234 JAMES CLERK MAXWELL. [CHAP. VIII. 



" I now proceed to envelop an argument from one of 

 those dark sciences which seem to have been sent up from 

 Dom Daniel for the special purpose of displaying reasonings 

 of this kind. 



" It is well known that the brain is the organ of intel- 

 lectual activity. It is held by all that the intellect is made 

 up of many distinct faculties. Therefore the brain must be 

 composed of corresponding organs." . . . 



The Essay concludes quite seriously " The education of 

 man is so well provided for in the world around him, and so 

 hopeless in any of the worlds which he makes for himself, 

 that it becomes of the utmost importance to distinguish 

 natural truth from artificial system, the development of a 

 science from the envelopment of a craft." 



6. Morality. May 1855. (See above, p. 202), Is Ethical 

 Truth obtainable from an Individual Point of View ? 



An inquiry concerning the first principles of Moral 

 Philosophy. 



Of three criteria, fitness, pleasure, and freedom, the last 

 is preferred, but is pronounced incomplete. Adam Smith's 

 use of the principle of sympathy is then considered. " The 

 repeated action of what Smith calls sympathy, calls forth 

 various moral principles, which may be deduced, no doubt, 

 from other theories, as necessary truths, but of which 

 the actual presence is now first accounted for. . . . Instead 

 of supposing the moral action of the mind to be a speculation 

 on fitness, a calculation of happiness, or an effort towards 

 freedom, he makes it depend on a recognition of our relation 

 to others like ourselves." This method (that of self-projection) 

 is pronounced the only true one, but is to be extended so as 

 to embrace other relations than that of mere similarity. 



Such is the bare outline of an essay which would fill at 

 least a dozen pages. It touches on various themes, from 

 the origin of law to the religious sanction of morals, and 

 contains no little evidence of the writer's growing power of 

 observing human life. 



