The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Basis of Morality, by Annie Besant

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Title: The Basis of Morality

Author: Annie Besant

Release Date: April 4, 2005 [EBook #15545]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE BASIS OF MORALITY

BY

ANNIE BESANT

AUTHOR OF

_Mysticism, The Immediate Future,
Initiation: The Perfecting of Man,
Superhuman Men, etc. etc._

THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING HOUSE
ADYAR, MADRAS, INDIA
1915

* * * * *

CONTENTS

I. REVELATION
II. INTUITION
III. UTILITY
IV. EVOLUTION
V. MYSTICISM

* * * * *

I

REVELATION

Must religion and morals go together? Can one be taught without the
other? It is a practical question for educationists, and France tried
to answer it in the dreariest little cut and dry kind of catechism ever
given to boys to make them long to be wicked. But apart from education,
the question of the bedrock on which morals rest, the foundation on
which a moral edifice can be built that will stand secure against the
storms of life--that is a question of perennial interest, and it must
be answered by each of us, if we would have a test of Right and Wrong,
would know why Right is Right, why Wrong is Wrong.

Religions based on Revelation find in Revelation their basis for
morality, and for them that is Right which the Giver of the Revelation
commands, and that is Wrong which He forbids. Right is Right because
God, or a [R.][s.]hi or a Prophet, commands it, and Right rests on the
Will of a Lawgiver, authoritatively revealed in a Scripture.

Now all Revelation has two great disadvantages as a basis for morality.
It is fixed, and therefore unprogressive; while man evolves, and at a
later stage of his growth, the morality taught in the Revelation becomes
archaic and unsuitable. A writt