Page:An introduction to ethics.djvu/12

 PREFACE

little book is designed primarily for students in Training Colleges. In many of these Colleges Ethics is a "professional subject," and the students naturally expect that it will be treated in such a way as to reveal its bearing on the work which they will have to do in the education of the young. In this book it has been my aim to drive a few main lines through ethical theory, and to indicate the application of moral principles to the actual life of the school.

On three points a word of explanation may perhaps be necessary. In the attempt to secure simplicity and brevity, I have avoided, as far as possible, all controversial details, and have endeavoured to state principles positively and clearly. In doing this I have sometimes been forced to try to write more definitively than I should have ventured to do had I been addressing another audience. In a brief and elementary course of Ethics, hesitating qualification and negative criticism are apt to produce confusion in the mind of the student; and at the risk of seeming unduly dogmatic I have tried to reach positive and definite conclusions.

I have chosen to approach the problems of Ethics by way of Psychology; and that for two reasons. In the first place, Training College students have