The notion of duty is in itself already the notion of a constraint of the free elective will by the law; whether this constraint be an external one or be self-constraint. The moral imperative, by its categorical (the unconditional ought) announces this constraint, which therefore does not apply to all rational beings (for there may also be holy beings), but applies to men as rational physical beings who are unholy enough to be seduced by pleasure to the transgression of the moral law, although they themselves recognize its authority; and when they do obey it, to obey it unwillingly (with resistance of their inclination); and it is in this that the constraint properly consists. * Now, as man is a free (moral) being, the notion of duty can contain only self-constraint (by the idea of the law itself), when we look to the internal determination of the will (the spring),...
On the banks of the Baetis--the modern Guadalquiver,--and under the woods that crown the southern slopes of the Sierra Morena, lies the beautiful and famous city of Cordova. It had been selected by Marcellus as the site of a Roman colony; and so many Romans and Spaniards of high rank chose it for their residence, that it obtained from Augustus the honourable surname of the "Patrician Colony." Spain, during this period of the Empire, exercised no small influence upon the literature and politics of Rome. No less than three great Emperors--Trajan, Hadrian, and Theodosius,--were natives of Spain. Columella, the writer on agriculture, was born at Cadiz; Quintilian, the great writer on the education of an orator, was born at Calahorra; the poet Martial was a native of Bilbilis; but Cordova could boast the yet higher honour of having given birth to the Senecas, an honour which won for it the...
There was a moment in the last century when the Gallican church hoped for a return of internal union and prosperity. This brief era of hope coincided almost exactly with the middle of the century. Voltaire was in exile at Berlin. The author of the Persian Letters and the Spirit of Laws was old and near his end. Rousseau was copying music in a garret. The Encyclopædia was looked for, but only as a literary project of some associated booksellers. The Jansenists, who had been so many in number and so firm in spirit five-and-twenty years earlier, had now sunk to a small minority of the French clergy. The great ecclesiastical body at length offered an unbroken front to its rivals, the great judicial bodies. A patriotic minister was indeed audacious enough to propose a tax upon ecclesiastical property, but the Church fought the battle and won. Troops had just...
Philosophies are world-conceptions presenting three main features: (1) A systematic comprehension of the knowledge of their age; (2) An emotional attitude toward the cosmos; and (3) A principle that will serve as a basis for rules of conduct. The first feature determines the worth of the several philosophical systems in the history of mankind, being the gist of that which will last, and giving them strength and backbone. The second one, however, appeals powerfully to the sentiments of those who are imbued with the same spirit and thus constitutes its immediate acceptability; while the ethics of a philosophy becomes the test by which its use and practicability can be measured. The author's ideal has been to harmonize these three features by making the first the regulator of the second and a safe basis of the third. What we need is truth; our fundamental emotion must be truthfulness, and our ethics...
Thomas Reid makes his first appearance as a boy in the manse of Strachan in Kincardineshire, where he entered this world of sense on the 26th of April 1710. His father, the Rev. Lewis Reid, was minister of the parish for fifty-eight years, from 1704 until his death in 1762. The mother, Margaret Gregory, was the eldest daughter, by his second marriage, of David Gregory, laird of Kinairdy in Banffshire. An elder son, David, born in 1705, and two daughters, Isobel and Jane, with Thomas, formed the family at the manse when Thomas was a boy. David was twice married, and died about 1780, without issue; the elder daughter, Isobel, died unmarried, in her stepmother’s house at Aberdeen, in 1770; and the younger, Jane, after a mésalliance , died without issue after the middle of the century. Their mother, Margaret Gregory, died in 1732, when the manse was still the...
In the fifth part of Ludwig Traube's Palaeographische Forschungen , (which I had the honor of publishing after that great scholar's death) [1] evidence was presented for Traube's apparently certain discovery of the very handwriting of John the Scot. In manuscripts of Reims, of Laon, and of Bamberg, he had observed certain marginal notes which were neither omitted sections nor glosses, but rather the author's own amplifications and embellishments of his work. Johannes had made such additions to his De Divisione Naturae in the Reims manuscript, and they all appear in that of Bamberg. In the latter manuscript there are fresh additions—or enlargements as I shall call them in the present paper—which have similarly been absorbed into the text in two manuscripts now in Paris. We thus have, in an interesting series, the author's successive recensions of his work. One of the shorter forms is the basis of the text...
SOCRATES: Why have you come at this hour, Crito? it must be quite early? CRITO: Yes, certainly. SOCRATES: What is the exact time? CRITO: The dawn is breaking. SOCRATES: I wonder that the keeper of the prison would let you in. CRITO: He knows me, because I often come, Socrates; moreover, I have done him a kindness. SOCRATES: And are you only just arrived? CRITO: No, I came some time ago. SOCRATES: Then why did you sit and say nothing, instead of at once awakening me? CRITO: I should not have liked myself, Socrates, to be in such great trouble and unrest as you are—indeed I should not: I have been watching with amazement your peaceful slumbers; and for that reason I did not awake you, because I wished to minimize the pain. I have always thought you to be of a happy disposition; but never did I see anything...
