John Wesley Powell

“ Then science is born, for science is knowledge, or verified judgments. When science is born, civilization begins. If judgments are incongruous, somewhere there must be error. This is the method of discovering error, which is habitual or intuitive in mankind, developed from infancy in the individual, and developed in the race from generation to generation, through the whole period of animate existence. It is the most profound intuition of the human mind.
With civilization there springs up a philosophy of monism, which is a philosophy of the error involved in judgments that are incongruous. ”

“ There is so much of truth in the philosophy of Pythagoras, that when we consider the universe as composed of properties that can be measured, and that by measure all properties are reduced to number, then all properties can be considered as number. ”

“ There are no plants; we only fallaciously think there are plants. There are no animals; we only fallaciously think there are animals. But there are minds, which, by some occult process, exist not in time or space, and in this occult sense are internal, whatever that may be. The furniture of the world, which we suppose to be external, does not exist, except as fallacy, or, as Hegel calls it, phenomenon. Antinomies arise, when we consider them as realities. But antinomies disappear, if we consider them as ideas. ”

“ The key to the meaning of that which we call ancient philosophy is found in the attempt to discover a unifying principle.
Through the centuries this has been the quest of wise men. The seemingly multitudinous properties and qualities of body must be reduced to some unifying principle. As the individual first guesses and then verifies, as already set forth in the chapters on intellection, so the race, at one time and another, guesses, chooses, selects some one property to which all other properties may be reduced as the unifying principle. ”

“ Hence, he properly explained antinomies as the final harmonizing of judgments by the last process in conception as ideation. So far, I believe his work to be sound; surely it possesses this germ of truth. But he did not clearly understand the nature of ideation, for he was an idealist, and reified the property—the psychic property—of bodies; he was a monist of an abstraction, and he believed the external world to be a fallacy—a phantasm, an illusion, a delusion if you will—something which does not exist in itself. ”

“ Counting on the human abacus had now been developed into the science of reasoning by conventional numbers, and, having discovered that sound is a numerical relation of vibrations of the air, and carrying his magical philosophy into all his ways and thoughts, but not clearly understanding the nature of measure itself, that it is the rendering of one property into the terms of another, until all of the properties are reduced to number, he conceived the doctrine that the universe is a world of numbers ”

“ The literature of the Pythagorean philosophy is meager, yet, from the little that remains, it seems to have been a theory of the origin of all other properties from number.
In mathematics, the science of verification is space reduced to number; motion is reduced to space, and then to number; and, finally, time is reduced to motion, and motion to space, and space to number; and all of these conventional reductions are accomplished by the device of measure. But, in the doctrine of Pythagoras, number seems to have been held as the substrate of properties. ”

“ At last, there arose a philosopher who cleared his imagination of the fallacies of kinds, as earth, air, fire, and water, and made the bold hypothesis that all things are ultimately founded, not on kind, but on its reciprocal, number, for Pythagoras was a mathematician. Then began the theories of reified abstractions, the theories by which the properties of bodies are unified as a foundation for monistic philosophy. ”

“ When we come properly to understand the world, that all things are thoughts, then we see that the real meaning of words is their psychic meaning, and that words can have but one meaning. As commonly understood, apprehended, composed, and embraced in the same senses, have synonymous meanings, but, according to Hegel, and to idealism generally since his time, synonymous words always have the same meaning, and that meaning must be found when it expresses a psychic fact. ”

“ Greek philosophy began with this theory, and there is abundant evidence that other races entertained the same doctrine.
Thus, the most ancient philosophy of civilization started with a theory of three worlds and four substances. We must now rapidly trace its development through five stages, during a period of more than twenty centuries, as it is revealed to us in the history of metaphysic as distinguished from science.
We must consider a little further the misunderstandings of ideation. Every man for himself verifies the current judgments which he makes in relation to practical affairs. ”

“ Kant resolves the world of thought into antinomies of contradictions, and refers us back to the practical judgments of good and evil, which control our acts; but Hegel develops a system in which he refers all of our judgments of an external world to fallacies. The only realities or cognitions are those about “idea,” as he calls it, or those about consciousness, and its development into the faculties of the intellect, as herein set forth. According to Hegel, the only noumenon is the idea. Mechanical properties of bodies are but phenomena. ”

