Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics: With Some of Their ApplicationsThornton, William Thomas
Philosophy
Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics: With Some of Their Applications
Thornton, William Thomas
Metaphysics; Utilitarianism
organism at once without making several _tentative_ efforts, undoing
to-day what was so carefully done yesterday, and repeating for centuries
the same _tentatives_ and the same _corrections_ in the same
succession.' 'Anthropomorphists,' he says, 'talk of "The Great
Architect," emphasising the name with capitals,' but 'what should we say
to an architect who was unable, or, being able, was obstinately
unwilling, to erect a palace except by first using his materials in the
shape of a hut, then pulling it down and rebuilding them as a cottage,
then adding storey to storey and room to room, not with any reference to
the ultimate purposes of the palace, but wholly with reference to the
way in which houses were constructed in ancient times? What should we
say to the architect who could not form a museum out of bricks and
mortar, but was forced to begin as if going to build a mansion, and,
after proceeding some way in this direction, altered his plan into a
palace, and that again into a museum? Would there be a chorus of
applause from the Institute of Architects, and favourable notices in the
newspapers of this profound wisdom?'[51]
Notwithstanding the exulting tone in which these questions are put, and
which seems to imply that in their proposer's opinion they are
unanswerable, they may, I think, be very summarily disposed of. Whatever
other comments might be made on the conduct of an architect who should
build in the complex manner suggested, surely the very last thing said
would be that he did not know how to build in simpler wise. His having
actually built a palace would be decisive proof of his knowing how to
build a palace; and of all queer reasons for questioning his possession
of that much architectural knowledge, about the queerest would be the
fact of his having built, not a palace only, but a hut and cottage in
addition. And if, adopting a still more complicated style, he should
begin by so constructing a hut that, if left to itself, it would draw up
brick and mortar from the earth, and grow into a cottage, and then go on
growing and adding storey to storey till it became a palace, this surely
would be a proof not of less, but of infinitely more, architectural
knowledge than if he had commenced and completed the palace with his own
hands. Not unwarrantably, perhaps, may Mr. Lewes, reflecting that his
own and every other human organism's genesis has consisted of at least
three stages, oval, foetal, and infantine, wonder why he was not
formed all at once, 'as Eve was mythically affirmed to be taken from
Adam's rib, and Minerva from Jupiter's head,' and why he was not brought
forth full dressed in an indefinitely expansible suit of clothes. Not
quite inexcusably, perhaps, might he conceive the reason to be some mere
whim or humour of his Maker, though there might be more gratitude in
conjecturing that the triple process was adopted for the purpose of
assisting biological enquirers like himself in their special researches.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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