22 Feb. 1815 D

Didacologia

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Ch. Art & Science Division

'. Use

The further we advance, the more clearly does /do/ the convenience of an apposite nomenclature and systematic arrangement, and the inconvenience of inapposite nomenclature and unsystematic arrangement become perceptible.

Somatics being the name given to the branch /stem/, by the two adjuncts physioplastic and anthropoplastic, a designation which is correct, and to every one to whom the import attached to those adjuncts in the original language is familiar, an intelligible one is presented. By a person whose ignorance of all particulars contained in the respective fields of human science, should be as great as that of any person can be, the import of the two names, and accordingly the nature of the two branches of science would nevertheless be conceived and understood, so he were but apprized of the import of the Greek words correspondent to the word nature and the word man.

So much for the apposite and systematic nomenclature and arrangement, now as to the inapposite and unsystematic. Of the two composing the inapposite appellative employed to designate physioplastic somatics, the word natural in so far as it went, was apposite and expressive. But when applied to designate the anthropoplastic branch of somatics, instead of being apposite and leading to truth, it leads of itself to error. What it gives you to understand is, that under the branch of science to which it thus gives name, in the observation made on the bodies which are the subjects of it, the state to which the consideration is confined is that into which they have been brought by the hands of nature, whereas the truth is, that the state in which alone they constitute, in a direct way, the subject of anthropoplastic somatology, is the state into which they have been brought, or are capable of being brought by the hand of man.

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