| Yo ppl, don`t ever try to judge from the outter apperence | ||||||||||||||||||
| My belief | Seeking for the truth | |||||||||||||||||
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may be proposed to our belief; and just as the electricians speak of live and dead wires, let us speak of any hypothesis as either live or dead. A live hypothesis is one which appeals as a real possibility to him to whom it is proposed. If I asked you to believe in the Mahdi, the notion makes no electric connection with your nature, -- it refuses to scintillate with any credibility at all. As an hypothesis it is completely dead. To an Arab, however (even if he be not one of the Mahdi's followers), the hypothesis is among the mind's possibilities: it is alive. This shows that deadness and liveness in an hypothesis are not intrinsic properties, but relations to the individual thinker. They are measured by his willingness to act. The maximum of liveness in an hypothesis , means willingness to act irrevocably. Practically, that means belief; but there is some believing tendency wherever there is willingness to act at all. Next, let us call the decision between two hypotheses an option. Options may be of several kinds. They may be -- 1. living or dead; 2. forced or avoidable; 3, momentous or trivial; and for our purposes we may call an option a genuine option when it is of the forced, living, and momentous kind. 1. A living option is one in which both hypotheses are live ones. If I say to you: "Be a theosophist or be a Mohammedan," it is probably a dead option, because for you neither hypothesis is likely to be alive. But if I say: " Be an agnostic or be a Christian," it is otherwise: trained as you are, each hypothesis makes some appeal, however small, to your belief. 2. Next, if I say to you: "Choose between going out with your umbrella or without it," I do not offer you a genuine option, for it is not forced. You can easily avoid it by not going out at all. Similarly, if I say, "Either love me or hate me," "Either call my theory true or call it false," your option is avoidable. You may remain indifferent to me, neither loving nor hating, and you may decline to offer any judgment as to my theory. But if I say, "Either accept this truth or go without it," I put on you a forced option, for there is no standing place outside of the alternative. Every dilemma based on a complete logical disjunction, with no possibility of not choosing, is an option of this forced kind. 3. Finally, if I were Dr. Nansen and proposed to you to join my North Pole expedition, your option would be momentous; for this would probably be your only similar opportunity, and your choice now would either exclude you from the North Pole sort of immortality altogether or put at least the chance of it into your hands. He who refuses to embrace a unique opportunity loses the prize as surely as if he tried and failed. Per contra, the option is trivial when the opportunity is not unique, when the stake is insignificant, or when the decision is reversible if it later prove unwise. Such trivial options abound in the scientific life. A chemist finds an hypothesis live enough to spend a year in its verification: he believes in it to that extent. But if his experiments prove inconclusive either way, he is quit for his loss of time, no vital harm being done. |
I Think every one will confess, that we do not perceive External Objects by themselves. We see the Sun, the Stars, and many Objects without us; and it is not probable that the Soul should go out of the Body, and walk as it were, through the Heavens, to Contemplate all those Objects there. She does not then see them by themselves and as the immediate Object of Mind; when it sees the Sun, for instance, it is not the Sun, but something which is nearly united to our Soul; and it is that which I call Idea: So that here by this word Idea, I mean only what is the immediate Object, or the nearest the Mind when it perceives any thing. It must be observed, that to make the Mind perceive any Object, it is absolutely necessary that the Idea of this Object should be actually present, of which we can have no doubt; but it is not requisite that there should be some external Object which resembles this Idea; for it often happens, that we perceive things which are not, and which never had a being. So that we often have in our Minds real Idea?s of things which never were. For instance, when a Man imagines a Mountain of God, it is absolutely necessary that the Idea of this Mountain should be really present to his Mind: When a Mad Man, a Man in a high Fever, or a Man that is asleep, sees any terrible Animal before his Eyes, it is certain that the Idea of this animal truly Exists; and yet this Mountain of Gold, and this Animal, never were. However, Men being Naturally inclined to believe that there is none but Corporeal Objects which Exist, they Judge of the Reality and Existence of things quite after another manner than they ought to do; for as soon as they are sensible of any Object, they will certainly have it that this Object Exists, although it often happens, that there is nothing without: And further, they affirm, that this Object is exactly the same as they see it, which never happens. But in respect to the Idea which necessarily Exists, and which can be nothing else besides what it appears to be, they without any reflection, commonly Judge it to be nothing; as if Idea?s had not a very great number of Properties: As if the Idea?s of a Square, for instance, was not very different from that of some number, and did not represent things perfectly distinct; which could never happen to nothing, since nothing has no Propriety. It is therefore indisputable, that Idea?s have a real Existence. But let us examine their Nature and Essence, and see what it can be in the Soul that is capable of representing all things. | |||||||||||||||||
| The idea of being Abstract | ||||||||||||||||||
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It is agreed on all hands that the qualities or modes of things do never really exist each of them apart by itself, and separated from all others, but are mixed, as it were, and blended together, several in the same object. But, we are told, the mind being able to consider each quality singly, or abstracted from those other qualities with which it is united, does by that means frame to itself abstract ideas. For example, there is perceived by sight an object extended, coloured, and moved: this mixed or compound idea the mind resolving into its simple, constituent parts, and viewing each by itself, exclusive of the rest, does frame the abstract ideas of extension, colour, and motion. Not that it is possible for colour or motion to exist without extension; but only that the mind can frame to itself by abstraction the idea of colour exclusive of extension, and of motion exclusive of both colour and extension. Again, the mind having observed that in the particular extensions perceived by sense there is something common and alike in all, and some other things peculiar, as this or that figure or magnitude, which distinguish them one from another; it considers apart or singles out by itself that which is common, making thereof a most abstract idea of extension, which is neither line, surface, nor solid, nor has any figure or magnitude, but is an idea entirely prescinded from all these. So likewise the mind, by leaving out of the particular colours perceived by sense that which distinguishes them one from another, and retaining that only which is common to all, makes an idea of colour in abstract which is neither red, nor blue, nor white, nor any other determinate colour. And, in like manner, by considering motion abstractedly not only from the body moved, but likewise from the figure it describes, and all particular directions and velocities, the abstract idea of motion is framed; which equally corresponds to all particular motions whatsoever that may be perceived by sense. Whether others have this wonderful faculty of abstracting their ideas, they best can tell: for myself, I find indeed I have a faculty of imagining, or representing to myself, the ideas of those particular things I have perceived, and of variously compounding and dividing them. I can imagine a man with two heads, or the upper parts of a man joined to the body of a horse. I can consider the hand, the eye, the nose, each by itself abstracted or separated from the rest of the body. But then whatever hand or eye I imagine, it must have some particular shape and colour. Likewise the idea of man that I frame to myself must be either of a white, or a black, or a tawny, a straight, or a crooked, a tall, or a low, or a middle-sized man. I cannot by any effort of thought conceive the abstract idea above described. And it is equally impossible for me to form the abstract idea of motion distinct from the body moving, and which is neither swift nor slow, curvilinear nor rectilinear; and the like may be said of all other abstract general ideas whatsoever. To be plain, I own myself able to abstract in one sense, as when I consider some particular parts or qualities separated from others, with which, though they are united in some object, yet it is possible they may really exist without them. But I deny that I can abstract from one another, or conceive separately, those qualities which it is impossible should exist so separated; or that I can frame a general notion, by abstracting from particulars in the manner aforesaid- which last are the two proper acceptations of abstraction. And there are grounds to think most men will acknowledge themselves to be in my case. The generality of men which are simple and illiterate never pretend to abstract notions. It is said they are difficult and not to be attained without pains and study; we may therefore reasonably conclude that, if such there be, they are confined only to the learned. | ||||||||||||||||||
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