LECTURES ON MORAL SCIENCE. DELIVERED BEFORE THE LOWELL INSTITUTE, BOSTON. BY MARK HOPKINS, D.D.LL.D. PRESIDENT OF WILLIAMS COLLEGE; AUTHOR OF "LECTURES BOSTON: GOULD AND LINCOLN, 69 WASHINGTON STREET. NEW YORK: SHELDON AND COMPANY. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1862, by GOULD AND LINCOLN, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the District of Massachusetts. GEO. C. RAND & AVERY, 6037 BM L то The Graduates of Williams College SINCE 1830. Permit me, my friends, a word of explanation with those of you who may read the following Lectures. It seems called for by the difference between them now, and when they were heard by the most of you. In 1830 I was elected to the Professorship of Rhetoric and Moral Philosophy in this college, and during the first year prepared and delivered twelve Lectures on Moral Philosophy. Of these, omitting the introductory one, the first paragraph was the following: "If the human constitution was made by a wise and good being, it must have been made for certain ends; and in those ends, whatever they may be, and nowhere else, can its perfection and happiness be found. To discover these ends and the means of attaining them, is the object of Moral Philosophy." Then followed such an examination of the constitution of man as I was able to make. This shows that the present lectures are but the carrying out of my original thought; but that those lectures should have been delivered for more than twenty-five years without essential alteration is what requires explanation, if not apology. During The explanation is, chiefly, from the pressure of other duties. the remaining years of my professorship, my leisure was occupied with lectures on Rhetoric and Natural Theology, in connection with extra duties imposed by the declining health of Dr. Griffin. Subsequently, and till 1855, |