PREFACE. THIS Small volume contains the substance of a first course of Lectures, delivered in October and November 1872, in partial fulfilment of the honourable trust a few months earlier confided to me, after the lamented death of Professor Maurice. The subjects formally assigned to the Knightbridge Professor are Moral Philosophy, Casuistry, and Moral Theology. The first and third of these scarcely need any exposition of their meaning. The second was viewed by Dr Whewell as an historical term, now superseded by the more general and comprehensive phrase, Moral Philosophy. On the other hand Professor Maurice, while he looks on the solution of cases of conscience as impossible, applies the name of Casuistry to that subjective side of Moral Science, which enforces the claims of the personal "I," the individual conscience. This subject, though highly important in itself, does not seem to me, whether in history or by etymology, to answer to the name. But I think it may be transferred, by a moderate license, from doubtful |