The Nature of Goodness

Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
GEORGE HERBERT PALMER Alford Professor of Philosophy In Harvard University
1903
The substance of these chapters was delivered as a course of lectures at Harvard University, Dartmouth and Wellesley Colleges, Western Reserve University, the University of California, and the Twentieth Century Club of Boston. A part of the sixth chapter was used as an address before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard, and another part before the Philosophical Union of Berkeley, California. Several of these audiences have materially aided my work by their searching criticisms, and all have helped to clear my thought and simplify its expression. Since discussions necessarily so severe have been felt as vital by companies so diverse, I venture to offer them here to a wider audience.
Previously, in The Field of Ethics, I marked out the place which ethics occupies among the sciences. In this book the first problem of ethics is examined. The two volumes will form, I hope, an easy yet serious introduction to this gravest and most perpetual of studies.
I. Difficulties of the investigation II. Gains to be expected III. Extrinsic goodness IV. Imperfections of extrinsic goodness V. Intrinsic goodness VI. Relations of the two kinds VII. Diagram
I. Enlargement of the diagram II. Greater and lesser good III. Higher and lower good IV. Order and wealth V. Satisfaction of desire VI. Adaptation to environment VII. Definitions
I. The four factors of personal goodness II. Unconsciousness III. Reflex action IV. Conscious experience V. Self-consciousness VI. Its degrees VII. Its acquisition VIII. Its instability
I. Consciousness a factor II. (A) The intention III. (1) The end, aim, or ideal IV. (2) Desire V. (3) Decision VI. (B) The volition VII. (1) Deliberation VIII. (2) Effort IX. (3) Satisfaction
I. Reflex influence of self-direction II. Varieties of change III. Accidental change IV. Destructive change V. Transforming change VI. Development VII. Self-development VIII. Method of self-development IX. Test of self-development X. Actual extent of personality XI. Possible extent of personality XII. Practical consequences