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Nihil Obstat:JOSEPHUS KEATING, S.J.Censor deputatus
Imprimi potest:JOANNES H. WRIGHT, S.J.Præp. Prov. Angliæ
Nihil Obstat:C. SCHUT, D.D.Censor deputatus
Imprimatur:EDM. CAN. SURMONTVie. Gen.
For fifteen years this Manual has enjoyed all the popularity that itsauthor could desire. With that popularity the author is the lastperson to wish to interfere. Therefore, not to throw previous copiesout of use, this edition makes no alteration either in the paginationor the text already printed. At the same time the author might well beargued to have lapsed into strange supineness and indifference tomoral science, if in fifteen years he had learnt nothing new, andfound nothing in his work which he wished to improve. Whoever will beat the expense of purchasing my Political and Moral Essays(Benziger, 1902, 6s.) will find in the first essay on the Origin andExtent of Civil Authority an advantageous substitute for the chapteron the State in this work. The essay is a dissertation written for thedegree of B. Sc. in the University of Oxford; and represents, I hope,tolerably well the best contemporary teaching on the subject.
If the present work had to be rewritten, I should make a tripledivision of Moral Philosophy, into Ethics, Deontology (the science of[Greek: to deon], i.e., of what ought to be done), and Natural Law.For if "the principal business of Ethics is to determine what moralobligation is" (p. 2), then the classical work on the subject, theNicomachean Ethics of Aristotle, is as the play of Hamlet with thecharacter of Hamlet left out: for in that work there is no analysis ofmoral obligation, no attempt to "fix the comprehension of the idea Iought" (ib.). The system there exposed is a system of Eudaemonism,not of Deontology. It is not a treatise on Duty, but on Happiness: ittells us what Happiness, or rational well-being, is, and what conductis conducive to rational well-being. It may be found convenient tofollow Aristotle, and avow that the business of Ethics is not Duty,not Obligation, not Law, not Sanction, but Happiness. That fierylittle word ought goes unexplained in Ethics, except in anhypothetical sense, that a man ought to do this, and avoid that,if he means to be a happy man: cf. p. 115. Any man who declares thathe does not care about ethical or rational happiness, stands to Ethicsas that man stands to Music who "hath no ear for concord of sweetsounds."
All that Ethics or Music can do for such a Philistine is to "send himaway to another city, pouring ointment on his head, and crowning himwith wool," as Plato would dismiss the tragedian (Republic III.398). The author of the Magna Moralia well says (I. i. 13): "Noscience or faculty ever argues the goodness of the end which itproposes to itself: it belongs to some other faculty to consider that.Neither the physician says that health is a good thing, nor thebuilder that a house is a good thing: but the one announces that heproduces health and how he produces it, and the builder in like mannera house." The professor of Ethics indeed, from the very nature of hissubject-matter, says in pointing out happiness that it is the rationalsovereign good of man: but to any