Chapter I: Preface

These pages represent an attempt to exhibit a scientific conception of morality in a popular form, and with a view to practical applications rather than the discussion of theoretical difficulties. For this purpose it has been necessary to study brevity and avoid controversy. Hence, I have made few references to other authors, and I have almost altogether dispensed with foot-notes. But, though I have attempted to state rather than to defend my views, I believe that they are, in the main, those which, making exception for a few back eddies in the stream of modern thought, are winning their way to general acceptance among the more instructed and reflective men of our day.

It is necessary that I should state that this Essay is independent of a much larger work, entitled the 'Principles of Morals,' on which I was, some years ago, engaged with my predecessor, the late Professor Wilson. Owing to the declining state of his health during the latter years of his life, that work was, at the time of his death, left in a condition which rendered its completion very difficult and its publication probably undesirable. For the present work I am solely responsible, though no one can have been brought into close contact with so powerful a mind as that of Professor Wilson, without deriving from it much stimulus and retaining many traces of its influence.

It has long been my belief that the questions of theoretical Ethics would be far less open to dispute, as well as far more intelligible, if they were considered with more direct reference to practice. This little book will, I trust, furnish an example, however slight and imperfect, of such a mode of treatment.

C.C.C.

_July_ 25, 1884.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

Introduction. The Sanctions of Conduct.

CHAPTER II.

The Moral Sanction or Moral Sentiment. Its Functions and the Justification of its claims to Superiority.

CHAPTER III.

Analysis and Formation of the Moral Sentiment. Its Education and Improvement.

CHAPTER IV.

The Moral Test and its Justification.

CHAPTER V.

Examples of the Practical Application of the Moral Test to existing Morality.

PROGRESSIVE MORALITY.

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