John Wesley Powell

“ Hegel, seeing the contradictions of Kant and Fichte and accepting their conclusions, developed the most elaborate and artificial philosophy ever presented in the history of human thought—a philosophy of contradiction, a scheme of the negative by which it was attempted to show that words are divine, but the world is finite and contradictory, and that every proposition affirmed of the world contains within itself its own contradiction, and that words must be believed and that sensation, perception, understanding, and reflection create phantasms. ”

“ There are those who affirm that qualities and properties are all one as ideal; there are those who affirm that qualities and properties are all one as real or material. And thus we have an idealistic philosophy and a materialistic philosophy. A few idealists have gone so far as to affirm that not only qualities but properties, bodies and relations are ideal; that there is no material or real world which exists except as it is created by the mind and that all these things exist only in mind. ”

“ It is thus that properties become qualities through our ideals, through the purposes which we have in view. There is no difficulty in distinguishing between qualities and properties as they have here been defined. Properties are not qualities and qualities are not properties, but qualities are founded upon properties. Properties are qualities when they are considered teleologically. It is right, therefore, to say that properties are real in the sense that they are grounded on matter and that qualities are ideal in the sense that they are dependent for their existence upon the mind. ”

“ Red is beautiful in the rose, ugly in the spot of blood on the floor. The sheen of sable in the ousel is beautiful, but the sheen of sable on the carrion-loving buzzard is ugly. If all serpents were harmless, gentle and intelligent, their lithe forms and gliding motions would be beautiful. ”

“ The railway train is fast to the man who is driving an ox-team, but the train is slow to the mother who is on her way to the death-bed of her child. An old man may say at one moment that the day is long, and in the next that life is short. To the laborer who is bent on his task the hum of the machinery is scarcely heard, but on his couch at night the tick of his clock is loud. The razor is beautiful and good in the hand of the skilful barber, but it is ugly and dangerous in the hands of an assassin; thus properties are transmuted into qualities by human ideas. ”

“ If the red lightning and the crimson cloud could change relations to men’s ideas of good and evil, the one as the harbinger of summer rain and the other as a visit of death, the lightning would be a thing of beauty and the cloud a terror. ”

“ It is thus that the confusion introduced by Locke in his discussion, due to the ignorance of his time, was still further increased by Spencer, and his three chapters on the attributes of matter constitute a monument of errors. An erroneous classification is the bane of science, for it throws phenomena into false relations and makes that which is simple appear to be complex, difficult, profound and even unknowable, as Spencer believed. ”

“ The coming of the rain may be welcomed by the husbandman who has planted his field of corn; it may be unwelcome to the belated traveler. Time is long and weary to the invalid on the couch of pain; time is short and joyous to the child in the park. ”

“ From the days of Aristotle to the last book of philosophy, substance and the properties of which it is composed, bodies as compounded substance and hence compounded properties, relations and compounded relations, qualities, and compounded qualities all have been under discussion, and attempts have been made to define them. ”

“ All of this can now be set forth and the truth demonstrated as simply and clearly as a proposition in Euclid, and it must be understood if modern science is to be understood, for upon these simple, self-evident propositions all modern science is founded. ”

“ The watchmaker uses a pin so small that it can be seen only with care, and yet it may be large or too large for the purpose intended. A hill in the Park Mountains would be called a mountain in the Catskills, and a mountain in the Park would be called a hill in the Himalayas. Thus properties are transformed into qualities by ideal circumstances. ”

“ Since Locke’s time this classification has been modified mainly in the direction of his errors. More and more have properties been considered as qualities, and a school of idealists has sprung up who hold that all properties are qualities in the sense in which these terms are here used. At the same time a school of realists has sprung up who hold that there are no qualities, but only properties, as these terms are here used. ”

“ He clearly sees that motions are properties, but he does not see the relation between motions and forces, so he places some of the forces in the second class of qualities and thus includes them in what we call qualities, while others he includes among powers. ”

“ These distinctions, which seem simple and are simple when understood, and may be understood by every intelligent man, have led to tomes and libraries of discussion and disputation not always friendly and charitable. ”

“ Again, extension and form are properties, but they may easily become qualities where there is some purpose in view. A pin may be large or small in relation to the hole which it is to fill in the timbers of a house ”