An Examination of the Philosophy of the UnknowableSherman & Company, 1912 - 235 pages |
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Common terms and phrases
Absolute abstract absurd activity admit affirm agency Agnosticism answer antecedent appearances argument ascer assertion assimilation attri attributes belief called causation cause co-existences cognition conceive conception conclusion congruity consciousness contemplation correlative correspondence DEDUCTIVE ARGUMENTS definite difference distinction distinguished doctrine effects element existence experience explanation extension external fact finite force Herbert Spencer hypothesis idea imagine implies impossible inconceivable infinite divisibility infinite series infinity internal Irrelative knowable knowledge known less limits manifestations matter Mental Substance minor premise modes motion mystery nature nescience noumena noumenon object of thought Objective Science Pantheism perception persistence phenomena phenomenon Philosophy present Prin produced proposition prove question Realism reality reason relation relative relativity of knowledge represent representation sciousness self-existent sensation sequence Sir William Hamilton solution Space spacial Spencer Substance of Mind supposed supposition symbol theory things tion transcends true truth ultimate uncon Unconditioned universal Unknowable unlike unthinkable velocity
Popular passages
Page 16 - We are obliged to regard every phenomenon as a manifestation of some Power by which we are acted upon; though Omnipresence is unthinkable, yet, as experience discloses no bounds to the diffusion of phenomena, we are unable to think of limits to the presence of this Power; while the criticisms of Science teach From Herbert Spencer, First Principles (New York: HM Caldwell Co., nd).
Page 114 - The very conception of consciousness, in whatever mode it may be manifested, necessarily implies distinction between one object and another. To be conscious, we must be conscious of something; and that something can only be known, as that which it is, by being distinguished from that which it is not.
Page 138 - Our consciousness of the unconditioned being literally the unconditioned consciousness, or raw material of thought to which in thinking we give definite forms, it follows that an ever-present sense of real existence is the very basis of our intelligence. As we can in successive mental acts get rid of all particular conditions and replace them by others, but cannot get rid of that undifferentiated substance of consciousness which is conditioned anew in every thought; there ever remains with us a sense...
Page 96 - This rhythm of evolution and dissolution, completing itself during short periods in small aggregates, and in the vast aggregates distributed through space completing itself in periods which are immeasurable by human thought, is, so far as we can see, universal and eternal — each alternating phase of the process predominating, now in this region of space and now in that, as local conditions determine.
Page 12 - The knowledge within our reach, is the only knowledge that can be of service to us. This maintenance of a correspondence between internal actions and external actions, which both constitutes our life at each moment and is the means whereby life is continued through subsequent moments, merely requires that the agencies acting upon us shall be known in their co-existences and sequences, and not that they shall be known in themselves. If x and y are two uniformly connected properties in some outer object,...
Page 83 - Various classes of facts thus unite to prove that the law of metamorphosis, which holds among the physical forces, holds equally between them and the mental forces. Those modes of the Unknowable which we call motion, heat, light, chemical .affinity, etc., are alike transformable into each other, and into those modes of the Unknowable which we distinguish as sensation, emotion, thought: these, ,in their turns, being directly or indirectly retransfonnable into the original shapes.
Page 113 - 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; while, independently of this, all that we know either of subject or object, either of mind or matter, is only a knowledge in each of the particular, of the plural, of the different, of the modified, of the phenomenal.
Page 165 - 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 which all things exist as The Unknowable.
Page 210 - If Religion and Science are to be reconciled, the basis of reconciliation must be this deepest, widest, and most certain of all facts — that the Power which the Universe manifests to us is utterly inscrutable.
Page 211 - Thus the consciousness of an Inscrutable Power manifested to us through all phenomena, has been growing ever clearer ; and must eventually be freed from its imperfections. The certainty that on the one hand such a Power exists, while on the other hand its nature transcends intuition and is beyond imagination, is the certainty towards which intelligence has from the first been progressing.