Published by THE VEDANTA SOCIETY OF SAN FRANCISCO 2963 Webster Street San Francisco, California U. S. A. Copyright, 1921, by Vedanta Society of S. F. THE INNER CONSCIOUSNESS How to Awaken and Direct It In theoretical as well as applied psychology no term is more misleading, or confusing than the term consciousness. We use the term often in our conversation; we come across it in our study; but when we are asked to define it properly, to explain its significance, its meaning, or the idea for which that word stands, we are unable to do so. And that is because there are so many varied ideas concerning consciousness. There are so many aspects of consciousness, there are so many states of consciousness that we get mixed up—that is, we confuse one with the other. So we must know thoroughly the true significance of the term. Then we can make...
Some people are subject to a certain delicacy of passion , which makes them extremely sensible to all the accidents of life, and gives them a lively joy upon every prosperous event, as well as a piercing grief when they meet with misfortune and adversity. Favours and good offices easily engage their friendship, while the smallest injury provokes their resentment. Any honour or mark of distinction elevates them above measure, but they are sensibly touched with contempt. People of this character have, no doubt, more lively enjoyments, as well as more pungent sorrows, than men of cool and sedate tempers. But, I believe, when every thing is balanced, there is no one who would not rather be of the latter character, were he entirely master of his own disposition. Good or ill fortune is very little at our disposal; and when a person that has this sensibility of temper meets...
hê gar noy enhergeia zôhê hê gar noy enhergeia zôhê Introduction THE SUBJECT OF THIS WORK, ITS METHOD AND ANTECEDENTS Progress is relative to an ideal which reflection creates.—Efficacious reflection is reason.—The Life of Reason a name for all practical thought and all action justified by its fruits in consciousness.—It is the sum of Art.—It has a natural basis which makes it definable.—Modern philosophy not helpful.—Positivism no positive ideal.—Christian philosophy mythical: it misrepresents facts and conditions.—Liberal theology a superstitious attitude toward a natural world.—The Greeks thought straight in both physics and morals.—Heraclitus and the immediate.—Democritus and the naturally intelligible.—Socrates and the autonomy of mind.—Plato gave the ideal its full expression.—Aristotle supplied its natural basis.—Philosophy thus complete, yet in need of restatement.—Plato’s myths in lieu of physics.—Aristotle’s final causes.—Modern science can avoid such expedients.—Transcendentalism true but inconsequential.—Verbal ethics.—Spinoza and the Life of Reason.—Modern and classic sources of inspiration. Pages 1...
"Les preuves de Dieu métaphysiques sont si éloignées du raisonnement des hommes, et si impliquées, qu'elles frappent peu; et quand cela serviroit à quelques-uns, ce ne seroit que pendant l'instant qu'ils voient cette démonstration; mais, une heure après, ils craignent de s'être trompés. Quod curiositate cognoverint, superbiâ amiserunt. " — Pensées de Pascal , II, xv. 2. A question which every author ought to ask of himself before he sends forth his work, and one which must occur to every thoughtful reader, is the inquiry, Cui bono? —what justification has one for treating the subject at all, and why in the particular way which he has chosen? To the pertinency of this question to the present treatise the author has been deeply sensible, and therefore cannot forbear a few prefatory words of explanation of his object and method. In accounts of the theistic argument, as in the history of philosophy...
As some apology may be thought necessary for having introduced certain unusual words of Greek origin, I shall only observe, that, as all arts and sciences have certain appropriate terms peculiar to themselves, philosophy, which is the art of arts, and science of sciences, as being the mistress of both, has certainly a prior and a far superior claim to this privilege. I have not, however, introduced, I believe, any of these terms without at the same time sufficiently explaining them; but, lest the contrary should have taken place, the following explanation of all such terms as I have been able to recollect, and also of common words used by Platonists in a peculiar sense, is subjoined for the information of the reader. Anagogic, [Greek: anagogikos]. Leading on high. Demiurgus, [Greek: demiourgos]. Jupiter, the artificer of the universe. Dianoetia. This word is derived from [Greek: dianoia], or that power of...
There is a curious impression to-day in the world of thought that Pragmatism is the most audacious of philosophic novelties, the most anarchical transvaluation of all respectable traditions. Sometimes it is pictured as an insurgence of emotion against logic, sometimes as an assault of theology upon the integrity of Pure Reason. One day it is described as the reckless theorizing of dilettanti whose knowledge of philosophy is too superficial to require refutation, the next as a transatlantic importation of the debasing slang of the Wild West. Abroad it is frequently denounced as an outbreak of the sordid commercialism of the Anglo-Saxon mind. All these ideas are mistaken. Pragmatism is neither a revolt against philosophy nor a revolution in philosophy, except in so far as it is an important evolution of philosophy. It is a collective name for the most modern solution of puzzles which have impeded philosophical progress from time...
