This volume is largely the outcome of the author's many years of class-room lecturing on the subject. Its object is to furnish for students and general readers a compendious view of the ethical facts and principles as the author believes them to be established by the best accredited knowledge and thought of our times. There seems to be room for such a work. The method is believed to give proper recognition to both the empirical and metaphysical sides of the subject. Starting from the universal phenomenon of moral distinctions in life, it determines the conscience psychologically, as a rationally intuitive power discerning the moral distinction and the reality and authority of moral law. The implications of conscience and moral law necessarily become theistic. The metaphysical examination finds for the real phenomena of the subjective faculty the objective and abiding reality of the ethical law which the faculty discerns, and the right or morally good itself so perceived as consisting proximately in a conformity of conduct with the relations of life in which moral requirement meets human freedom, and as ultimately grounded in the absolute and perfect source of the moral constitution of the universe. The movement carries to the conclusion of eternal and immutable moral law. The disclosures of revelation confirm the ethical law of the natural reason, completing the moral view and supplying, in the divine forces of Christianity, the proper dynamic for the realization of the ethical life. The volume is humbly sent forth in the hope that it may contribute somewhat to the cause of truth and prove quickening to the life of duty and righteousness. GETTYSBURG, Dec. 1, 1896. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. DEFINITION AND GENERAL DIVISIONS. PAGES 1. Definition and Statement of the Subject-matter 15-17 2. Historical Glance at the Beginning and Progress of the Science 17-20 3. Theoretical and Practical 20-23 4. Relations to Psychology, Natural Theology, and Christian Theology 23-27 CHAPTER II. THE FACT OF MORAL DISTINCTIONS. 1. Revealed in Personal Consciousness 28-29 2. Incorporated in the Social Organism 29 3. Witnessed to in History 29-31 4. Shown in the Religious World 31-33 5. Pervades Literature 33-34 6. Ethnic and Anthropological Information 34-35 7. Unaffected by Theories of its Cause or Significance 35-36 CHAPTER III. FACULTY OF MORAL DISTINCTIONS--THE EXISTENCE OF CONSCIENCE. 1. The Importance of this Question 37-39