TO THE READER.

Ornate woodcut decorative initial 'N' featuring the letter intertwined with thick foliage and vine patterns within a square border.

There is no reason why I should delay you long, friend Reader, for the sake of a preface; although I ought not to pass you by again entirely ungreeted, unless even then, when I am writing about Morals, I myself should wish to appear ill-mannered. The author is making a play on words in Latin between Moribus (Ethics or Morals) and male moratus (badly mannered or immoral). Therefore, just as I have done in most of my writings—so that the Reader may understand what the Occasion, what the Goal, and finally what the Reason for writing each of them was—I thought the same should be done briefly in this present little work.

With how unwilling and reluctant a mind I approached whatever this work is, those very people know who urged me with such great effort to undertake it. For many things stood in the way, preventing me from allowing myself to be overcome even by their most vehement and frequently repeated demands. One reason was that I am the sort of person who was not accustomed to grant much value to dry and meager systems of Moral Philosophy In this period, "Moral Philosophy" was the standard term for what we now call Ethics. of this kind, which strive to battle against solid Vice and Baseness with the mere "shadow-boxings" original Greek: σκιομαχίαις (skiomachiais), referring to fighting an imaginary enemy or hitting the air. of Definitions and Divisions. For Vice...