Moral Philosophy | Page 4

Appendix. See P.M.E._ pp.
185-9: _Fowler's Progressive Morality, or Fowler and Wilson's
Principles of Morals_, pp. 227-248.
p. 181, 1. ii from top. Add, _This is "the law of our nature, that function
is primary, and pleasure only attendant" (Stewart, Notes on
Nicomathean Ethics,_ II. 418).

p. 218, lines 13-16 from top, cancel the sentence, _To this query_, etc.,
and substitute: _The reply is, that God is never willing that man should
do an inordinate act; but suicide is an inordinate act, as has been shown;
capital punishment is not _(c. viii. s. viii. n. 7, p. 349).
p. 237. For _The Month for March,_ 1883, read _P.M.E._, pp. 215-233.
p. 251. To the Reading add P.M.E., pp. 267-283.
p. 297, l.6 from foot. After simply evil add: _Hobbes allows that human
reason lays down certain good rules, "laws of nature" which however it
cannot get kept_. For Hobbes and Rousseau see further _P.M.E_., pp.
81-90.
p. 319, middle. Cancel the words: _but the sum total of civil power is a
constant quantity, the same for all States_.
pp. 322-3. Cancel §. 7 for reasons alleged in _P.M.E_., pp. 50-72.
Substitute: _States are living organizations and grow, and their powers
vary with the stage of their development_.
p. 323, § 8. For _This seems at variance with_, read This brings us to
consider.
p. 338. To the Readings add _P.M.E_., pp. 102-113.
p. 347, middle. Cancel from one of these prerogatives to the end of the
sentence. Substitute: _of every polity even in the most infantine
condition._
* * * * *
MORAL PHILOSOPHY.
PART I. ETHICS.

CHAPTER I
.
OF THE OBJECT-MATTER AND PARTITION OF MORAL
PHILOSOPHY.
1. Moral Philosophy is the science of human acts in their bearing on
human happiness and human duty.
2. Those acts alone are properly called _human_, which a man is
master of to do or not to do. A _human act_, then, is an act voluntary
and free. A man is what his human acts make him.
3. A voluntary act is an act that proceeds from the will with a
knowledge of the end to which the act tends.

4. A free act is an act which so proceeds from the will that under the
same antecedent conditions it might have not proceeded.
An act may be more or less voluntary, and more or less free.
5. Moral Philosophy is divided into Ethics, Deontology, and Natural
Law. Ethics consider human acts in their bearing on human happiness;
or, what is the same thing, in their agreement or disagreement with
man's rational nature, and their making for or against his last end.
Deontology is the study of moral obligation, or the fixing of what
logicians call the comprehension of the idea I ought. Ethics deal with
[Greek: to prepon], "the becoming"; Deontology with [Greek: to deon],
"the obligatory". Deontology is the science of Duty, as such. Natural
Law (antecedent to Positive Law, whether divine or human, civil or
ecclesiastical, national or international) determines duties in detail,--the
extension of the idea _I ought_,--and thus is the foundation of
Casuistry.
6. In the order of sciences, Ethics are antecedent to Natural Theology;
Deontology, consequent upon it.
Readings.--St. Thos., in Eth., I., lect. 1, init.; ib., 1a 2æ, q. 1, art. 1, in
corp.; ib., q. 58, art. 1, in corp.


CHAPTER II
.
OF HAPPINESS.
SECTION I.--Of Ends.
1. Every human act is done for some end or purpose. The end is always
regarded by the agent in the light of something good. If evil be done, it
is done as leading to good, or as bound up with good, or as itself being
good for the doer under the circumstances; no man ever does evil for
sheer evil's sake. Yet evil may be the object of the will, not by itself,
nor primarily, but in a secondary way, as bound up with the good that is
willed in the first place.
2. Many things willed are neither good nor evil in themselves. There is
no motive for doing them except in so far as they lead to some good

beyond themselves, or to deliverance from some evil, which
deliverance counts as a good. A thing is willed, then, either as being
good in itself and an end by itself, or as leading to some good end.
Once a thing not good and desirable by itself has been taken up by the
will as leading to good, it may be taken up again and again without
reference to its tendency. But such a thing was not originally taken up
except in view of good to come of it. We may will one thing as leading
to another, and that to a third, and so on; thus one wills study for
learning, learning for examination