An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation Volume 1 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1823 Excerpt: ...by the single and positive term to starve. XI. Acts enter-In the second place, acts may be distinguished teroai.d'"" mt external and internal. By external, are meant corporal acts; acts of the body: by internal, mental acts; acts of the mind. Thus, to strike is an external or exterior act: to intend to strike, an internal or interior one. XII. Acts of di--Acts of discourse are a sort of mixture of the course, what. two: external acts, which are no ways material, nor attended with any consequences, any farther than as they serve to express the existence of internal ones. To speak to another to strike, to write to him to strike, to make signs to him to strike, are all so many acts of dis. course. XIII. External Third, Acts that are external may be distin actsinaybe _ transitive guished into transitive and intransitive. Acts or intransi-., tive. may be called transitive, when the motion is communicated from the person of the agent to some foreign body: that is, to such a foreign body on which the effects of it are considered Exterior. An exterior act is also called by lawyers overt. as being material; as where a man runs against c?. vu. you, or throws water in your face. Acts may be called intransitive, when the motion is communicated to no other body, on which the effects of it are regarded as material, than some part of the same person in whom it originated: as where a man runs, or washes himself. XIV. An act of the transitive kind may be said to A transitive be in its commencement, or in the first stage of its progress, while the motion is confined to the mination, person of the agent, and has not yet been com-mediate' municated to any foreign body, on which the, rosress" effects of it can be material. It may be said to be in its terminat...