Anthropology as an Aid to Moral Science
Appendix 1. (7).
In industry experience has shown that the division of work is very helpful, because each part can stand on its own. For example, a person who works in a factory producing sewing accessories and is employed in putting the point on needles, does not need to know how to make the eye; this can be done by someone else. We become more skilled and attentive in proportion to the simplicity of the task assigned to us. Contemporary society, occupied in mind and spirit by material things, thinks that sciences follow the same law as industry, and so divides the sciences into tiny parts.
The Encyclopedia came into being under the influence of this impoverished way of thinking. A Scottish philosopher, Reid, founder of the philosophy school of Glasgow, speaks of the categories of Aristotle in this way: `Of all methods of arrangement, the most anti-philosophical seems to be the invention of this age; I mean arranging the arts and sciences by the letters of the alphabet, in dictionaries and encyclopedias. With these authors, the categories are A, B, C, etc.' (cf. A brief account of Aristotle's logic by this author, published in Sketches of the History of Man by Lord Kames in 1773).
I do not deny that scientific dictionaries can render some service; I am indicating only the vainglory of those who pride themselves on knowledge restricted solely to dictionaries.
The harm done to science and morality by the fragmentation of knowledge is incredible. People who attend German universities can testify to the harm done to the behaviour of the young by the separation of natural law from ethics in teaching, without any regard to the intimate connection between the two. The last century, for example, was spent in discussing human rights but forgot human duties. Such presumption greatly furthered the division of law from ethics, which enabled the human being to receive from everybody and give to nobody.
A famous professor of public law (K. L. Haller) ably demonstrates the harm caused to the state by the excessive divisions introduced into political science. Sometimes the material and corporeal harm resulting from excessive division of the sciences has recalled us to our senses, as in the case of the separation of medicine from surgery. Outstanding people, like Stahl (De medicinae et chirurgiae perpetuo nexu, Regiomont, 1705), Heister (De chirurgiae cum medicina necessitate, Hamstel, 1732), and J. P. Frank (De chirurgo medicis auxiliis indigente, in t. 4 of his Delectus opusculorum etc.) have spoken out against the evil brought upon humanity by these divisions. But what can be said about the sciences needed by doctors of souls? The Church's pastors are responsible for considering how much harm has been caused to the education of the clergy by the divisions, limitations and restrictions forced upon theological studies under the pretext of piety and reforms required in seminary studies.