It is necessary, indeed, in order to justify and clarify our concrete
moral judgments, that we should reach clear and firmly grounded
conclusions upon the underlying abstract questions. And the habit of
laying aside upon occasion one's instinctive or habitual moral
preferences and discussing with open mind their justification and
rationality is of great value to the individual and to society. Hence
the first two Parts of this volume take up, as simply as is consonant
with the really intricate questions involved, the history of the
development of human morality and the psychological foundation of moral
obligations and ideals. The exposition of the meaning of right and
wrong there unfolded serves as a basis for the sound solution of the
confused concrete issues, private and then public, which are discussed
in the remainder of the volume.
An introductory outline of any subject must inevitably be superficial.
To explain all the discriminations that are important to the
specialist, to justify thoroughly all the positions taken, to do
adequate justice to opposing views, would require ten volumes instead
of one. And though there is a crying need of scholarly and elaborate
discussion of the endless problems of morality, there is a prior need
for the student of surveying the field, seeing what the problems are,
how they are related, and what is approximately certain. The impression
left by many ethical treatises, that everything is matter for dispute
and no moral judgments are reliable, seems to me unfortunate; I have
preferred to incur the charge of dogmatism rather than to fall into
that error to offer a clear cut set of standards, to which exception
will be taken by this critic or that, rather than to hold out to the
student a chaos of confused possibilities.
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