“ An ignorant mind believes itself omniscient and omnipotent; those impulses in itself which really represent the inertia and unspent momentum of its last dream it regards as the creative forces of nature. ”
George Santayana, The Life of Reason (1905). copy citation
| Author | George Santayana |
|---|---|
| Source | The Life of Reason |
| Topic | inertia impulse |
| Date | 1905 |
| Language | English |
| Reference | |
| Note | |
| Weblink | http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15000/15000-h/15000-h.htm |
Context
“Where no particular events are recognised there is still a feeling of continuous existence. We trail after us from our whole past some sense of the continuous energy and movement both of our passionate fancies and of the phantasmagoria capriciously at work beyond. An ignorant mind believes itself omniscient and omnipotent; those impulses in itself which really represent the inertia and unspent momentum of its last dream it regards as the creative forces of nature. The first lines of cleavage and the first recognisable bulks at which attention is arrested are in truth those shadowy Fichtean divisions: such are the rude beginnings of logical architecture. In its inability to descry anything definite and fixed, for want of an acquired empirical background and a distinct memory, the mind flounders forward in a dream full of prophecies and wayward identifications.”
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