Split (3)

train · 9.09M rows

text stringlengths 1 32.7k
He fastened a massive rock her , while he awaited the return of Sandy.
Ian had just tied her accustomed rock the creature and was lifting himself to the wall when he heard a sound.
Ian had just tied the creature to her accustomed rock and was lifting the wall himself when he heard a sound.
As Ian stared in wonderment, the piper lifted his bagpipes from his shoulder and handed the boy them .
He would soon show a cheering crowd those pipes as his fingers flew over the chanter.
Much less do we ask how empirical circumstances can generate rationality of thought; nor how it is possible for reflection to lay power of determining truth and thereby of constructing further reality claim .
Quite compatible with this, however, is the notion that it seizes upon certain specific conditions and factors, and aims to bring clear consciousness--not them to abolish them.
All the typical investigatory and verificatory procedures of the various sciences are inherently concerned as indicating the ways in which thought actually brings its own successful fulfilment in dealing with various types of problems itself .
Its contents or material shift æsthetic , ethic , or affectional their values back and forth from technological or utilitarian .
The reason that it does not present those actually concerned with it itself as such a monster and miracle is because there is a certain homogeneity or continuity of reference and of use which controls all diversities in both the modes of existence specified and the grades of value assigned.
The historical point of view describes the sequence; the normative follows its conclusion the sequence , and then turns back and judges each historical step by viewing it in reference to its own outcome.
As we submit our gaze each characteristic function and situation of experience , we find it has a dual aspect.
He does this, not because he prefers order confusion , or error to truth, but simply because, when the chain of historic sequence is cut, the vessel of thought is afloat to veer upon a sea without soundings or moorings.
But historic philosophy even in its aberrant forms has proved a factor in the valuation of experience; it has brought light problems , it has provoked intellectual conflicts without which values are only nominal; even through its would-be absolutistic isolations, it has secured recognition of mutual dependencies and reciprocal reinforcements.
We must avoid yielding to the temptation of identifying the exclusion of the other logic with either of these ; or of supposing that it is possible to isolate one finally from the other.
Yet they are full of unexamined assumptions; they commit all sorts of logically predetermined conclusions us .
It is also determined by a psychical mechanism so thoroughly objective or regular in its workings as to give the current of ideas that is possessed by any physical sequence the same necessary character .
It is only by continual transition from impression and ideas as mental states and events to ideas as cognitive (or logical) objects or contents, that Lotze bridges concrete material conditions of thought the gulf from bare exciting antecedent .
But the significance of the belief in sun-revolving-about-earth as an item of the experience of those who meant it, consisted precisely in the fact that it was taken not as a mere association of feelings, but as a definite portion of the whole structure of objective experience, guaranteed by other parts of the fabric, and lending its support and giving them its tone .
This brings the fact that there is no such thing as either coincidence or coherence in terms of the elements or meanings contained in any couple or pair of ideas taken by itself us explicitly .
We must not leave this phase of the discussion, however, until it is quite clear that our objection is not to Lotze's position that reflective thought arises from an antecedent which is not reflectional in character; nor yet to his idea that this antecedent has a certain structure and content of its own setting the peculiar problem which evokes thought and gives its specific activities the cue .
It is the further work of thought to exclude some of the contending factors from membership in experience, and thus to relegate the sphere of the merely subjective them .
It gives " useful combinations , " " correct expectations , " " seasonable reactions " rise (Vol.
I confine the logical difficulty myself .
How can thought relate the fragmentary sensations , impressions , feelings itself , which, in their contrast with and disparity from the workings of constitutive thought, mark it off from the latter; and which in their connection with its products give the cue to reflective thinking?
How can thought relate itself to the fragmentary sensations, impressions, feelings, which, in their contrast with and disparity from the workings of constitutive thought, mark it off from the latter; and which in their connection with its products give reflective thinking the cue ?
And when we get such a concept, the former mere temporal abruptness of color experiences gives organic parts of a color system way .
To find out what is given is an inquiry which taxes the uttermost reflection .
At times Lotze gives the tendency to define thought entirely in terms of modes and forms of activity which are exercised by it upon a strictly foreign material way .
As merely foreign and external, it is too heterogeneous to lend thought's exercise and influence itself .
