Social morality :

Front matter

arV1791 Soelal merali

Cornell University Library

I olin,anx

Preface

connects it with his human life, and not with the narrow, selfish tendencies in him, which are inhuman ? May not Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius have perceived something much higher than the word Stoicism can express — an actual governing principle for the life, not a congeries of opinions to be maintained against all challengers ? May not the Humanity which the Comtist dreams of be much more to him than all his Positivism, than all the volumes which set it forth ? Believing that the true centre of Humanity is He whom all Christian teachers and Societies have professed to acknowledge, I must feel their delinquencies more than those of other men, in so far as they have fallen into Inhumanity. In the object of their belief I find the reconciliation of the principles which have been discovered to all the seekers after some maxim for their guidance and the guidance of mankind.

I do not pretend that I have given an example in this volume of the method which I perceive to be the right one. But I have aimed at it and so have been prevented from adopting the classification of opinions which Mr Lecky deems satisfactory. I cannot regard the Utilitarian merely or chiefly as the antagonist of

PREFACE. XI

'independent Morality.' He may often speak as if lie were so ; the younger champions of the Sect whose main desire is to trample out every behef which existed in the world before Bentham was born into it, may gladly accept this negative representation of their office. But older defenders of Utility, to whom years have brought the philosophic mind — the philosophic mind being I suppose the equitable one — would perhaps be more ready to die for the conviction which they embraced in their childhood than their more passionate allies, because they entertain it as a conviction and because they have learnt to reverence the convictions of their neighbours as well as their own. If I had no youthful recollections which gave me a regard and affection for some of these I should feel simply as a student that I was bound to recognize their contribution as well as that of ' the independent Moralist ' to Moral Science and Moral Practice.

The watchword 'independent Morality,' though I recognize its worth, and accept it as an heirloom from Dr Whewell, I could never inscribe on my banner. It must always be an awkward one for a writer on Social MoraHty. His subject must continually remind him of dependencies. According to me it begins from

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fixed relations ; we only learn by degrees in what sense and under wliat great limitations independence is possible. I appreciate tbe importance of tbe stage in our existence wben this word acquires significance. But I cannot separate it from the obligations to the Nation or from the affections of the Family out of which the Nation is developed. A thoroughly independent Moralist would I conceive be most immoralw

I should be very ungrateful if I did not confess how much I owe to Sir H. Maine's work on Ancient Law — ^not exactly for suggesting to me the method of this book, but for assuring me that in adopting it I should not depart from the most considerate judgment of men aiming at different objects from mine, and possessing a much wider culture. I can scarcely express how great is my delight that an eminent lawyer should find himself obliged simply by his legal studies to abandon the atomic theory of Society and to accept the fact of Family Existence as its starting-point. I am bound to acquit Sir H. Maine of all responsibility for the consequences which I have deduced from his doctrine; I am equally bound to say how much he has taught me by his own inferences from it.

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I ouglit to explain some omissions wMch would seem to Mx Lecky very flagrant in the rapid survey of the Moralists from Hobbes to Kant contained in my eighteenth Lecture. He "will ask how such names as Hutcheson, Hartley or Reid can have dropped out of the Hst ? Certainly from no disrespect to them or to Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Condillac, Clarke, Butler, of whom also I have said nothing. I deliberately meant to omit aU who could be represented either (1) as in any sense theologians, (2) as chiefly psychologists or physiologists. One of these last titles would certainly be given to Hutcheson, Hartley, Reid; their doctrines may have affected Morality, but they are not primarily Social Moralists. Hume earned the name — ^whatever others may be due to him — when he enunciated his doctrine of Utility. As I intended only to select the most characteristic assertor of each maxim, I should not have spoken of him as weU as Bentham if I had not desired to shew how essentially dif-^ ferent two opinions may be which a common epithet has confounded. Mr Lecky has also noticed this difference, but he has intimated a preference for the Scotch Sage with which I cannot sympathise. In accordance with the rule

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which I laid down for myself I have alluded only to Locke as a writer on Government and Toleration ; only to Kant's Ethical dogma. To connect Morality with Politics and with all social relations has been my wish throughout ; I hope that I may hereafter explain where I discover the link between it and Psychology. I should have made my purpose unintelligible if I had entered upon that question in these Lectures.

In an Inaugural Lecture — delivered three years ago at Cambridge — I intimated an intention of deHvering separate courses of Lectures on Casuistry, Moral Philosophy, and Moral Theology. In that design I have persevered to this extent ; I have treated of the Conscience which I take to be the subject of Casuistry in one set of Lectures, of Social Morality in the present. But Moral Theology has intruded itself into both ; the effort to make that a distinct subject I have found impracticable. It must be so for any one who discovers beneath the Conscience which testifies of our personal existence, beneath alL the order of human Society, a divine foundation*.

* I have been asked by some who attended my Lectures at Cambridge, as well as by friends elsewhere, to state distinctly

PREFACE. XV whether I accept the account of my opinions and objects which was given a week or two ago in a very popular journal, the PM Mall Gazette. I am sure that if the author of that highly flattering criticism does me the honour to glance at the titles of these Lectures — I cannot ask him to take the trouble of reading any one of them — he will perceive that he is boimd to denounce me as the most immoral of all writers on Morality, supposing his estimate of me to be the true one. He affirms that I have rendered into a theological dialect the conceptions of humanity which prevail in our age. I have affirmed that those conceptions of humanity when separated from the old foundation, which is simply, broadly, satisfactorily announced in the formularies that are repeated by children and peasants in all parts of Christendom, are narrow, impractical, inhuman. If I am secretly undermining the doctrine which I appear to assert, I hope there is honesty enongh in each of my hearers — honesty enough in the critic who has bestowed on me such kindly patronage — to say with the old Homeric hero, 'I hate as the gates of Hell the man who says one thing with his lips and hides another in his heart.'

Cambridge,