Deontology Volume 2

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1834 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER IV. NEGATIVE EFFICIENT BENEVOLENCE. The compound term ' effective' or ' efficient benevolence/ has been adopted, in consequence of the want of a single word which should imply the union of benevolence and beneficence. These operate by checking or by exciting to action. They are either restrictive or instigative. The effective benevolence which requires abstention from action is the first branch that deserves attention. Actions there are, and those very numerous, which at the same time that they are inhibited by efficient benevolence, are manifestly so by the considerations of prudence. And where the alliance between prudence. and benevolence is obvious, there can be no doubt as to the line of duty. But the miscalculations of self-regard so often encroach on the claims of benevolence, the sacrifice of the happiness of others is so often made on the false estimate, that by such sacrifice our own happiness is best promoted, that the first and most important task of the moralist, is to harmonize the selfish and beneficent principle, and to demonstrate that a due regard to the felicity of others, is the best and wisest provision for our own. Negative effective benevolence consists in nothing more than in the avoiding to do evil to others. But of evil done to others, some portions are taken cognizance of by law, others are left to the operation of opinion, with its different sanctions or instruments of pain and pleasure. Evil done to others by man's instrumentality may be deemed annoyance; and annoyance is either punishable or not punishable by judicial proceedings. This division, it is obvious, must be not natural but factitious. Its lines of demarcation shift with time and place. In different countries different laws visit the same...