PRESIDENT OF THE ROYAL INSTITUTION OP GREAT
BRITAIN, ETC. ETC.
DEAR SIR,--As the substance of this book was originally delivered in
the form of Lectures before the Royal Institution, London, I was
naturally led, in giving my notes a more exact expression and a larger
illustration, to do so in connexion with your name--a name which,
besides its official significance in all that concerns the Albemarle
Street Institution, was recommended to me by that remarkable
combination of rare experience of life, enlightened scholarship, and
various knowledge of men and places, which, more than the greatest
metaphysical acuteness, or the most extensive academical learning,
enables a man to be a sound judge of those important practical
questions with which the science of Ethics is occupied. As by the
arrangements of the season--1869--of which my course formed a part,
the number of Lectures was limited to four, and as I determined to
treat the subject in the concrete historically, rather than in the
form of abstract discussion, it necessarily happened that the four
phases of morals to which I specially directed attention, viewed in
reference to the whole system of ethical doctrine, presented an
incomplete and fragmentary aspect. I endeavoured however, under these
limitations, to bring forward those historical manifestations of moral
truth which both afforded a ready occasion for discussing some of the
most fundamental questions of Ethics, and, from historical and local
considerations, were most fitted to be presented to a British audience
at the present day. At the same time, there runs through the four
discourses a unity of thought and tendency beyond what the title
indicates, and which those who are competent to judge will easily
recognise. Hoping that you will find nothing in this book but what has
been “attained with honesty, and maintained with moderation”--the
test of excellence in such matters which yourself have wisely
indicated,--and that you may be able to accord to these Discourses in
their written form some portion of that approbation which your
presence conferred on their oral delivery,
I am,
DEAR SIR,
Yours, with sincere esteem,
JOHN STUART BLACKIE.
UNIVERSITY, EDINBURGH,
_October_ 1871.