Excerpt from Ethics, General and Special

The family and the State are the topics; and each meets with the fullest treatment. The family presents such vital ques tions as marriage, its oneness, its perpetuity, its obligations, its relations with the civil power, parents and children. The State leads to an analysis of men's inclination to band them selves together, of the purpose that actuates the inclination, of the elements entering into society's structure; of authority, its origin, its phases, its constituents, and of the mutual relations between ruler and subjects. Tongiorgi offers this other di vision of Ethics from its causes: 1, Final cause, or man's last end; 2, Material cause, or man's moral acts; 3, Formal cause, or good and evil; 4, Model cause, or Natural Law; 5, Efficient cause, mind, will and habits, behavior.

These, therefore, are some of the topics destined to occupy our attention. The field is so vast that we can hope to do any thing like justice to only the leading points; and it shall be my endeavor, while making my treatment of the matter as thorough as possible, to omit nothing of primary importance. While devoting no little time to the forward part of Moral, or General Ethics, we intend to pay more special attention to the after-part, designated by some authors as Natural Right. The spirit of Catholicity will of course pervade our whole work. We shall never forget that we are men of faith, with the light of the Scriptures as interpreted by the Church for guide, with the traditions of two thousand years at our serv ice, and the example of an army of saints before our eyes. We enter not into this enquiry in the disposition of Rational ists, who exercise to-day so wide an influence in the world of thought, outside the one true Church. We hesitate to re move God's messages to men from the field of morality. We refuse to regard man as an absolute, self-sufficient being, in dependent of his surroundings, accountable to no superior for his conduct, his own guide, his own reward, his own punish ment. We maintain, on the contrary, that every instant of his life is beset with well defined relations; that he is poor, and weak, and erring; that he is affected by his environment.

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