[30] He summarizes it as follows (p. 99): "No other way was left to him [Lotze] excepting this of first attributing sense all and afterwards attributing all to thought, and, finally of attributing it to thought only because it was already in its material.
[30] He summarizes it as follows (p. 99): "No other way was left to him [Lotze] excepting this of first attributing all to sense and afterwards attributing thought all , and, finally of attributing it to thought only because it was already in its material.
[30] He summarizes it as follows (p. 99): "No other way was left to him [Lotze] excepting this of first attributing all to sense and afterwards attributing all to thought, and, finally of attributing thought it only because it was already in its material.
The obviousness of the logical contradiction of attributing to a preliminary specific work of thought exactly the condition of affairs which is elsewhere explicitly attributed to a psychical mechanism prior to any thought-activity, should not blind its meaning and relative necessity us .
This second activity is that of arranging experienced quales in series and groups, thus ascribing various instances a sort of universal or common somewhat (as already described; see p. 55).
In a way it dictates "its object-matter its own laws .
Or again, the given material of experience apart from thought is precisely the relatively chaotic and unorganized; it even reduces a mere sequence of psychical events itself .
Our subsequent inquiry simply consists in tracing the other of the two horns of the now familiar dilemma some of the phases of the characteristic seesaw from one : either thought is separate from the matter of experience, and then its validity is wholly its own private business; or else the objective results of thought are already in the antecedent material, and then thought is either unnecessary, or else has no way of checking its own performances.
The ghost haunts the last him .
In other words, logically speaking, we are at the end just exactly where we were at the beginning--in the sphere of ideas, and of ideas only, plus a consciousness of the necessity of referring a reality which is beyond them , which is utterly inaccessible to them , which is out of reach of any influence which they may exercise , and which transcends any possible comparison with their results these ideas .
There is, on the one hand, a world of reality which must be regarded as having existence outside of and independently of the thoughts or ideas we are now applying to it; and there is, on the other hand, a world of ideas whose value is measured by the possibility of applying reality them , of qualifying reality by them.
The act defines the given but indefinite real by affirmation of a quality, and affirms reality of the definite quality by attaching the previously undefined real it .
Bosanquet undertakes to rescue it by assuring us again that it is the character and quality of being directly in contact with sense-perception, not any fixed datum of content, that forms the center of the individual's real world and gives his otherwise ideal extension of this center the stamp of reality .
I have first to symbolize the color of Torbay, using for the purpose any blue that I can call to mind, and fixing, correcting, subtracting from, the color so recalled, till I reduce a mere index quality it ; and then I have to deal in the same way with the meaning or significant idea so obtained, clipping and adjusting the qualities of Torbay till it seems to serve as a symbol of the Ægean.
And yet how the meager content of the idea succeeds in referring to the world of meanings, and acting as the instrument for referring reality a meaning , is not at all clear.
It is an act, and an act which refers reality an ideal content .
It now remains to develop the implications of the new theory further by comparing some of the more important problems of logic its application with that of Bosanquet.
To slur the difference by applying both one name accomplishes nothing.
The Anglo-Saxon invasion brought great numbers of the pure representatives of the Northern race of closely allied stocks; and these did not confine any one region themselves , but, entering at many points of the south and east coasts, diffused themselves throughout almost all England, imposing themselves as masters upon those Britons whom they did not drive out.
The importance of the physical uniformity we may realize on reflecting that the one great divergence of physical conditions, the sub-tropical climate of the southern States, gave the one great and dangerous division of the people which for a time threatened the harmonious development of the national life rise ; that is to say, the civil war was due to the divergence of the social system and economic interests of the southern States resulting from their sub-tropical climate.
How much does Great Britain or Japan owe the insular character of its territory , which from early days has sharply marked off the people from all others , making of them a well-defined and closed group , within which free intermarriage has given homogeneity of innate qualities , and within which a national culture has grown up undisturbed ; so that by mental and physical type , and by language , religion , tradition and sentiment , the people are sharply marked off from all others , and assimilated to one another this !
A unitary well-defined territory of well marked and fairly uniform character tends to national unity, not only through making the community a relatively closed one, but also by aiding the imagination to grasp the idea of the nation and offering the affections and sentiments of the people a common object .
