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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: THE CKEATIVE Pt'Rl'OSE. 81 CHAPTER III. THE DIVINE IDEA, AND THE CONDITIONS OP ITS REALIZA.TION. 1. If, instead of proposing it as the rule of human conduct, Bentham had simply assumed greatest happiness to be the creative purpose, his position would have been tenable enough. Almost all men do in one way or other assert the same. There have indeed been times when such a faith was far from universal. Ilad the proposition been made before Simeon Stylites on the top of his column, he would very likely have demurred to it. Probably the Flagellants of the thirteenth century may have thought otherwise. And even now it is possible that the Fakecrs of India hold a contrary opinion. But, whilst it may be true that a savage asceticism attributes to the Deity a barbarity equal to its own, and conceives him as delighting in human sacrifices; whilst it may be true that amongst ourselves the same notion yet lingers, under the form of occasional fasts and penances; still there are few if any amongst civilized people who do not agree that human well-being is in accordance with the Divine will. The doctrine is taught by all our religious teachers; it is assumed by every writer on morality: we may therefore safely consider it as an admitted truth. It is one thing, however, to hold that greatest happiness is the creative purpose, and a quite different thing to hold that greatest happiness should be the immediate aim of man. It has been the fatal error of the expediency-philosophers to confound these positions. They have not observed that the truth has two sides, a Divine side and a human side; and that it matters much to us which we look at. Greatest Happiness and Morality, are the face and obverse of the same fact: what is written on the one surface is beyond our interpretatio...
| ISBN-13 | 9780217996402 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10 | 021799640X |
| Weight | 1.14 Pounds |
| Dimensions | 9.00 x 6.00 x 0.79 In |
| List Price | $24.58 |
| Format | Paperback |
|---|---|
| Pages | 352 pages |
| Publisher | |
| Published On | 2009-08-01 |
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