“Conformity to nature has no connection whatever with right and wrong. The idea can never be fitly introduced into ethical discussions at all, except, occasionally and partially, into the question of degrees of culpability. To illustrate this point, let us consider the phrase by which the greatest intensity of condemnatory feeling is conveyed in connection with the idea of nature - the word "unnatural."”

— John Stuart Mill

That a thing is unnatural, in any precise meaning which can be attached to the word, is no argument for its being blamable; since the most criminal actions are to a being like man not more unnatural than most of the virtues.
Source: On Nature (1874), p. 102

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Conformity to nature has no connection whatever with right and wrong. The idea can never be fitly introduced into ethic…" by John Stuart Mill?

John Stuart Mill179

British philosopher and political economist 1806–1873

Related quotes

“Wherever ideas come together they tend to weld into general ideas; and whenever they are generally connected, general ideas govern the connection; and these general ideas are living feelings spread out.”

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist

The Law of Mind (1892)

“An unjust composition never fails to contain error and falsehood. Therefore an unjust connection of ideas is not derived from nature, but from the imperfect composition of man.”

Ethan Allen (1738–1789) American general

Source: Reason: The Only Oracle Of Man (1784), Ch. XIII Section II - Of The Importance of the Exercise of Reason, and Practice of Morality, in order to the Happiness of Mankind
Context: An unjust composition never fails to contain error and falsehood. Therefore an unjust connection of ideas is not derived from nature, but from the imperfect composition of man. Misconnection of ideas is the same as misjudging, and has no positive existence, being merely a creature of the imagination; but nature and truth are real and uniform; and the rational mind by reasoning, discerns the uniformity, and is thereby enabled to make a just composition of ideas, which will stand the test of truth. But the fantastical illuminations of the credulous and superstitious part of mankind, proceed from weakness, and as far as they take place in the world subvert the religion of REASON, NATURE and TRUTH.

“Pictures are the idea in visual or pictorial form; and the idea has to be legible, both in the individual picture and in the collective context – which presupposes, of course, that words are used to convey information about the idea and the context. However, none of this means that pictures function as illustrations of an idea: ultimately, they are the idea. Nor is the verbal formulation of the idea a translation of the visual: it simply bears a certain resemblance to the meaning of the idea. It is an interpretation, literally a reflection.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

Quote from Richter's letter to Jean-Christophe Ammann, February 1973; as cited on collected quotes on the website of Gerhard Richter: 'on Other subjects' https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/quotes/other-aspects-6 <br class="br">1970's

“Since sounds have no natural connection with our ideas … the doubtfulness and uncertainty of their signification … has its cause more in the ideas they stand for than in any incapacity there is in one sound more than another to signify any idea.”

John Locke book An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Book III, Ch. 9, sec. 4
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689)

“The Platonic doctrine of Ideas has been, in all ages, the derision of the vulgar, and the admiration of the wife. Indeed, if we consider that ideas are the most sublime objects of speculation, and that their nature is no less bright in itself, than difficult to investigate, this opposition in the conduct of mankind will be natural and necessary; for, from our connection with a material nature, our intellectual eye, previous to the irradiations of science, is as ill adapted to objects the most splendid of all, "as the eyes of bats to the light of day."”

Proclus (412–485) Greek philosopher

"A Dissertation on the Doctrine of Ideas, &c." Footnote: see second book of Aristotle's Metaphysics.
The Philosophical and Mathematical Commentaries of Proclus on the First Book of Euclid's Elements Vol. 1 (1788)

“Growing has no connection with audience.
Audience has no connection with identity.
Identity has no connection with a universe.
A universe has no connection with human nature.”

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays

The Geographical History of America (1936)

“Destiny connects us all like a thread and that’s how people meet.
Sadness, bliss, separation and reunion are nothing but a natural phenomenon.
As for those uncontrollable, we can only let nature take its course.”

Deng Feng-Zhou (1949) Chinese poet, Local history writer, Taoist Neidan academics and Environmentalist.

(zh-TW) 勢運天成一線牽，人生際遇係因緣；
悲歡散合平常待，事起非能任自旋。

"Destiny" (隨緣)

Source: Deng Feng-Zhou, "Deng Feng-Zhou Classical Chinese Poetry Anthology". Volume 6, Tainan, 2018: 86.

“A possible explanation of the physicist's use of mathematics to formulate his laws of nature is that he is a somewhat irresponsible person. As a result, when he finds a connection between two quantities which resembles a connection well-known from mathematics, he will jump at the conclusion that the connection is that discussed in mathematics simply because he does not know of any other similar connection.”

Eugene Paul Wigner The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences

"The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences," Communications in Pure and Applied Mathematics, February 1960.

“Ideas never lack for words. It is words that lack ideas. As soon as the idea has come to its last degree of perfection, the word blossoms; or, if you like, it blossoms from the word that presents it and clothes it.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist

“Taste is the intermediate faculty which connects the active with the passive powers of our nature, the intellect with the senses; and its appointed function is to elevate the images of the latter, while it realizes the ideas of the former.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

On the Principles of Genial Criticism (1814)

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

John Stuart Mill179

Related quotes

Related topics