PROFESSOR IN CHICAGO THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY; LATELY PROFESSOR OF BOSTON: GOULD AND LINCOLN, 59 WASHINGTON STREET. NEW YORK: SHELDON AND COMPANY. アマ -3 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1859, by GOULD AND LINCOLN, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the District of Massachusetts. ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED BY W. F. DRAPER, ANDOVER, MASS. PREFACE. 心して THE present volume is the result of the author's studies while Professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy in Amherst College, and was originally prepared as a course of lectures to the senior class in that Institution. It was intended as a sequel to the author's treatise on Mental Philosophy. The favorable reception of that work by the public has induced him to give this also to the press, with the hope that it may be of service to the cause of Education. Few departments of science have so rich a literature as Moral Philosophy. And yet, by general concession, there are few good text-books of the science. Of the treatises now most generally in use in our schools and colleges, some appear deficient in thorough scientific discussion of the principles and true theory of morals; others, again, in practical detail. In some of them, under the title of Moral Philosophy, topics are discussed which more properly pertain to Psychology, as, for example, the phenomenon of Conscience, and the problems of the Will, while the history of ethical opinion one of the widest and richest fields of investigation has almost universally been overlooked. It has been the aim of the author to give, as far as possible, a science of morals, and not merely a treatise on moral subjects. With a view to this, the principles which lie at the foundation of the science are first discussed, as concisely as may be, in the opening division of the work; and in the subsequent division these principles are considered in their application to the practical duties and relations of life. Of the several classes of duties, that class which pertains to the state or Political Ethics-has received in these pages a fuller discussion than is usually given in works of this kind; yet not fuller, perhaps, than its relative importance demands. It has seemed to the author that the youth of a free country should be carefully instructed in the first principles of civil government, and in the rights and obligations of the citizen. It is the proper province of Moral Philosophy, which treats of the various duties of life, to do this. Yet, strange as it may seem, no branch of moral science has probably received less attention, in this country, than Political Ethics. J. H. CHICAGO, AUGUST 1859 |