1901.
Seventh Edition 1907.
In offering to the public a new book upon a subject so trite asEthics, it seems desirable to indicate clearly at the outset itsplan and purpose. Its distinctive characteristics may be firstgiven negatively. It is not, in the main, metaphysical orpsychological: at the same time it is not dogmatic or directlypractical: it does not deal, except by way of illustration, withthe history of ethical thought: in a sense it might be said tobe not even critical, since it is only quite incidentally that itoffers any criticism of the systems of individual moralists. Itclaims to be an examination, at once expository and critical, ofthe different methods of obtaining reasoned convictions as towhat ought to be done which are to be found—either explicitor implicit—in the moral consciousness of mankind generally:and which, from time to time, have been developed, either singlyor in combination, by individual thinkers, and worked up intothe systems now historical.
I have avoided the inquiry into the Origin of the MoralFaculty—which has perhaps occupied a disproportionate amountof the attention of modern moralists—by the simple assumption(which seems to be made implicitly in all ethical reasoning)that there is something[1] under any given circumstances whichit is right or reasonable to do, and that this may be known.If it be admitted that we now have the faculty of knowingthis, it appears to me that the investigation of the historicalanteced