et and other eminent divines; and various of its
excesses were condemned by the popes during the latter half of the 17th
century. After a long eclipse it was finally re-established, though in a
very modified form, by Alfonso Liguori about the middle of the 18th
century.

In Protestant countries casuistry shrank and dwindled, though works on
the subject continued to be written both in Germany and England during
the 17th century. The best known of the Anglican books is Jeremy
Taylor's _Ductor Dubitantium_ (1660). But the Protestant casuist never
pretended to speak authoritatively; all he did was to give his reasons,
and leave the decision to the conscience of his readers. "In all this
discourse," says Bishop Sanderson, one of the best of the English
writers, "I take it upon me not to write edicts, but to give my advice."
Very soon, however, these relics of casuistry were swept away by the
rising tide of common-sense. The 18th century loved to discuss hard
cases of conscience, as a very cursory glance at Fielding's novels
(1742-1751) or Boswell's _Life of Johnson_ (1791) will show. But the age
was incurably suspicious of attempts to deal with such difficulties on
any kind of technical system. Pope was never tired of girding at

"Morality by her false guardians drawn,
Chicane in furs, and casuistry in lawn";

while Fielding has embodied the popular conception of a casuist in
Parson Thwackum and Philosopher Square, both of whom only take to
argument when they want to reason themselves out of some obvious duty.
Still more outspoken is the Savoyard vicar in the _Emile_ (1762) of Jean
Jacques Rousseau: "Whence do I get my rules of action? I find them in my
heart. All I feel to be good is good; all I feel to be evil is evil.
Conscience is the best of casuists; it is only when men wish to cheat it
that they fly to logical quibbles." Extravagant as this sentiment
sounds, it paved the way to better things. The great object of
17th-century moralists had been to find some general principle from
which the whole of ethics could be deduced; common-sense, by turning its
back on abstract principles of every kind, forced the philosophers to
come down to the solid earth, and start by inquiring how the world does
make up its mind in fact. During the last two centuries deduction has
gone steadily out, and psychology come in. Ethics have become more
distinctively a science, instead of an awkward hybrid between a science
and an art; the