Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1851 edition. Excerpt: ... NOTES. Note I.--Page 15. Of the Classification of the Sciences. I Am abundantly sensible, not only, as is stated in the text, how imperfect all such classifications must be, but that grave objections may be urged against the one I have adopted, and particularly against the threefold division of physical, psychological, and ethical or moral. It may be said that one part of the moral branch of Natural Theology belongs to psychology--namely, the arguments drawn from the nature of the mind in favour of a future state; and that this part ought therefore to have been classed with the second division of the ontological branch--namely, the psychological. But it must be borne in mind that the two first divisions, comprising the ontological branch, are confined to the doctrine of existences--the investigation of the Deity's existence and attributes; while the whole of the third division, or second branch, relates to the prospects of man with respect to his soul; and consequently, although the arguments respecting these prospects are partly of a psychological nature, yet they relate to the future, and not at all to the past or present--not ft all to the doctrine of existence or attributes. This is therefore a sufficiently distinct ground for the separation. In all such classifications we should be guided by views of convenience, rather than by any desire to attain perfect symmetry; and that arrangement may be best suited to a particular purpose which plants the same things in one order, and separates them and unites them in one way, when an arrangement which should dispose those things differently might be preferable, if we had another purpose to serve. Thus the three divisions of physics, psychology, and morals unless in the sense in which...