Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Value of a Study of Ethics: An Inaugural Lecture
Then, as everyone knows, the spirit of our age is scientific. The characteristic of Science is patient, thorough, systematic enquiry. Science needs no apology for its existence. It has established itself by doing its work, thus enforcing a lesson on the value of acting out our convictions if we wish others to believe in them. The in?uence of scientific thought and literature is felt by the student before he enters the university, and no one can take a university training without becoming more or less familiar with scientific methods. Since Bacon wrote his Instauration of the Sciences and exposed the various z'a'ols that hinder the attainment of truth, authority has been discredited in science. One of the first things a student of science learns to do is to mistrust his previous opinions. In many enquiries they appear to him as mere prejudices, preventing him from seeing the truth and giving an impartial decision.
We started with the assumption that we were to exclude all critical investigation of Ethics, and employ only the dogmatic method. But, as we have seen, the other in?uences that we have enumerated all con cur in destroying the student's respect for the dogmatic method.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
