First principles. Popular ed, Volume 2Williams & Norgate, 1910 |
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Common terms and phrases
Absolute abstract action agencies alternation antagonism antecedents aphelion arises assert assumed become belief body cause celestial dynamics changes chapter co-existences cognition cohesion common conceive conclusion connexion consciousness constituted continuous correlation definite direction Earth eccentric orbits effect element energy equal equivalent existence experiences fact faint manifestations feeling further gravitation heat Hence hyperbola hypothesis ideas illustrations implies impossible impressions inference infinite infinitely divisible involved kind knowledge laws of thought least resistance less limits line of least matter mental mode molecular motion movements muscular nature nervous object objective science organic oscillations Pantheism parabola persistence of force phenomena Philosophy position present Principles of Psychology produced proposition proved quantity reality relation relative Religion religious rhythm Science sensations similarly Sir William Hamilton social Solar Solar System space supposed symbolic conception things tion transformed truth ultimate undulations universal Unknowable unthinkable velocity vivid manifestations waves
Popular passages
Page 91 - He, like every other man, may properly consider himself as one of the myriad agencies through whom works the Unknown Cause; and when the Unknown Cause produces in him a certain belief, he is thereby authorized to profess and act out that belief.
Page 55 - As the conditionally limited (which we may briefly call the conditioned) is thus the only possible object of knowledge and of positive thought — thought necessarily supposes conditions. To think is to condition ; and conditional limitation is the fundamental law of the possibility of thought.
Page 138 - Our inability to conceive Matter becoming non-existent, is immediately consequent on the nature of thought. Thought consists in the establishment of relations. There can be no relation established, and therefore no thought framed, when one of the related terms is absent from consciousness.
Page 56 - And by a wonderful revelation, we are thus, in the very consciousness of our inability to conceive aught above the relative and finite, inspired with a belief in the existence of something unconditioned beyond the sphere of all comprehensible reality.* 2.
Page 55 - How, indeed, it could ever be doubted that thought is only of the conditioned, may well be deemed a matter of the profoundest admiration. Thought cannot transcend consciousness ; consciousness is only possible under the antithesis of a subject and object of thought, known only in correlation, and mutually limiting each other...
Page 84 - Perpetually to construct ideas requiring the utmost stretch of our faculties, and perpetually to find that such ideas must be abandoned as futile imaginations, may realize to us more fully than any other course, the greatness of that which we vainly strive to grasp, By continually seeking to know and being continually thrown back with a deepened conviction of the impossibility of knowing, we may keep alive the consciousness that it is alike our highest wisdom and our highest duty to regard that through...
Page 132 - Indeed, it needs but to remember that consciousness consists of changes, to see that the ultimate datum of consciousness must be that of which change is the manifestation ; and that thus the force by which we ourselves produce changes, and which serves to symbolize the cause of changes in general, is the final disclosure of analysis.
Page 80 - Is it not just possible that there is a mode of being as much transcending Intelligence and Will, as these transcend mechanical motion ? It is true that we are totally unable to conceive any such higher mode of being.
Page 134 - ... non-existent, or else to confess that Science and Philosophy are impossible. For if, instead of having to deal with fixed quantities and weights, we had to deal with quantities and weights which were apt, wholly or in part, to be annihilated, there would be introduced an incalculable element, fatal to all positive conclusions.
Page 68 - Absolute is a pure negation. He nevertheless finds that there does exist in consciousness an irresistible conviction of the real " existence of something unconditioned." And he gets over the inconsistency by speaking of this conviction as