19 Feb. 1815 '. Use A

Didacologia Sec.3

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Ch. Art & Science Division

'. Use

Uses of the foregoing Divisions.

To what purpose all this ramification, all these divisions, subdivisions, and sub-subdivisions, to what purpose all this neology ? The words which to everybody are so familiar, of which the application is so easy, why seek to disturb the possession they have so long held of the field of art and science ?

Answer To enable you /men/ whomsoever it may concern should you ever happen to be in the humour, not only to complete an all-comprehensive view of the field of art and science, but also an observation of the mutual relation and connexion of its several compartments, and their respective contents; at the same time to show in what way those contents are respectively of a nature to be regarded as interesting, and as such, as qualifying the whole system to make an adequate return, for any such labour as any person may feel himself disposed to employ in the examination of it.

This view this observation the assemblage of names in use - so long as they are employed to the exclusion of a connected and consistent system of nomenclature, such as the foregoing has endeavoured to render itself - will not suffer to be taken.

In the first place, as to the principle or source of division. The point of view in which it places the whole field is not merely the most interesting in which it is capable of being placed, but the only one to which in itself the appellation of interesting can with propriety be applied. Unless in so far as it means conducive to wellbeing - to the maximization of the aggregate mass of pleasure - to the minimization of the aggregate mass of pain, the word interesting is devoid of meaning.

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