t; the important thing being the
character of the control which is to be exerted. And to
arrive at this, he employs a distinction of great practical
utility, and which is peculiarly his own. Following his
tripartite division of knowledge, he finds all kinds of
it arrange themselves under one of two classes, and to
be either adequate or inadequate. By adequate knowledge
he means not necessarily what is exhaustive and
complete, but what, as far as it goes, is distinct and
unconfused: by inadequate, what we know merely as
fact either derived from our own sensations, or from the
authority of others; but of the connexion of which
with other facts, of the causes, effects, or meaning of
which we know nothing. We may have an adequate
idea of a circle, though we are unacquainted with all the
properties which belong to it; we conceive it distinctly
as a figure generated by the rotation of a line, one end
of which is stationary. Phenomena, on the other
hand, however made known to us--phenomena of the
senses, and phenomena of experience, as long as they
remain phenomena merely, and unseen in any higher
relation--we can never know except as inadequately.
We cannot tell what outward things are, by coming in
contact with certain features of them. We have a very
imperfect acquaintance even with our own bodies, and
the sensations which we experience of various kinds
rather indicate to us the nature of these bodies themselves
than of the objects which affect them. Now it is
obvious that the greater part of mankind act only upon
knowledge of this latter kind. The amusements, even
the active pursuits of most of us, remain wholly within
the range of uncertainty; and, therefore, necessarily are
full of hazard and precariousness: little or nothing issues
as we expect; we look for pleasure and we find pain;
we shun one pain and find a greater; and thus arises the
ineffectual character which we so complain of in life--
the disappointments, failures, mortifications which form
the material of so much moral meditation on the vanity
of the world. Much of all this is inevitable from the
constitution of our nature. The mind is too infirm
to be entirely occupied with higher knowledge. The
conditions of life oblige us to act in many cases which
cannot be understood by us except with the utmost
inadequacy; and the resignation to the higher will which has
determined all things in the wisest way, is imperfect in
the best of us. Yet much is possibl