Part of: The Principles of Ethics, 2 vols. (1879) (LF ed.) The Principles of Ethics, vol. 2 (LF ed.)
- Herbert Spencer (author)
- Tibor R. Machan (introduction)
Spencer considered The Principles of Ethics to be his finest work. In the second volume he covers the ethics of social life (or justice), negative beneficence, positive beneficence, and a number of topics in several appendices (such as Kant’s theory of rights, land ownership, and animal rights). In the large section on “Justice” he discusses property rights, free exchange, free speech, the rights of women and children, and the nature of the state.
Key Quotes
Food & Drink
Over the dinner table, or in groups of persons otherwise held together, there frequently occur cases in which an erroneous statement is made or an invalid argument urged. One who recognizes the error may either display his superior knowledge or superior logic, or he may let the error pass in…
Sport and Liberty
A nature which generates international hatreds and intense desires for revenge–which breeds duelists and a contempt for those who do not seek to wipe out a slight by a death, is not a nature out of which harmonious communities can be molded. Men who rush in crowds to witness the brutalities of…
Parties & Elections
… the acquirement of so-called political rights is by no means equivalent to the acquirement of rights properly so-called. The one is but an instrumentality for the obtainment and maintenance of the other; and it may or may not be used to achieve those ends. The essential question is–How are…
Economics
Which is the more misleading, belief without evidence, or refusal to believe in presence of overwhelming evidence? If there is an irrational faith which persists without any facts to support it, there is an irrational lack of faith which persists spite of the accumulation of facts which should…