The vocabulary of philosophy, mental, moral, and metaphysical : with quotations and references for the use of students / by William Fleming ; edited by Henry Calderwood.
- Date:
- 1876
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The vocabulary of philosophy, mental, moral, and metaphysical : with quotations and references for the use of students / by William Fleming ; edited by Henry Calderwood. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
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![ACTION and ACT— ness. A land act might he admissible, though not usual, hut an action of kindness is not used, though an action of great kindness might he. Deed is synonymous with act. “ Act (actum) is a thing done ; action (actio) is doing : act, therefore, is an incident; an action, a process or habit; a virtuous act; a course of virtuous action.”—Taylor, Synonyms. Action, Moral [self-directed action which comes under the sweep of moral law. An overt action which possesses moral quality must have motive, act, and end.—Ed.] Such actions are distinguished, according to the manner of their being called forth, into spontaneous or instinctive, voluntary or reflective, and free or deliberate ; according to the faculty from which they proceed, into physical, intellectual, and moral; and according to the nature of the action (and cha- racter of the agent), into right and wrong, virtuous or vicious, praiseworthy or blameworthy. An action is said to be materially right, when, without regard to the end or the intention of the agent, the action is in conformity with some moral law or rule : formally right, when the end or the intention of the agent is right, and the action is not materially ivrong. For a man to give his goods to feed the poor is materially right, even though he should not have charity or brotherly love, hut when he has charity or brotherly love, and throws even a mite into the treasury of the poor, the action is formally right, although, in effect, it may fall short of that which is only materially right. ACTIVE.—That which causes change is active; that which is changed is passive.—Taylor, Elements of Thought. ACTIVITY.—V. Will. ACTUAL (quod est in actu) is opposed to potential. A rough stone is a statue potentially; when chiselled, actually. “ The relation of the potential to the actual Aristotle exhibits by the relation of the unfinished to the finished work; of the unemployed carpenter to the one at work upon his building ; of the individual asleep to him awake. Potentially the seed is the tree, but the grown-up tree is it actually; the potential philosopher is he who is not at this moment philosophizing ; even before the battle the better general is the potential conqueror ; in fact everything is potentially which possesses a principle of motion, of develop-](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2199531x_0025.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
