THE SCOPE OF PHILOSOPHY 



in his guilty attitude when detected in commit- 

 ting a raid upon some neighbouring sheepfold. 

 Coming lastly to man, but little illustration 

 will be needed to show that his acquisition of 

 knowledge is in like manner the progressive 

 establishment of distinctions. The supremely 

 important knowledge which we acquire during 

 early infancy consists in the mental grouping 

 of objects according to their various properties ; 

 in the gradual recognition of distinctions between 

 hardness and softness, sweetness and acidity, 

 rigidity and elasticity, roughness and smooth- 

 ness, humidity and dryness, roundness and an- 

 gularity, — between various shades and intensi- 

 ties of temperature, of sound, and of colour, — 

 between matter which resists and space which 

 does not resist. Later in life, our intellectual 

 education consists still in the progressive group- 

 ing of experiences. That portion of it which 

 we habitually designate as practical consists in 

 the more and more complete distribution of 

 ends (as variously desirable or undesirable), and 

 of the relations between ends and means ; while 

 the education which we more especially char- 

 acterize as theoretical consists ih the more and 

 more complete distribution of our acquired no- 

 tions into well-defined groups, mathematical, 

 physical, or physiological, legal or ethical. He 

 who has so distinctly classified his experiences 

 of the connections between certain courses of 

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