Ethics — Part 4
- Pages
- about 80
- Category
- Philosophy
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 88 min at 250 wpm
From the opening
Human infirmity in moderating and checking the emotions I name bondage:
for, when a man is a prey to his emotions, he is not his own master, but
lies at the mercy of fortune: so much so, that he is often compelled,
while seeing that which is better for him, to follow that which is worse.
Why this is so, and what is good or evil in the emotions, I propose to
show in this part of my treatise. But, before I begin, it would be well
to make a few prefatory observations on perfection and imperfection,
good and evil.
When a man has purposed to make a given thing, and has brought it
to perfection, his work will be pronounced perfect, not only by
himself, but by everyone who rightly knows, or thinks that he knows,
the intention and aim of its author. For instance, suppose anyone sees a
work (which I assume to be not yet completed), and knows that the aim
of the author of that work is to build a house, he will call the work
imperfect; he will, on the other hand, call it perfect, as soon as he
sees that it is carried through to the end, which its author had purposed
for it. But if a man sees a work, the like whereof he has never seen
before, and if he knows not the intention of the artificer, he plainly
cannot know, whether that work be perfect or imperfect. Such seems to
be the primary meaning of these terms.
But, after men began to form general ideas, to think out types of
houses, buildings, towers, &c., and to prefer certain types to others,
it came about, that each man called perfect that which he saw agree
with the general idea he had formed of the thing in question, and called
imperfect that which he saw agree less with his own preconceived type,
even though it had evidently been completed in accordance with the idea
of its artificer.
A short sample. Read the whole book
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