PREFACE.

BEING somewhat at variance with precedent, the tone and mode of treatment occasionally adopted in the following pages will, perhaps, provoke criticism. Whether, in thus innovating upon established usage, the writer has acted judiciously or otherwise, the event must determine. He has not, however, transgressed without adequate motive; having done so under the belief that, as it is the purpose of a book to influence conduct, the best way of writing a book must be the way best fitted to effect this purpose.

Should exception be taken to the manifestations of feeling now and then met with, as out of place in a treatise having so scientific a title; it is replied that, in their present phase of progress, men are but little swayed by purely intellectual considerations-that to be operative, these must be enforced by direct or implied appeals to the sentiments-and that, provided such appeals are not in place of, but merely supplementary to, the deductions of logic, no well-grounded objection can be made to them. The reader will find that the several conclusions submitted to him are primarily based on entirely impersonal reasoning, by which alone they may be judged; and if, for the sake of commending these conclusions to the many, the sympathies have been indirectly addressed, the general argument cannot have been thereby weakened, if it has not been strengthened.

Possibly the relaxations of style in some cases used, will be censured, as beneath the gravity of the subject. In defence of them it may be urged, that the measured movement which custom prescribes for philosophical works, is productive of a monotony extremely repulsive to the generality of readers. That no counterbalancing advantages are obtained, the writer does not assert. But, for his own part, he has preferred to sacrifice somewhat of conventional dignity, in the hope of rendering his theme interesting to a larger number.

LONDON, December, 1850.

CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION.

The Doctrine of Expediency

The Doctrine of the Moral Sense

Lemma I.

Lemma II.

PART I.

CHAP. I. Definition of Morality

II. The Evanescence of Evil

III. The Divine Idea; and the Conditions of its Realization

PART II.

IV. Derivation of a First Principle

V. Secondary Derivation of a First Principle

VI. First Principle

VII. Application of this First Principle

VIII. The Rights of Life and Personal Liberty

IX. The Right to the Use of the Earth

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