Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Essays, Vol. 2: Philosophical and Theological
Morality is not a system of trains, but a system of rules. In other words, it is not a science, but an art. Every art is a method of accomplishing some end; the mechanical arts, some outward end of util ity, as the building of a house, the weaving of a dress, the guidance of a ship; the fine arts, some inward end of feeling, consisting essentially, amid all accidental varieties of material and means, in satisfaction to the sense of beauty. It is plain that the end must be given, before the means can found no method of doing can be laid down till we know what is to be done. There can be no art of tailoring for a man who never saw a coat; or of navigation for a people who never heard of the sea. To say then that the first requisite in a treatise on any art is a definition of its object is only to affirm that a prob lem must be stated in order to be solved.
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