The Inductions of Ethics Author:Herbert Spencer Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. WHAT IDEAS AND SENTIMENTS ARE ETHICAL? § 119. A silent protest has been made by many readers, and probably by most, while reading that section ... more »of the foregoing chapter which describes the ethics of enmity. Governed by feelings and ideas which date from their earliest lessons, and have been constantly impressed on them at home and in church, they have formed an almost indissoluble association between a doctrine of right and wrong in general, and those particular commands and interdicts included in the decalogue, which, contemplating the actions of men to one another in the same society, takes no note of their combined actions against men of alien societies. The conception of ethics has, in this way, come to be limited to that which I have distinguished as the ethics of amity; and to speak of the ethics of enmity seems absurd. Yet, beyond question, men associate ideas of right and wrong with the carrying on of inter-tribal and inter-national conflicts; and this or that conduct in battle is applauded or condemned no less strongly than this or that conduct in ordinary social life. Are we then to say that there is one kind of right and wrong recognized by ethics and another kind of right and wrong not recognized by ethics? If so, under what title is this second kind of right and wrong to be dealt with ? Evidently men's ideas about conduct are in so unorganized a state, that while one large class of actions has an overtly-recognized sanction, another large class of actions has a sanction, equally strong or stronger, which is not overtly recognized. The existence of these distinct sanctions, of which one is classed as moral and the other not, is still more clearly seen when we contrast the maxims of Christianity with the dogmas of duellists. During centuries throu...« less