The King\'s Achievement
THE KING'S ACHIEVEMENT By Robert Hugh Benson Author of "By What Authority?" "The Light Invisible," "A Book of the Love of Jesus," etc. _Non minus principi turpia sunt multa supplicia, quam medico multa funera._ (Sen. de clem. 1, 24, 1.) _I must express my gratitude once more to the Rev. Dom Bede Camm, O.S.B., as well as to the Very Rev. Mgr. Barnes, who have done me great service in revising proofs and making suggestions; to the Rev. E. Conybeare, who very kindly provided the coins for the cover-design of the book; to my mother and sister, to Eustace Virgo, Esq., to Dr. Ross-Todd, and to others, who have been extremely kind in various ways
* One who is acquainted with practical philosophy is not,
therefore, a practical philosopher. The latter is he who makes the
rational end the principle of his actions, while at the same time he
joins with this the necessary knowledge which, as it aims at action,
must not be spun out into the most subtile threads of metaphysic,
unless a legal duty is in question; in which case meum and tuum must
be accurately determined in the balance of justice, on the principle
of equality of action and action, which requires something like
mathematical proportion, but not in the case of a mere ethical duty.
For in this case the question is not only to know what it is a duty to
do (a thing which on account of the ends that all men naturally have
can be easily decided), but the chief point is the inner principle
of the will namely that the consciousness of this duty be also the
spring of action, in order that we may be able to say of the man who
joins to his knowledge this principle of wisdom that he is a practical
philosopher.
Now in this philosophy (of ethics) it seems contrary to the idea
of it that we should go back to metaphysical elements in order to make
the notion of duty purified from everything empirical (from every
THE KING'S ACHIEVEMENT By Robert Hugh Benson Author of "By What Authority?" "The Light Invisible," "A Book of the Love of Jesus," etc. _Non minus principi turpia sunt multa supplicia, quam medico multa funera._ (Sen. de clem. 1, 24, 1.) _I must express my gratitude once more to the Rev. Dom Bede Camm, O.S.B., as well as to the Very Rev. Mgr. Barnes, who have done me great service in revising proofs and making suggestions; to the Rev. E. Conybeare, who very kindly provided the coins for the cover-design of the book; to my mother and sister, to Eustace Virgo, Esq., to Dr. Ross-Todd, and to others, who have been extremely kind in various ways