The Chinese nation, again, owes geographical unity its existence and its homogeneity of mental and physical type .
There are to-day many countries in which the distribution of mineral wealth is exerting an influence of this sort, giving the differentiation of an industrial area from agricultural areas and a consequent divergence of interests and of mental habits rise ; notably South Africa, Spain, and Italy.
The United States of America afford a good illustration of this principle, as I have already pointed out; the sub-tropical climate of the southern states gave a differentiation of occupation , and consequently of ideas and interests and sentiments , which was almost fatal to the unity of the nation rise .
Such personalities, more effectively perhaps than any other factors, engender national unity and bring a high pitch it .
Nevertheless many, perhaps most, negroes are capable of acquiring European culture and of turning good account it .
We may fairly ascribe the lack of men endowed with the qualities of great leaders , the incapacity of the negro race to form a nation even more than to the lower level of average capacity.
But another almost equally striking case is that of the Arab nation, which has owed one man its existence .
But, as in the case of the Turks, who owe a line of great despots of the house of othman their national existence , they make little progress in civilisation and they do not unify the peoples they rule; for they produce ability of no other kind.
The character of the cross-bred is made up of divergent inharmonious tendencies, which give internal conflict rise , just as the physical features appear in bizarre combination; what examples we have-the Spanish Americans, the Eurasians, the Mulattoes, the half-breeds of Java and Canada-seem to show that a people so composed will produce few great men and will not become a great nation.
America owes the spanish war something of the same kind ; and the entry of that nation into the Great War, long delayed as it was, will probably be found to have had a similar effect.
Holland owes such influences some of the strength of her nationhood ; and the assumption by the American nation of responsibility for the peoples of Cuba and of the Phillipine islands cannot fail to bring them in some degree similar moral benefits[77].
Just in the same way new modes of national behaviour are only effected when the attention of the nation’s mind is turned upon the situation; whereas, with recurrence of the need for any such novel mode of action, there is formed some special executive organisation, say a Colonial Office, or an Unemployed Central Committee, or an Imperial Conference, which deals with it in a more or less routine fashion, and which, as it becomes perfected, needs less and less to be controlled and guided by national attention and therefore operates in the margin of the field of consciousness of the national mind, while public attention is set free to turn other tasks of national adaptation itself .
Hence Russia had no capacity for national thought and action; and when, as recently, ideas stirred action the masses , their actions were those of unorganised crowds, impulsive and ineffective; the ends were but vaguely conceived, the means were not deliberately chosen, or, if so chosen, found no executive organisation for the effective expression of the collective purpose.
Under such a system there appears inevitably a tendency rigorously to subordinate that of the nation as a whole the welfare of individuals .
The defect of such organisation was illustrated by the fact that Germany, though its well-governed population increased rapidly, for many years continued to lose other countries great numbers of its population .
The inherent weakness of the system induced all sorts of extreme measures directed to maintain its equilibrium and cohesion the governing power .
Bosanquet’s theory amounts to a justification of the old individualist laissez faire doctrine-the doctrine that the good of the whole is best achieved by giving the play and conflict of individual purposes and strivings-the freest possible scope philosophic radicalism of Bentham and Mill, which teaches that, if each man honestly and efficiently pursues his private ends, the welfare of the State somehow results.
They, economically and individually, had nothing material to gain by a separation from Austria; and in separating themselves they would have risked much, their lives, and their material welfare; yet the idea of the Magyar nation impelled it them .
In fact national progress and power and success depend in chief part upon the fulness and the extension, the depth and width of this self-consciousness-the accuracy and fulness with which each individual mind reflects the whole; and upon the strength of the sentiments which are centred upon it and which lead men to act for the good of the whole, to postpone public ends private .
Each individual’s sense of duty, in so far as it is a true sense of duty, and not a fictitious sense due merely to superstitious fear or to habit formed by suggestion and compulsion, is chiefly founded upon the consciousness of the society of which he forms a part, upon the group spirit that binds his fellows him and makes him one with them.
Surely, if in any nation the national consciousness could inspire and maintain this high level of strenuous self-sacrifice for the welfare of the nation all classes of its people in all relations of life , that nation would soon predominate over all others, and be impregnably strong, no matter what defects of individual and national character it might display.
