On Compromise

On Compromise

The writer has availed himself of the opportunity of a new edition to add three or four additional illustrations in the footnotes. The criticisms on the first edition call for no remark, excepting this, perhaps, that the present little volume has no pretensions to be anything more than an Essay. To judge such it performance as if it professed to be an exhaustive Treatise in casuistry, is to subject it to tests which it was never designed to bear. Merely to open questions, to indicate points, to suggest cases, to sketch outlines,as an Essay does all these things,may often be a process not without its own modest usefulness and interest. The design of the following essay is to consider, in a short and direct way, some of the limits that are set by sound reason to the practice of the various arts of accommodation, economy, management, conformity, or compromise. The right of thinking freely and acting independently, of using our minds without excessive awe of authority, and shaping our lives without unquestioning obedience to custom, is now a finally accepted principle in some sense or other with every school of thought that has the smallest chance of commanding the future. Under what circumstances does the exercise and vindication of the right, thus conceded in theory, become a positive duty in practice? If the majority are bound to tolerate dissent from the ruling opinions and beliefs, under what conditions and within what limitations is the dissentient imperatively bound to avail himself of this toleration? How far, and in what way, ought respect either for immediate practical convenience, or for current prejudices, to weigh against respect for truth? For how much is it well that the individual should allow the feelings and convictions of the many to count, when he comes to shape, to express, and to act upon his own feelings and convictions? Are we only to be permitted to defend general principles, on condition that we draw no practical inferences from them? Is every other idea to yield precedence and empire to existing circumstances, and is the immediate and universal workableness of a policy to be the main test of its intrinsic fitness? ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 11557
Author: Morley, John
Release Date: Mar 1, 2004
Format: eBook
Language: English