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The doctrine of retribution. Bampton lectures (1875)
The doctrine of retribution Bampton lectures - 1875 Author:William Jackson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: We now come, in order due, to a most important point. Any speculative difficulties which may have environed the apprehension of Moral Distinctions as axiomatic, ... more »will probably be found to rise from one or both of two causes.. The'former cause is a limitation of philosophic method, more or less untenable. The latter consists in a process something more than limitary. A practice of setting ' up artificial departments of thought and knowledge, and then isolating them. A practice sure to extend itself over every realm of Thought, and afterwards over our thinking Powers themselves. As if Human Reason—one and indivisible—could first, be disorganized and next be treated as a sort of confederate Republic: a psychological United States,—each State, a separate Dominion, and the several States sometimes at peace, sometimes in antagonism amongst themselves. Both these causes of difficulty coincide in producing a false Method of philosophic procedure. They are, therefore, well worth examination. The primary Ethical beliefs in which we are specially interested must at all times be gainers by every fair enquiry into the Conditions of human certitude.. Errors of Method are incidents-never unlikely to befal scientific men; and from them.to be propagated downwards till they become rooted as vulgar errors. To find out where science misleads the people, is always an endeavour useful per se. It shows the truth misrepresented in its truest light; sifts away any chance error attached to its representation by friendly advocates; joins again the divided cycle of Reason; links thought tothought, insight to insight, belief to belief. Now, this cycle of Reason is broken by ill-conceived Method more fatally than by any other cause. That the Moral contradictory of " ought" and " ought not " should share i...« less