Excerpt from The Hibbert Journal, Vol. 14: A Quarterly Review of Religion, Theology, and Philosophy; October, 1915-July, 1916 There is a well-known passage in the writings of the late William J ames1 in which, after severely criticising the con ception of the Absolute, he yet allows that it has one useful office - that, namely, of providing a moral holiday. He does not mean by this, however, that the Absolute discharges ordinary men and women, even for a time, from the Obliga tion of doing their duty. The people for whom ...
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Excerpt from The Hibbert Journal, Vol. 14: A Quarterly Review of Religion, Theology, and Philosophy; October, 1915-July, 1916 There is a well-known passage in the writings of the late William J ames1 in which, after severely criticising the con ception of the Absolute, he yet allows that it has one useful office - that, namely, of providing a moral holiday. He does not mean by this, however, that the Absolute discharges ordinary men and women, even for a time, from the Obliga tion of doing their duty. The people for whom the holiday is provided are moral philosophers. On them falls the burden of finding a theoretical ground for the distinction between right and wrong; and it is from this burden, and the sore travail it involves, that the conception of the Absolute gives the philo'sophic mind a temporary respite. According to James, by postulating the Absolute you abolish the distinc tion between right and wrong, and are, in consequence, relieved for the time being of the worry of having to find and hold the grounds on which the distinction rests. That is the holiday you now enjoy - a purely theoretical affair; but, like most holidays, it is Of brief duration and may be rudely interrupted at any moment by the occurrence of a concrete moral question. None the less it will have done you good. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at ... 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.
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