At last the proofs were corrected, the Notes verified, and the time had come when the Preface must be written! How was I to find a quiet hour to compose it? Like most women I was bound hand and foot by a fine web of little duties and attentions, which men never feel or brush aside remorselessly, (it was only Hooker, who rocked a cradle with his foot while he wrote the Ecclesiastical Polity!); and it was a serious question for me when I could find leisure and solitude. Luckily, just on the critical day, my father was seized with a fancy to go to the play, and, equally luckily, I had so bad a cold that it was out of question that I should, as usual, accompany him. Accordingly I had an evening all alone, and wrote fast and hard the pages which I shall presently quote, finishing the last sentence of my Preface as I heard my father’s knock at the hall door.

I had all along told my father (though, alas; to his displeasure), that I was going to publish a book; of course, anonymously, to save him annoyance. When the printing was completed, the torn and defaced sheets of the MS. lay together in a heap for removal by the housemaid. Pointing to this, my poor father said solemnly to me: “Don’t leave those about; you don’t know into whose hands they may fall.” It was needless to observe to him, that I was on the point of publishing the “perilous stuff”!

The book was brought out by Longmans that year (1855) and afterwards by Crosby and Nichols in Boston, and again by Trübner in London. It was reviewed rather largely and, on the whole, very kindly, considering it was by an unknown and altogether unfriended author; but sometimes also in a manner which it is pleasant to know has gone out of fashion in these latter days. It was amusing to see that not one of my critics had a suspicion they were dealing with a woman’s work. They all said, “He reasons clearly.” “His spirit and manner are particularly well suited to ethical discussion.” “His treatment of morals” (said the Guardian) “is often both true and beautiful.” “It is a most noble performance,” (said the Caledonian Mercury), “the work of a masculine and lofty mind.” “It is impossible,” (said the Scotsman), “to deny the ability of the writer, or not to admire his high moral tone, his earnestness and the fulness of his knowledge.” But the heresy of the book brought down heavy denunciation from the “religious” papers on the audacious writer who, “instead of walking softly and humbly on the firm ground and taking the Word of God as a lamp,” &c., had indulged in “insect reasonings.” A rumour at last went out that a woman was the author of this “able and attractive but deceptive and dangerous work,” and then the criticisms were barbed with sharper teeth. “The writer” (says the Christian Observer), “we are told, is a lady, but there is nothing feeble or even feminine in the tone of the work.... Our dislike is increased when we are told it is a female (!) who has propounded so unfeminine and stoical a theory ... and has contradicted openly the true sayings of the living God!” The Guardian (November 21st, 1855) finally had this delightful paragraph: “The author professes great admiration for Theodore Parker and Francis Newman, but his own pages are not disfigured by the arrogance of the one or the shallow levity of the other” (think of the shallow levity of Newman’s book of the Soul!). “He writes gravely, not defiantly, as befits a man giving utterance to thoughts which he knows will be generally regarded as impious.”

I shall now offer the reader a few extracts; and first from the Preface:—

“It cannot surely be questioned but that we want a System of Morals better than any of those which are current amongst us. We want a system which shall neither be too shallow for the requirements of thinking men, nor too abstruse for popular acceptation; but which shall be based upon the ultimate grounds of philosophy, and be developed with such distinctness as to be understood by every one capable of studying the subject. We want a System of Morals which shall not entangle itself with sectarian creeds, nor imperil its authority with that of tottering Churches, but which shall be indissolubly blended with a Theology fulfilling all the demands of the Religious Sentiment—a Theology forming a part, and the one living part, of all the theologies which ever have been or shall be. We want a system which shall not degrade the Law of the Eternal Right by announcing it as a mere contrivance for the production of human happiness, or by tracing our knowledge of it to the experience of the senses, or by cajoling us into obeying it as a matter of expediency; but a system which shall ascribe to that Law its own sublime office in the universe, which shall recognise in man the faculties by which he obtains a supersensible knowledge of it, and which shall inculcate obedience to it on motives so pure and holy, that the mere statement of them shall awaken in every breast that higher and better self which can never be aroused by the call of interest or expediency.

“It would be in itself a presumption for me to disclaim the ability necessary for supplying such a want as this. In writing this book, I have aimed chiefly at two objects. First. I have sought to unite into one homogeneous and self-consistent whole the purest and most enlarged theories hitherto propounded on ethical science. Especially I have endeavoured to popularise those of Kant, by giving the simplest possible presentation to his doctrines regarding the Freedom of the Will and the supersensible source of our knowledge of all Necessary Truths, including those of Morals. I do not claim however, even so far as regards these doctrines, to be an exact exponent of Kant’s opinions.... Secondly. I have sought (and this has been my chief aim) to place for the first time, at the foundation of ethics, the great but neglected truth that the End of Creation is not the Happiness, but the Virtue, of Rational Souls. I believe that this truth will be found to throw most valuable light, not only upon the Theory, but upon all the details of Practical Morals. Nay, more, I believe that we must look to it for such a solution of the ‘Riddle of the World’ as shall satisfy the demands of the Intellect while presenting to the Religious Sentiment that same God of perfect Justice and Goodness whose ideal it intuitively conceives and spontaneously adores. Only with this view of the Designs of God can we understand how His Moral Attributes are consistent with the creation of a race which is indeed ‘groaning in sin’ and ‘travailing in sorrow’; but by whose freedom to sin and trial of sorrow shall be worked out at last the most blessed End which Infinite Love could devise. With this clew, we shall also see how (as the Virtue of each individual must be produced by himself, and is the share committed to him in the grand end of creation) all Duties must necessarily range themselves accordingly—the Personal before the Social—in a sequence entirely different from that which is comformable with the hypothesis that Happiness is ‘our being’s end and aim’; but which is, nevertheless, precisely the sequence in which Intuition has always peremptorily demanded that they should be arranged. We shall see how (as the bestowal of Happiness on man must always be postponed by God to the still more blessed aim of conducing to his Virtue) the greatest outward woes and trials, so far from inspiring us with doubts of His Goodness, must be taken as evidences of the glory of that End of Virtue to which they lead, even as the depths of the foundations of a cathedral may show how high the towers and spires will one day ascend.”—Pref., pp. V.–X.

In the first chapter, entitled What is the Moral Law? I take for motto Antigone’s great speech:—

“ἄγραπτα κᾀσφαλῆ θεῶν

νόμιμα....

οὐ γἀρ τι νῦν γε κᾀχθὲς, ἀλλ’ ἀεί ποτε