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Moral Science; a Compendium of Ethics by Alexander Bain
page 30 of 484 (06%)
in our own power; and the grand mistake of the Stoics was their
viewing all good and evil whatever in the same light.

It is an essential part of human liberty, to permit each person to
form and to indulge these sentiments or caprices; although a good
education should control them with a view to our happiness on the
whole. But, when any individual liking or fancy of this description is
imposed as a law upon the entire community, it is a perversion and
abuse of power, a confounding of the Ethical end by foreign
admixtures. Thus, to enjoin authoritatively one mode of sepulture,
punishing all deviations from that, could have nothing to do with the
preservation of the order of society. In such a matter, the
interference of the state in modern times, has regard to the detection
of crime in the matter of life and death, and to the evils arising
from the putrescence of the dead.

6. The Ethical End, although properly confined to Utility, is subject
to still farther limitations, according to the view taken of the
Province of Moral Government, or Authority.

Although nothing should be made morally obligatory but what is
generally useful, the converse does not hold; many kinds of conduct
are generally useful, but not morally obligatory. A certain amount of
bodily exercise in the open air every day would be generally useful;
but neither the law of the land nor public opinion compels it. Good
roads are works of great utility; it is not every one's duty to make
them.

The machinery of coercion is not brought to bear upon every
conceivable utility. It is principally reserved, when not abused, for
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