Treatise on right and wrong

New York: A. A. Knopf, 1934. First Edition. Hardcover. Good+/Good. Navy blue cloth boards with lovely gilt titling and decoration on the spine and author's initials blindstamped on front. Binding is sound. Interior is unmarked. Yellow upper page edges. Untrimmed pages. Unpriceclipped dustjacket. 8vo. 5.75 x 8 inches. Our photos depict actual book offered for sale. Books are carefully packaged by hand and shipped from our family-owned bookshop in Easton, Pennsylvania, USA. BOOK INFO: See photos for Table of Contents, which include: The Nature and Origin of Morality, Its Evolution, Its Variety, Its Christian Form, Its State Today. 'This book is a sort of companion volume to my 'Treatise on the gods.'... In particular, I have given rather more attention than is usual to the moral ideas and practices of so-called uncivilized peoples, for there is instruction in them, and only too often they are passed over loftily. Naturally enough, civilized men have got much further in their moral speculations than savages, but it is a mistake to think that savages have neglected the subject, or that the problems before them are too elemental to be worth attention, either relatively or absolutely. Most treatises on ethics give a great deal of space to attempts to define such concepts as right and wrong, good and evil, moral and immoral, sin and virtue. I avoid that labor because it appears to me to be useless and turn for support to Matthew Arnold, who says in 'Literature and Dogma': 'Conduct is really, however men may overlay it with philosophical disquisitions, the simplest thing in the world. That is to say, it is the simplest thing in the world as far as understanding is concerned; as regards doing it is the hardest thing in the world'. Here we are concerned with understanding rather than with doing, and I assume that the definitions of the aforesaid terms cherished by my readers will be sufficiently close to my own to enable them to follow me.' (-from the Preface). Includes bibliographical note and subject index. viii p., 2 l., 331, xix, [1] p. 22 cm.