Stewart

Casuistry

The consideration of these nice and puzzling question in the science of ethics has given rise, in modern times, to a particular department of it, distinguished by the title of casuistry.

Conception

Under the article of conception, I shall confine myself to that faculty whose province it is to enable us to form a notion of our past sensations, or of the objects of sense that we have formerly perceived.

Copy

We copy instinctively the voices of our companions, their accents, and their modes of pronunciation.

disentangle

To disentangle truth from error.

Equilibrist

When the equilibrist balances a rod upon his finger.

Imagination

The business of conception is to present us with an exact transcript of what we have felt or perceived. But we have moreover a power of modifying our conceptions, by combining the parts of different ones together, so as to form new wholes of our creation. I shall employ the word imagination to express this power.

Judgment

The power by which we are enabled to perceive what is true or false, probable or improbable, is called by logicians the faculty of judgment.

Phenomenon

In the phenomena of the material world, and in many of the phenomena of mind.

Principle

Those active principles whose direct and ultimate object is the communication either of enjoyment or suffering.

Reason

In common and popular discourse, reason denotes that power by which we distinguish truth from falsehood, and right from wrong, and by which we are enabled to combine means for the attainment of particular ends.

Reason is used sometimes to express the whole of those powers which elevate man above the brutes, and constitute his rational nature, more especially, perhaps, his intellectual powers; sometimes to express the power of deduction or argumentation.

Sentiment

The word sentiment, agreeably to the use made of it by our best English writers, expresses, in my own opinion very happily, those complex determinations of the mind which result from the cooperation of our rational powers and of our moral feelings.

Mr. Hume sometimes employs (after the manner of the French metaphysicians) sentiment as synonymous with feeling; a use of the word quite unprecedented in our tongue.

Transitive

By far the greater part of the transitive or derivative applications of words depend on casual and unaccountable caprices of the feelings or the fancy.

Will

It is necessary to form a distinct notion of what is meant by the word “volition” in order to understand the import of the word will, for this last word expresses the power of mind of which “volition” is the act.

The word “will,” however, is not always used in this its proper acceptation, but is frequently substituted for “volition”, as when I say that my hand mover in obedience to my will.