ctical value. The fact is as far otherwise as
can be imagined--the defect to which I am here pointing, is one of the
most clamorous importance. Of what value, let me ask, is Paley's Moral
Philosophy? What is its imagined use? Is it that in substance it reveals
any new duties, or banishes as false any old ones? No; but because the
known and admitted duties--duties recognised in _every_ system of
ethics--are here placed (successfully or not) upon new foundations, or
brought into relation with new principles not previously perceived to be
in any relation whatever. This, in fact, is the very meaning of a
theory[14] or contemplation, [[Greek: Theoria],] when A, B, C, old and
undisputed facts have their relations to each other developed. It is
not, therefore, for any practical benefit in action, so much as for the
satisfaction of the understanding, when reflecting on a man's own
actions, the wish to see what his conscience or his heart prompts
reconciled to general laws of thinking--this is the particular service
performed by Paley's Moral Philosophy. It does not so much profess to
tell _what_ you are to do, as the _why_ and the _wherefore_; and, in
particular, to show how one rule of action may be reconciled to some
other rule of equal authority, but which, apparently, is in hostility to
the first. Such, then, is the utmost and highest aim of the Paleyian or
the Ciceronian ethics, as they exist. Meantime, the grievous defect to
which I have adverted above--a defect equally found in all systems of
morality, from the Nichomachean ethics of Aristotle downwards--is the
want of a casuistry, by way of supplement to the main system, and
governed by the spirit of the very same laws, which the writer has
previously employed in the main body of his work. And the immense
superiority of this supplementary section, to the main body of the
systems, would appear in this, that the latter I have just been saying,
aspires only to guide the reflecting judgment in harmonising the
different parts of his own conduct, so as to bring them under the same
law; whereas the casuistical section, in the supplement, would seriously
undertake to guide the conduct, in many doubtful cases, of action--cases
which are so regarded by all thinking persons. Take, for example, the
case which so often arises between master and servant, and in so many
varieties of form--a case which requires you to decide between some
violation of your conscience, on the one hand, as