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BLAKEY'S HISTORY OF MORAL SCIENCE * "
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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An ambitious title , and one which promises much ; but the promises of title-pages are so seldom followed by performances ! ' Moral science ' should naturally mean the science of morals . It were something to find that there is a writer alive who believes
that such a science exists ; and not only exists ,, but is in such a state of advancement that the time is come to write its history ; who , consequently , is not only able to tell us the opinions of others , but has systematic ones of his own . For how should he write the history of a science , who has not constructed a consistent scheme * of the science in its present state ? The historian of moral
philosophy must himself have a philosophy of morals ; must have surveyed the field of ethics extensivel y enough , and with sufficient power of concatenation , to have arranged its truths ( or whatever present themselves to his mind as such ) into a connected series , following and flowing out of one another : thus much , at least , is implied in , the name of science . But Mr . Blakey has no such
thought . There are few ways in which a mind of little depth or compass is more apt to betray itself than by the use of big words to express small things ; whoever does this innocently and without quackery , shows himself to be unfurnished with the larger idea-for which he should have reserved his large phrase . By giving the name * History of Moral Science ' to a book , which should have
been called ' Sketch of the Opinions of various Authors on the Foundation of Moral Obligation , with critical Remarks / Mr . Blakey demonstrates how little meaning even the word Science ' has for him , since he considers the whole history of a science to be summed up in the controversial discussions concerning the first principle of it .
After a short preamble , and a few loose remarks about the ancient systems of morality / Mr . Blakey presents us with what professes to be a summary of the opinions of the following writers , concerning the first principle of ethics : —Hobbes , Cudworth , Bishop Cumberland , Locke , Archbishop King , Wollaston , Clarke , Shaftesbury , Mandeville , Bolingbroke and Pope , Soames Jenyns ,
Iiutcheson , a Mr . Thomas Rutherford , Hume , Hartley and Priestley , Lord Kames , Bishop ^ Butler , Dr . Ferguson , Dr . Price , Adam Smith , Paley , Gisborne , Bentham , Godwin , Dugald Stewart , Cogan , Dr . Thomas Brown , and a certain Dr . Dewar . All foreign authors whatever are then disposed of in a single chapter ; and two chapters more are employed in promulgating such of the author ' s own opinions as have not been sufficiently manifested by his strictures on other writers .
Mr . Blakey ' s statement of the opinions of these various authors * History of Moral Science . By Robert Blakey , Author of an Essay on Moral Good and Evil . 2 vols . 8 vo . 1833 .
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Blakey's History Of Moral Science * "
BLAKEY ' S HISTORY OF MORAL SCIENCE * "
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No . 82 . 3 B
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1833, page 661, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2624/page/1/
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