History as past ethics; an introduction to the history of morals
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF MORALS
PHILIP VAN NESS MYERS
Formerly Professor of History and Political Economy in the University of Cincinnati. Author of “Ancient History,” “Mediæval and Modern History,” and “A General History”
GINN AND COMPANY
BOSTON · NEW YORK · CHICAGO · LONDON ATLANTA · DALLAS · COLUMBUS · SAN FRANCISCO
COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY PHILIP VAN NESS MYERS
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 526.2
The Athenæum Press GINN AND COMPANY · PROPRIETORS · BOSTON · U.S.A.
TO I. C. M.
My conviction gains infinitely the moment another soul will believe in it.—Novalis
This work completes the series of historical textbooks which I began more than thirty years ago. It is an expansion of a course of lectures given for several years to my advanced classes in history, and is designed as a brief introduction to the history of morals. In treating the science of morals as a branch of history my thought is, without trenching in the least upon the domain of the philosophy of morals, to make the work of the department of history more helpfully introductory than it has hitherto been to that of the department of moral philosophy. The book is the outgrowth of a conviction that the philosophy of ethics, if it shall become a stimulus and guide to social service and humanitarian effort,—especially if it shall bring reënforcement to that ethical idealism which so largely motives the present-day movement for world peace,—must be based on a knowledge of the facts of the moral life of the race in all the various stages of the historic evolution, and that to gather and systematize these facts is a part of the task of the historian, indeed the most important part of his task. It is my hope that teachers of both history and ethics may find the book helpful, whether made the basis of classroom discussion or of lecture comment.
P. V. N. M.
P. V. N. Myers
HISTORY AS PAST ETHICS
PREFACE
CONTENTS
HISTORY AS PAST ETHICS
I. Institutions, Ideas, and Conditions of Life determining the Rules of Conduct
II. Essential Facts of Kinship or Intratribal Morality
III. The Beginnings of Intertribal Morality
I. Circumstances and Ideas which molded and motived Morality
II. The Ideal
I. Ideas, Institutions, and Historical Circumstances determining the Cast of the Moral Ideal
II. The Ideal
III. Effects of the Ideal upon Chinese Life and History
I. Formative and Modifying Influences
II. The Ideal
III. Some Significant Facts in the Moral History of Japan
II. The Various Moral Standards
II. The Ideal
III. Some Expressions of the Ethical Spirit of Buddhism
I. Philosophical and Religious Ideas which created the Ethical Type
II. The Ideal
III. The Practice
I. The Religious Basis of Hebrew Morality
II. The Evolution of the Moral Ideal
I. Institutions and Ideas determining the Moral Type
II. The Ideal
III. Limitations and Defects of the Ideal
IV. The Moral Evolution
I. Institutions and Conditions of Life Determining the Early Moral Type
II. The Primitive Moral Type
III. The Moral Evolution under the Republic
IV. The Moral Evolution under the Pagan Empire
I. Religious Ideas and Theological Dogmas molding the Ideal
II. The Moral Ideal
I. Conceptions of Life and Historical Circumstances that produced the Ascetic Ideal
II. The Ideal and its Chief Types
III. The Chief Moral Facts of the Period
I. Religious Basis of the Moral System
II. The Moral Code
III. The Moral Life
I. The Church consecrates the Martial Ideal of Knighthood
II. The Composite Ideal of Knighthood
III. The Chief Moral Phenomena of the Period
I. Determining Influences
II. Some Essential Facts in the Moral History of the Age
I. Principles of the Reformation of Ethical Import
II. Some Important Moral Outcomes of the Sixteenth-Century Religious Reform
I. Forces determining the Trend of the Ethical Movement
II. Expressions of the New Moral Consciousness in Different Domains of Life and Thought
FOOTNOTES
INDEX
Transcriber’s Notes
