These activities are intrinsically worthwhile, and are distinct from those driven by necessity.
No writer can be less intrinsically worthy of study than Wolff.
For example, if it should turn out that the mass of a body is to be estimated by counting the number of corpuscles (whatever they may be) which go to form it, then a body with an irrational measure of mass is intrinsically impossible.
Foreign Countries Inquiries by local officials in connexion with measures of taxation, such as the hearth-tax in France, were instituted in continental Europe as early as the, 4th century; but as the basis of an estimate of population they were intrinsically untrustworthy.
When two thinkers of such eminence (probably the two greatest ethical thinkers of antiquity) have arrived independently at this strange"--conclusion, have agreed in ascribing to cravings, felt in this life, so great, and to us so inconceivable, a power over the future life, we may well hesitate before we condemn the idea as intrinsically absurd, and we may take note of the important fact that, given similar conditions, similar stages in the development of religious belief, men's thoughts, even in spite of the most unquestioned individual originality, tend though they may never produce exactly the same results, to work in similar ways.
