BEING SELECTIONS FROM WRITERS PRINCIPALLY OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND ANALYTICAL INDEX BY L. A. SELBY-BIGGE, M.A. FORMERLY FELLOW AND LECTURER OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, OXFORD IN TWO VOLUMES VOL. I Oxford AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 1897 LIBRARY OF THE LELAND STANFORD JR. UNIVERSITY. a.38309. Oxford PRINTED AT THE CLARENDON PRESS BY HORACE HART, M.A. PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY PREFACE A BOOK of selections is never quite satisfactory, and suggests apology on several grounds. Even if it is wanted, its execution may easily be found fault with. When all is irrevocably in print, one feels how much better it might have been done-how niggardly one has been to one author, how stupidly indulgent to another, how badly proportioned is the whole, and how awkwardly arranged. In the present case it may be pleaded that no particular principle has been violated, for I soon came to the conclusion that to adopt one or even two principles only as the basis of such a selection was impossible, and would not be very profitable. I abandoned myself therefore to the guidance of the principle of utility in its vaguest form, and simply tried to make a book which would be useful, and fairly representative of the British moral philosophy of the eighteenth century. In making it the limits of space |