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an introduction to the
CHAPTER II.
Philosophy, then, has a practical as well as a theoretical side; besides being a system of speculative truth, it is a real and effective discipline of humanity. It is the point of conciliation in which life, knowledge, and virtue meet. In it, fact and duty,[1] or, that which is, and that which ought to be, are blended into one identity. But the practical character of philosophy, the active part which it plays throughout human concerns, has yet to be more fully and distinctly elucidated.
The great principle which we have all along been
- ↑ Sir James Mackintosh, and others, have attempted to establish a distinction between "mental" and "moral" science, founded on an alleged difference between fact and duty. They state, that it is the office of the former science to teach us what is (quid est), and that it is the office of the latter to teach us what ought to be (quid oportet). But this discrimination vanishes into nought upon the slightest reflection; it either incessantly confounds and obliterates itself, or else it renders moral science an unreal and nugatory pursuit. For, let us ask, does the quid oportet ever become the quid est? does what ought to be ever pass into what is, or, in other words, is duty ever realised as fact? If it is, then the distinction is at an end. The oportet has taken upon itself the character of the est. Duty, in becoming practical, has become a fact. It no
