Responsibility in mental disease / by Henry Maudsley.

  • Henry Maudsley
Date:
1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Responsibility in mental disease / by Henry Maudsley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    345/364 (page 327)
    but an advantage to an individual to have such a knowledge of the reign of moral law in the domain of human evolution as an inductive method of study will impart to his understanding. It would simplify discussions on education if the truth were distinctly apprehended that morality is not dependent for its existence upon religion, and that men are not dependent only upon revelation for their knowledge of it. Let them realise that nature works through moral laws, as clearly as they realise her operation through physical laws, and they will have as strong a sense or feeling of the folly of dis- obeying the former as they now have of the folly of disobeying the latter. The result must be that morality will obtain as strong a sanction from an inductive method of study as it now has, and has happily long had, from authority, and that an in- creased knowledge will confer an increased feeling of duty and an increased power to perform it. It is difficult to realise the reign of law in our relations with human nature ; for we are unable to look at the matter calmly and objectively as we can in our investigations of physical nature; our sympathies and antipathies as beings of the same kind are necessarily stirred; and we unavoidably mingle our feelings with our apprehensions and conceptions. There will always be therefore a feeling of approbation of right and of disappro- bation of wrong action superadded to the intellec- tual recognition of moral law, such as does not accompany a like obedience to or infraction of