It is only in so far as the object conceived becomes the object of some sentiment that the conception of it moves feeling and action us strongly .
Of all forms of intercourse, conflict and competition are the most effective in developing national consciousness and character, because they bring the minds of all individuals a common purpose ; and that is the condition of the highest degree and effectiveness of collective mental action and volition.
And judicious well-wishers of the American nation rejoice that it has recently entered more fully into the international arena, and has not continued to pursue the policy of isolation, which was long in favour; because, as is already manifest, this fuller intercourse and intenser rivalry with other nations must render fuller and more effective their national spirit, develop the national will and raise a higher plane the national life , giving to individuals higher ends and motives than the mere accumulation of wealth, and removing that self-complacency as regards their national existence which hitherto has characterised them in common with the peoples of Thibet and China.
Individual volition can only be marked off from every impulsive action and every lower form of effort, by the fact that in true volition, among all the impulses or motives that may impel action or decision a man , the dominant rôle is played by a motive that springs from his self-regarding sentiment.
It is the presence and operation in the national mind of the idea of the nation in the extended sense just indicated that gives to national decisions and actions the character of truly collective volitions; they approach this type more nearly, the more the idea is rich in meaning and adequate or true, and the more widely it is spread, and the more powerful and widely spread is the sentiment which attaches the nation value and sways men to decision and action for the sake of the whole, determining the issue among all other conflicting motives.
It is the presence and operation in the national mind of the idea of the nation in the extended sense just indicated that gives to national decisions and actions the character of truly collective volitions; they approach this type more nearly, the more the idea is rich in meaning and adequate or true, and the more widely it is spread, and the more powerful and widely spread is the sentiment which attaches value to the nation and sways decision and action men for the sake of the whole, determining the issue among all other conflicting motives.
It is in fact implied in their loyalty, if they are loyal and patriotic, that they shall yield the expression of the national will their individual opinion and shall accept the means chosen to the common end.
But the war has also intensified the antipathy, and given the arguments , of those who decry nationality and deprecate increased force patriotism-for these are but two different modes of expressing the same attitude.
The fact that patriotism of some degree and form is universally displayed, and that it breaks out everywhere into heat and flame when certain conditions are realized, does not for them in any degree justify it; and it should not, they hold, reconcile its continued existence us ; they draw an indictment not merely against a whole people, but against the whole human race.
As a fine example of this method one may cite Mr Stratford Wingfield’s History of British Patriotism, in which he not only confines these methods himself , but shows a positive dislike and contempt for all attempts to apply reason and scientific method to the study of human affairs.
As a fine example of this method one may cite Mr Stratford Wingfield’s History of British Patriotism, in which he not only confines himself to these methods, but shows a positive dislike and contempt for all attempts to apply the study of human affairs reason and scientific method .
[95] In maintaining this attitude, the advocates of patriotism give the claim of their opponents that patriotism or nationalism is essentially irrational , in the sense that it is incapable of justification by reason some colour .
Let us note in passing that neglect of this truth gives two of the extreme forms of political doctrine or ideal , current at the present day ; first , the ideal of the brotherhood of man in a nationless world ; secondly , the extreme form of democratic individualism which assumes that the good of society is best promoted by the freest possible pursuit by individuals of their private ends , which believes that each man must have an equal voice in the government of his country , because that is the only way in which his interests and those of his class can be protected and forwarded ; a doctrine which regards public life as a mere strife of private and class interests rise .
It is important to note that not only do modern facilities of communication render possible a truly collective mental life for the large Nation-States of the present age; but that these modern conditions actually carry with them certain great advantages, which tend to raise a higher level than was possible for the ancient city-state , even though its members were of high average capacity and many of them of very great mental power , as in athens the collective mental life of modern nations .
In these two ways, then;-first, through the culmination of national deliberation among a selected group of representatives, among whom again custom and tradition accord the natural leaders , the most able and those in whose consciousness the nation , in the past , present and future is most adequately reflected precedence and prestige ; secondly, by means of the party system, which ensures vigorous criticism and full discussion of all proposals, under a system of traditional conventions evolved for the regulation of such discussions;-in these two ways the principal vices of collective deliberation are corrected, and the formal deliberations and decisions of the nation are raised to a higher plane than the collective deliberations of any assembly of men lacking such traditional organisation could possibly attain.
