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 I. MAN A MORAL PERSON, PSYCHOLOGICALLY CONSIDERED. 7. We may assume that moral relations or qualities pertain only to moral persons and to their actions or char- Thc mora, acter, their dispositions, thoughts, feelings, and nare- words. We inquire then, first of all, who is a moral person, and what are the capacities and faculties which constitute such a person? ? What endowments qualify him for moral activity and its responsibilities? Following the order of topics already suggested, we begin with the psychological analysis of man's moral constitution or personality. Some conceive these endowments to be special, and additional to those by which the other functions of human How miscon- nature are performed. They represent to them- TMi'd. selves and others certain so-called moral endowments, as superadded to the intellect, sensibility, and will, with the other recognized human powers, like a separate attachment or gearing to a machine, or as special organs in a plant or animal. To this special nature they assign the moral experiences as separate and quasi-independent functions, even though these may be conceived to interact with the inferior powers by some unexplained connection whenever man acts morally. In effect they assume or imply that man might be a completely furnished human being, and yet be incapable of moral judgments and feelings, and consequently conceive that the endowments which make him moral might be alternately attached or withdrawn, suspended or brought into action, leaving him essentially a man, whether with or without them. Some make this moral faculty to be the originator of special ideas, which they name the " moral reason," as an inlet or discerner of moral relations or conceptions. Others conceive it as a special sensibility called the " ...
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