all the graces of style. Still he would hope that the searcher after truth, who, like himself, has felt the want of fixed principles in Ethical Philosophy, will forgive the imperfections of the manner, and find something to interest him in the matter of the following pages. Physical science has made rapid strides, and knowledge has secured for us, to a vast extent, a dominion over earth, sea, and air. But the science of man, which alone can make this power available to the increase of happiness, has been in a corresponding degree neglected, and held to be of less importance than the arts and manufactures, which tend only to the increase of wealth. The knowledge that men have of their own minds, is ordinarily considered to furnish sufficient insight into human nature, without the aid of Mental Philosophy; and in Moral and Social Science, the opinions to which they are born, or to which some antiquated Professor of a College was born a century back, constitute to every individual a standard of truth. The consequence has been that generally recognized principles upon which to base measures to promote the happiness of mankind, have hitherto been wanting; the efforts to that end have been almost universally empirical in their character, or what the age calls practical; and we have much talk of "public morals" and of the "defence of the public morals," against men who have spent their lives in teaching what shall best conduce to the public virtue and happiness. Hence there is no subject on which such various and conflicting opinions exist as upon that of the present inquiry; every one feels rather than reasons, and all the great questions that have reference to the well-being of the race, are considered so purely controversial, as to be inadmissible into British Associations, Mechanics' and Philosophical Institutions, and all other societies devoted to the moral and intellectual culture of the people. The writer is induced to lay his own reflections on the subject before the public, in the hope that the result of that labour which was necessary to satisfy his own mind, may be, in some small degree, a saving of labour to others; and that if the conclusions at which he has arrived do not carry conviction to other minds, they may, at least, stimulate to inquiry in the most interesting and important department of knowledge. It may not be without its use to make brief mention of the steps by which these conclusions were forced upon him; and this consideration will, perhaps, be an excuse for the egotism of the following remarks. Many years ago the writer felt altogether unable to satisfy his mind with the prevailing systems, either of Metaphysics or Morality, as based upon the popular Theology. The more he reflected the more he became convinced that the nature of man, and the object and aim of his existence were misunderstood; that the ways of Providence were misinterpreted, and that the foundations of morality were laid upon the sand, being based upon the supposition that man is capable of acting contrary to the particular constitution with which his Creator has endowed him, and independently of the circumstances in which he is placed. The perusal of Edwards's "Inquiry into Freedom of Will," and the conviction that the doctrine of Philosophical Necessity is there demonstrated, and that, therefore, every system built upon an opposite principle, by whatever authority supported, cannot be true, first led him to the investigation of opinions which he had been brought up to consider as established. The most uncomfortable of all states,-a state of doubt and unbelief,-followed: for consciousness of error is not the same as the discovery of truth. The "Deontology" of Bentham, presented the first land-mark to direct his course. It soon became evident to him that the laws of the moral world are, through the instrumentality of pleasure and pain, and of the definite constitution given to man by his Maker, as fixed and determinable as the laws of the physical world. Holding fast by the doctrine of Phy losophical Necessity, he gradually formed a system which, at least, satisfied his own mind, and which he feared was a creed peculiar to himself; and it was not until after the chief portion of the first and second parts of this work was written, that he discovered that Philosophical Necessity constituted the groundwork of the ethical creed of a numerous party in this country. The writings of this party first turned his thoughts to the subject of Part the 3d; that is, to the measures by which the Greatest Happiness principle, or the Moral Law, may be best carried into practice; but although he perceived that many had come to similar conclusions on most of these points, viewed separately, yet he felt that such truths were isolated and still required to be thrown into one connected system. This he has attempted to do for himself, and so far as he is able, for other minds experiencing a similar want. In some cases where great and important principles may appear to be dismissed in too summary a manner, it must be attributed to the persuasion that the works of those who have amply elucidated these points are familiar to all interested in the subject. For the confirmation of what have been given as facts in Mental Science established by Phrenology, he must refer to the works of Phrenologists, and experience must decide as to the truth of those opinions in the analysis of the mental faculties in which he has ventured to differ from them. With respect to the frequent use of long quotations, the object of the Author being, solely, the elucidation of truth, he has thought it better, whenever his views could be as well or better expressed in the words of writers more known to the public than himself, to give them in preference to his own; as he conceives that the cause of truth will be better served by that course than by a greater assumption of originality. The writer has only to add that the views which he has attempted to set forth in the following pages, have brought much consolation and satisfaction to his own mind, in affording him something definite to believe on subjects which at first sight seem despairingly mysterious and unfathomable; in expanding and clearing his views of Providence; in making known God in the character of the Universal Father-revealing Himself in a language that cannot be misunderstood or misinterpreted, to every sect and every clime; and it will be one of his greatest sources of happiness if they afford grounds of equal hope and trust to any of his fellow-creatures. Rosehill, near Coventry, |