When a Russian fleet fired upon our fishing boats doing them considerable damage , the means of communication were sufficiently developed among us to allow of the action and reaction of all on each which produces the characteristic results of collective mental action, the exaltation of emotion, the suggestibility, the sense of irresponsible power; and, in the absence of the deliberative organisation which, by concentrating influence and responsibility in the hands of a few of the best men, controlled and modified this collective action, we should have rushed upon the Russian fleet and probably have brought on a general European war.
It is said that the average man carries within him a germ of an ideal of justice and right, and that he applies the criticism or approval of the actions of other men this ; though he often fails to apply it to his own actions, because, where his own interests are concerned, he is apt to be the sport of purely egoistic impulses.
It is said that the average man carries within him a germ of an ideal of justice and right, and that he applies this to the criticism or approval of the actions of other men; though he often fails to apply his own actions it , because, where his own interests are concerned, he is apt to be the sport of purely egoistic impulses.
Still less does the non-moral man of great ability strive with all his powers to make others act upon base motives like his own and to degrade their sentiments; rather, he sees that he can better accomplish his selfish ends if other men are unlike himself and are governed by altruistic sentiments; and he sees also that he can better attain his ends if he does altruistic ideals lip-service ; and he is, therefore, apt to exert whatever direct influence he has over the sentiments of men in the same direction as the moral leaders, praising the same actions, upholding in words the same ideals.
In this way the men of great abilities, but of immoral or non-moral character, actually aid some extent the moral leaders in their work; whereas under no conditions is the relation reversed; the moral leaders never praise or acquiesce in bad actions, but always denounce them and use their influence against them.
But in America, while the informal organisation expressed in public opinion seems to be very highly developed, the formal organisation is much inferior; it has not yet such traditions as give the best minds the greatest influence and embody the effects of their influence.
Both in the formal organisation of the national mind, which is the parliamentary or other national assembly, and in the informal organisation which is public opinion, we see, then, that (in the nation of higher civilisation at least) organisation results in a raising of the collective mental process above the level of the average minds, because it gives the best minds who form and maintain the traditions , especially the moral traditions a predominant influence ; and these press upon the minds of all members of the community from their earliest years, moulding them more or less into conformity with themselves, fostering the better, repressing the purely egoistic, tendencies.
And the ideal organisation after which we ought to strive, is that which would give the best minds the greatest possible influence of this sort , an influence which consists not in merely organising and directing the energies of the people in the manner most effective for material or even scientific progress, as in modern Germany; but one which, by moulding the sentiments and guiding the reasoning of the people in all matters, public and private alike, secures their consent and agreement and the co-operation of their wills in all affairs of national importance.
In the second Part we passed on to apply the understanding of the mind of the nation as the most important , complex , and interesting of all types of the group mind these principles .
For the formation of nations implies the beginning of civilisation; and civilisation very largely consists in the capacity of a people to subdue their physical environment, or at least to adapt men ’s needs the physical environment to a degree that renders them far less the sport of it than was primitive man; it consists, in short, in replacing man’s natural environment by an artificial environment largely of his own choice and creation.
But these material evidences are not the expression of the mental state of the peoples of India, and form no true part of their civilisation; and, in fact, they affect their civilisation astonishingly little; although if these products of a higher civilisation should be maintained for a long period of time they would, no doubt, produce changes of their civilisation, probably tending in some degree to assimilate that of western europe their mental state .
Kidd, on the other hand[106], maintained that the progress of European civilisation has been primarily due to an improvement of the morality of peoples; that this has led to improvement of social organisation; and that this in turn has been the essential condition of the progress of the intellectual tradition, because it has secured a stable social environment, a security of life, a free field for the exercise of intellectual powers; in the absence of which conditions the intellectual powers of a nation cannot effectively organise themselves and apply the understanding of man and nature , or to securing the traditional perpetuation of the gains which they may sporadically achieve themselves .

Subsets and Splits

No community queries yet

The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.