Two Unpublished Essays Author:Ralph Waldo Emerson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: The Present State of Ethical Philosophy [A Bowdoln Prize Dinertation of I8l] WHEN the present system of things began its being, and the eternal relations ... more »of matter were established, the constitution of moral science was yet to be founded. It began with the social human condition, — with man's first sense of duty to his Maker and to his fellow- man. It has remained in permanent eternal principles, designed to regulate the present life and to conduct the human race to their unseen and final destinies. Its development was later: with rude and unworthy beginnings, in which Advancement was long scarcely perceptible and always uncertain, and blessed with no charter of exemption from the difficulties of error. For a time it was extricating itself from the consequences of mistake, and improving its condition, sometimes, however, making a false step and plunging deeper into gulfs of absurdity andpollution; but it has finally placed itself on respectable ground in the circle of human knowledge. It were a bold and useless enquiry, and leading back beyond the limits of human information, certainly claiming the apology of interest and importance, to ask what surpassing mind conceives the germ of moral science, or how it was communicated from heaven to earth. It was the beautiful and eternal offspring of other worlds, and conferred on this by interposition which no discoveries might anticipate. We shall briefly sketch the history of ethical philosophy, and notice some prominent distinctions which separate ancient from modern ethics, before we proceed to consider the present state of the science. We find irregular and casual hints of moral science thrown out by the most distinguished ancient Greek poets, descending, as is supposed, remotely from primeval revelation. We know of no...« less