22 Feb. 1815

Didacologia

7 3

Ch. Art

'. Use

When upon taking a further step, we come to the word philosophy, the misrepresentation, instead of receiving any correction is rendered still more flagrant. Instead of a state of, or acquisition made by the understanding, and that alone, that which the term philosophy was originally employed to designate, and which, even now, it ceases not to convey to those who are more or less acquainted with the language from which it has been borrowed, is a state of the affections, a sentiment or affection of love and good-liking. Of good-liking in relation to what ? - Why, even to wisdom. And what is wisdom ? - A term of wide and imperfectly determined import, employed not so much to designate science as to designate an habitually correct state of the judgment, or judicial faculty, to whatsoever subjects, considered as applied, but more particularly, to such as are regarded as standing distinguished, in respect of their importance, in the highest degree.

As in its original import, this term Natural Philosophy is scarcely expressive of any idea which it is employed to express; hence it is, that, from the first to the last, in relation to this or that less extensive branch of science, a question may be, - does it belong to Natural History, or does it belong to Natural Philosophy ? whereas, under the terms physioplastic somatology, and anthropoplastic somatology, a clear line of demarkation between the two sciences, thus designated, is drawn at one stroke, and all such questions are nipped in the bud.

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