Prolegomena to Ethics

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1899 edition. Excerpt: ... And would this spirit ever have found its inward law in an injunction to produce as much pleasure as possible--to seek as its supreme object to obtain that for others which it would reject for itself? Does not the same spirit still find such an injunction unmeaning or repellent, in those cases where it needs, owing to the felt insufficiency of the rules of conventional morality, to resort for direction to some conception of ultimate good? 363. It may be retorted, however, that by our own confession the injunction to realise the capacities, to make the most and best, of the human soul, derives its definite content from reference to the recognised virtues and excellences of life. It is an injunction to attain these more fully, to render them more generally attainable, to give further realisation to the spirit which has expressed itself in them. If it on the one hand, and the injunction to make life as pleasant as possible on the other, have alike need of this reference in order to acquire definite meaning, what advantage has the former over the latter? Its advantage we take to be this. The former injunction does, while the latter does not, correspond to the inward law by which men have been governed in the effort and aspiration that have yielded the various excellences in the way of art and knowledge, no less than of conduct, which now determine our ideal of further perfection. Accordingly in those cases--very exceptional, as we have all along pointed out--where the difference between the two injunctions would make itself practically apparent, the one would, while the other would not, suggest a manner of life, a standard of achievement in knowledge and art, here: 'We can only have the highest happiness, such as goes along! / with being a...