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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Philebus by Plato: we know what our duties are for the most part before we speculate about
them. And the use of speculation is not to teach us what we already know,
but to inspire in our minds an interest about morals in general, to
strengthen our conception of the virtues by showing that they confirm one
another, to prove to us, as Socrates would have said, that they are not
many, but one. There is the same kind of pleasure and use in reducing
morals, as in reducing physics, to a few very simple truths. And not
unfrequently the more general principle may correct prejudices and
misconceptions, and enable us to regard our fellow-men in a larger and more
generous spirit.
The two qualities which seem to be most required in first principles of
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