CHAPTER XII. OBJECTIONS AND MISUNDERSTANDINGS 136 Do men always act for pleasure or to avoid pain? Are pleasures and pains incommensurable? Are some pleasures worthier than others? Is morality "categorical," beyond need of justification? Should we live "according to nature," and adjust ourselves to the Is self-development, or self-realization, the ultimate end? Is the source of duty the will of God? CHAPTER XIV. THE WORTH OF MORALITY Morality as the organization of human interests. CHAPTER XV. HEALTH AND EFFICIENCY What is the moral importance of health? Can we attain to greater health and efficiency? What should be the attitude of the individual toward alcoholic What should be our attitude toward the use of alcoholic liquors CHAPTER XVII. MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE What are the reasons for the ideal of monogamy? What safeguards for this ideal are necessary,? CHAPTER XIX. TRUTHFULNESS AND ITS PROBLEMS What are the reasons for the obligation of truthfulness? What exceptions are allowable to the duty of truthfulness? Should art be censored in the interests of morality? CHAPTER XXI. THE MECHANISM OF SELF-CONTROL What are our potentialities of greater self-control? A practicable mechanism of self-control. The threefold key to happiness: II. Hearty acquiescence in our lot. CHAPTER XXIII. PATRIOTISM AND WORLD-PEACE. What is the meaning and value of patriotism? CHAPTER XXVII. INDUSTRIAL RECONSTRUCTION Ought the trusts to be broken up, or regulated? What are the ethics of the following schemes: II. Profit-sharing, coöperation, consumers' leagues? What flagrant forms of inequality exist in our society? PROBLEMS OF CONDUCT INTRODUCTORY What is the field of ethics? To know what exists, in its stark reality, is the concern of natural science and natural philosophy; to know what matters, is the field of moral philosophy, or ethics. The one group of studies deals with facts simply as facts, the other with their values. Human life is checkered with the sunshine and shadow of good and evil, joy and pain; it is these qualitative differences that make it something more than a meaningless eddy in the cosmic whirl. Natural philosophy (including the physical and psychological sciences), drawing its impartial map of existence, is interesting and important; it informs us about our environment and ourselves, shows us our resources and our powers, what we can do and how to do it. Moral philosophy asks the deeper and more significant question, What shall we do? For the momentous fact about life is that it has differences in value, and, more than that, that we can make differences in value. Caught as we are by the irresistible flux of existence, we find ourselves able so to steer our lives as to change the proportion of light and shade, to give greater value to a life that might have had less. This possibility makes our moral problem. What shall we choose and from what refrain? To what aims shall we give our allegiance? What shall we fight for and what against? For the savage practically all of his activity is determined by his imperative needs, so that there is little opportunity |