The volume before us brings us at once to a period which, in the matter of time, lies a full generation behind us, but which is as foreign to the present generation in Germany as if it were quite a century old. And, still, it was the period of the preparation of Germany for the revolution of 1848, and all that has happened to us since is only a continuation of 1848, only a carrying out of the last will and testament of the revolution. Just as in France in the eighteenth, so in Germany in the nineteenth century, revolutionary philosophic conceptions introduced a breaking up of existing political conditions. But how different the two appear! The French were engaged in open fight with all recognized science, with the Church, frequently also with the State, their writings were published beyond the frontiers in Holland or in England, and they themselves...
Confucius was born in the year 550 b.c. , [1] in the land of Lu, in a small village, situated in the western part of the modern province of Shantung. His name was K'ung Ch'iu, and his style (corresponding to our Christian name) was Chung-ni. His countrymen speak of him as K'ung Fu-tzu, the Master, or philosopher K'ung. This expression was altered into Confucius by the Jesuit missionaries who first carried his fame to Europe. Since the golden days of the Emperors Yao and Shun, the legendary founders of the Chinese Empire, nearly two thousand years had passed. Shun chose as his successor Yü, who had been his chief minister, a man whose devotion to duty was such that when engaged in draining the empire of the great flood—a task that took eight years to accomplish—he never entered his home till the work was done, although in the course of...
EDUCATION—INTELLECTUAL, MORAL, AND PHYSICAL. 1 vol., 12mo. Cloth, $1.25. A NEW SYSTEM OF PHILOSOPHY. Vol. I. FIRST PRINCIPLES. Large 12mo. 503 pages. Cloth $2.00. PRINCIPLES OF BIOLOGY. In Quarterly Parts, by Subscription. $2.00 per year. NOW IN PRESS: ESSAYS—MORAL, POLITICAL, AND ÆSTHETIC. 1 vol., large 12mo. Cloth. Copies sent by mail, postpaid, on receipt of price. Entered , according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. The author of the following work, Mr. Herbert Spencer, of England, has entered upon the publication of a new philosophical system, so original and comprehensive as to deserve the attention of all earnest inquirers. He proposes nothing less than to unfold such a complete philosophy of Nature, physical, organic, mental and social, as Science has now for the first...
It seems impossible to separate by any exact line the genuine writings of Plato from the spurious. The only external evidence to them which is of much value is that of Aristotle; for the Alexandrian catalogues of a century later include manifest forgeries. Even the value of the Aristotelian authority is a good deal impaired by the uncertainty concerning the date and authorship of the writings which are ascribed to him. And several of the citations of Aristotle omit the name of Plato, and some of them omit the name of the dialogue from which they are taken. Prior, however, to the enquiry about the writings of a particular author, general considerations which equally affect all evidence to the genuineness of ancient writings are the following: Shorter works are more likely to have been forged, or to have received an erroneous designation, than longer ones; and some kinds of composition,...
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK LONDON, BOMBAY AND CALCUTTA 1912 COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY HENRY JAMES JR. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED The present volume is an attempt to carry out a plan which William James is known to have formed several years before his death. In 1907 he collected reprints in an envelope which he inscribed with the title ‘Essays in Radical Empiricism’; and he also had duplicate sets of these reprints bound, under the same title, and deposited for the use of students in the general Harvard Library, and in the Philosophical Library in Emerson Hall. Two years later Professor James published The Meaning of Truth and A Pluralistic Universe , and inserted in these volumes several of the articles which he had intended to use in the ‘Essays in Radical Empiricism.’ Whether he would nevertheless have carried out his original plan, had he lived,...
It seems impossible to separate by any exact line the genuine writings of Plato from the spurious. The only external evidence to them which is of much value is that of Aristotle; for the Alexandrian catalogues of a century later include manifest forgeries. Even the value of the Aristotelian authority is a good deal impaired by the uncertainty concerning the date and authorship of the writings which are ascribed to him. And several of the citations of Aristotle omit the name of Plato, and some of them omit the name of the dialogue from which they are taken. Prior, however, to the enquiry about the writings of a particular author, general considerations which equally affect all evidence to the genuineness of ancient writings are the following: Shorter works are more likely to have been forged, or to have received an erroneous designation, than longer ones; and some kinds of composition,...
2. There can be no doubt that the founder of the Milesian school, and therefore the first of the cosmologists, was Thales; [55] but all we can really be said to know of him comes from Herodotos, and the romance of the Seven Wise Men was already in existence when he wrote. He tells us, in the first place, that Thales was of Phoenician descent, a statement which other writers explained by saying he belonged to the Thelidai, a noble house descended from Kadmos and Agenor. [56] This is clearly connected with the view of Herodotos that there were “Kadmeians” from Boiotia among the original Ionian colonists, and it is certain that there really were people called Kadmeians in several Ionic cities. [57] Whether they were of Semitic origin is, of course, another matter. Herodotos probably mentions the supposed descent of Thales simply because he was believed to have introduced...