Practice and Principle

It is very easy to form simple principles about the state of the world. It is even easier to form simple principles about morality, and so define a method of action. Principles often seem very good. For instance, it appears that a person ought to speak the truth, and that to lie would be against principle. Many of these ideas may be collected, and a procedure for acting will follow.

However, it sometimes occurs that there is a case where following a principle seems harmful. The practical proceeding of nature might not lend itself to confinement by a simple maxim. When this happens, there occurs the conflict between practical action, and principled action. Eventually, one must be superior.

If it were that sometimes principled action were a superior judge to practical action, and other times reversed, it would mean that each case would be determining the method of action, and so if the chosen course heeded any reasoning, it would in every case heed the practical reasoning.

Thus, if principle is a superior judge to practice in every case, it is so in all cases, for if not it would be superior in no case. Likewise, if practice is superior in any one case, it is superior in all cases.

Principles must have a basis on which they are formed. If it occurs that there is a conflict between the principled action and practical reasoning, it must be that the principle in question is not based in the world in which it now applies, for, if not, such a world would contradict itself.

Such a principle not applied in its own world is not a principle at all, for it does not relate to the choice of action in question, and but rather to something analogous in its own world. In such cases, it is the practical reason that defines action in this world. Practical reasoning is therefore superior to any principle in all cases in which the two would come in conflict.