Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: when completely formed. Many of our most important perceptions through the eye are universally acknowledged to be acquired. But they are as general as the original perceptions of that organ; they arise as independently of our will, and human nature would be quite as imperfect without them. An adult who did not immediately see the different distances of objects from his eye, would be thought by every one to be as great a deviation from the ordinary state of man as if he were incapable of distinguishing the brightest sunshine from the darkest midnight. Acquired perceptions and sentiments may therefore be termed natural, as much as those which are more com- monly so called, if they be as rarely found wanting. Ethical theories can never be satisfactorily discussed by those who do not constantly bear in mind, that the question concerning the existence of a moral faculty in man which immediately approves or disapproves without reference to any further object, is perfectly distinct, on the one hand, from that which inquires into the qualities thus approved or disapproved; and on the other, from an inquiry whether that faculty be derived from other parts of our mental frame, or be itself one of the ultimate constituent principles of human nature. SECTION II. Retrospect of Ancient Ethics. Inquiries concerning the nature of mind, the first principles of knowledge, the origin and government of the world, appear to have been among the earliest objects which employed the understanding of civilized men. Fragments of such speculation are handed down fromthe legendary age of Greek philosophy. In the remaining monuments of that more ancient form of civilization which sprung up in Asia, we see clearly that the Bra- minical philosophers, in times perhaps before the dawn of western history, …
A GENERAL VIEW OF THE PROGRESS OG ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: when completely formed. Many of our most important perceptions through the eye are universally acknowledged to be acquired. But they are as general as the original perceptions of that organ; they arise as independently of our will, and human nature would be quite as imperfect without them. An adult who did not immediately see the different distances of objects from his eye, would be thought by every one to be as great a deviation from the ordinary state of man as if he were incapable of distinguishing the brightest sunshine from the darkest midnight. Acquired perceptions and sentiments may therefore be termed natural, as much as those which are more com- monly so called, if they be as rarely found wanting. Ethical theories can never be satisfactorily discussed by those who do not constantly bear in mind, that the question concerning the existence of a moral faculty in man which immediately approves or disapproves without reference to any further object, is perfectly distinct, on the one hand, from that which inquires into the qualities thus approved or disapproved; and on the other, from an inquiry whether that faculty be derived from other parts of our mental frame, or be itself one of the ultimate constituent principles of human nature. SECTION II. Retrospect of Ancient Ethics. Inquiries concerning the nature of mind, the first principles of knowledge, the origin and government of the world, appear to have been among the earliest objects which employed the understanding of civilized men. Fragments of such speculation are handed down fromthe legendary age of Greek philosophy. In the remaining monuments of that more ancient form of civilization which sprung up in Asia, we see clearly that the Bra- minical philosophers, in times perhaps before the dawn of western history, …