Excerpt from The Principles of Moral Science: An Essay

I shall not be surprised. To find the success of the attempt questioned and denied by many, if not most, of those who have Spent the best part of their lives in the study of the great Catholic writers on morals. I admit, nay claim, that some important conclusions at which I have arrived differ from those of the ordinary hand books ou Human Acts, Laws, and Conscience, and are not to be found in any published treatise with which I am acquainted. If it were otherwise, I should not have thought of writing or publishing.

Very soon after I began to teach Moral Theology, I noticed a considerable difference between the principles of the science as explained in the treatise on Human' Acts, and the less general conclusions reached later on, when dealing with particular virtues. As time advanced this difference seemed to increase rather than diminish, and I resolved to try whether I could not formulate the principles so that, while perfectly reasonable in them selves and breathing the spirit of the School, they might stand the test of being brought into comparison with all the less general, and therefore more easily ascertained, conclusions of moral science. Unless forced by what I deem compelling reasons I have not ventured to advocate a new form of statement: the reader must decide for himself whether the reasons that appeal to me so strongly are as conclusive as I deem them.

Those who have begun the study of moral theology or ethics by reading the treatise on Human Acts, may be disposed to think that the treatise in question, with which all our hand-books commence, was developed and put into its present shape before the special treatises that come later on and deal with particular virtues, such as charity, religion, chastity, or justice and that these special treatises are practical applications of more general prin ciples previously formulated. The reverse is true. The trea tise on Human Acts is a synthesis of conclusions previously deduced when dealing with special virtues. Hence the natural order is to test the more general principles by applying them to the solution of special cases, somewhat as the student of nature tests a law by seeing whether it harmonizes with observed facts or even with previously ascertained less general conclusions. It may be, of course, that these less general conclusions are not true, or that the facts have not been correctly observed, or that the observation has not been sufficiently exhaustive. If, however, you are satisfied that the special conclusions are true, while you cannot make them square with the more general principle or law, nothing remains but to give this principle or law a new shape, so that it may be brought into harmony with the other ascertained results of science.

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