Preface.

Our purpose, in the following pages, is, to discover the features of Locke's Ethical Philosophy. Although his writings abound in ethical observation, and severally took their rise from ethical considerations, he has nowhere given a systematic statement of his moral doctrines. His proposed treatise on Ethics was probably never written, certainly no trace of it has been discovered. We are credibly informed that among Locke's unpublished papers, in the British Museum and in private hands, there is nothing of ethical importance. So far as we can learn, no monograph on Locke's ethical philosophy has yet appeared. The histories of Ethics, for the most part, refer to Locke, but make no attempt to give a complete view of his system. Mackintosh, in his celebrated "Dissertation on Ethical Philosophy" gives Locke no place. We cannot suppose that the most Roman, as well as the most practical of modern philosophers, has left barren the great field in which Stoicism worked with such great and valuable results. Locke adopted the Stoic division of Philosophy into Physics, Ethics, and Logic. "Ethics", says Locke, "is the seeking out of those rules and measures of human actions, which lead to happiness, and the means to practise them. The end of this, is not bare speculation, and the knowledge of truth; but right, and a conduct suitable to it." (Essay, IV. 21. 3.) It is important to ascertain