PHILOSOPHY DEFINED. 133 



under the head of Moral Philosophy, we treat of human ac- 

 tions as right or wrong, we do not include special directions 

 for behaviour in the nursery, at table, or on the exchange; 

 and though Political Philosophy has for its topic the con- 

 duct of men in their public relations, it does not concern it- 

 self with modes of voting or details of administration. Both 

 of these sections of Philosophy contemplate particular in- 

 stances, only as illustrating truths of wide application. 



§ 37. Thus every one of these conceptions implies the 

 belief in a possible way of knowing things more completely 

 than they are known through simple experiences, mechani- 

 cally accumulated in memory or heaped up in cyclopaedias. 

 Though in the extent of the sphere which they have sup- 

 posed Philosophy to fill, men have differed and still differ 

 very widely; yet there is a real if unavowed agreement 

 among them in signifying by this title a knowledge which 

 transcends ordinary knowledge. That which remains as the 

 common element in these conceptions of Philosophy, after 

 the elimination of their discordant elements, is — knowledge 

 of the highest degree of generality. We see this tacitly 

 asserted by the simultaneous inclusion of God, Nature, and 

 Man, within its scope; or still more distinctly by the divi- 

 sion of Philosophy as a whole into Theological, Physical, 

 Ethical, &c. For that which characterizes the genus of 

 which these are species, must be something more general 

 than that which distinguishes any one species. 



What must be the specific shape here given to this con- 

 ception? The range of intelligence we find to be limited to 

 the relative. Though persistently conscious of a Power 

 manifested to us, we have abandoned as futile the attempt 

 to learn anything respecting the nature of that Power ; and 

 so have shut out Philosophy from much of the domain sup- 

 posed to belong to it. The domain left is that occupied by 

 Science. Science concerns itself with the co-existences and 

 sequences among phenomena; grouping these at first into 