“ The proposition that Being and Nothing is the same seems so paradoxical to the imagination or understanding, that it is perhaps taken for a joke. And indeed it is one of the hardest things thought expects itself to do: for Being and Nothing exhibit the fundamental contrast in all its immediacy,—that is, without the one term being invested with any attribute which would involve its connexion with the other. This attribute, however, as the above paragraph points out, is implicit in them—the attribute which is just the same in both. ”

“ It seems possible to refer to Aristotle as an authority for many of the fallacies which have been entertained in metaphysic, and philosophers usually reverence him as the Master. If I were called on to point out the fundamental doctrine of Aristotle, I should cite his theory of energy, so I call this the fallacy of Aristotle. ”

“ There is kind, form, force, and causation of conception, but there is no kind, form, force, and causation, except that which is ideal; that is, he everywhere assumes, and practically affirms, that the mechanical properties are the creations of the mind. ”

“ Plato thought that properties were given off from the substance of bodies as forms. For a long time it was held by philosophers that force was thus given off from bodies as subtle emanations.
In this stage of speculation, properties were called accidents, and the theory of bodies took this phase. Bodies are composed of substance and accidents; the accidents may come and go, but the substance remains. ”

“ We have also seen how motion was explained as the self-activity of molar bodies, and that the heavenly bodies, which were supposed to be molar bodies, are in motion by appointed paths established by conflict in war, and given spacial or world directions, and that force was considered as will and the cause of motion.
We also have seen the manner in which time was considered as an attribute of space. We likewise have seen the development of the seven worlds into three, as the midworld, the zenith, and the nadir worlds. ”

“ And thus here, as in all other cases where we use words without having clear and distinct ideas, we talk like children: who, being questioned what such a thing is, which they know not, readily give this satisfactory answer, that it is something: which, in truth, signifies no more, when so used, either by children or men, but that they know not what; and that the thing they pretend to know, and talk of, is what they have no distinct idea of at all, and so are perfectly ignorant of it, and in the dark. ”

“ Life is a perpetual exercise of choice. Judgments that are made must be verified in practical affairs, lest the race should become extinct. So, in the making of our judgments, we form a habit of verifying them before we proceed to act.
The immediate judgments of practical life must be verified, but the judgments which we make about future events may be postponed, and, practically, they are postponed in tribal society. But men come at last to seek for the verification of judgments which are more and more remotely practical, for they also are found to involve ultimate welfare. ”

“ Kant gives four fundamental antinomies; but with Hegel all reasoning about the external world, or the four properties of bodies, is fallacious, and the only way to cognize reality is first to cognize consciousness in all its developments, and then to cognize the external world as a system of fallacious judgments. Real cognition must be of the “idea” itself. This is the fallacy of Hegel. ”

“ In this new stage, not only does metaphysic reify, substantialize, or hypostasize the essentials or noumena of consciousness, but it adopts the ghost theory, for the psychic property is considered as a ghost which can leave the body and return to it. The completed stage of the ghost theory is idealism. Opposed to idealism or the ghost theory of spirit—mind or consciousness—is the theory which is most commonly called materialism, of which Spencer is the modern champion. ”

“ As his exposition of the subject is not very lucid, and as men may honestly controvert any statement made of his doctrine, it seems better to look for another master of this doctrine. In Spencer, we have a philosopher who rivals Plato in literary skill. In Spencer’s “First Principles,” where he lays the foundation of his philosophy, he sets forth the doctrine in no uncertain terms. Motion is derived from force, extension also is derived from force, and, finally, all of the properties are held to have force as their substrate. ”

“ So that if any one will examine himself concerning his notion of pure substance in general, he will find he has no other idea of it at all, but only a supposition of he knows not what support of such qualities which are capable of producing simple ideas in us ”

“ Now, in tribal society, the most noble or honorable is the eldest, for that is the method of expressing nobler; elder and nobler are synonymous, for the elder has dominion in tribal society. In the beginning of Greek philosophy, the άρχή, the first, held dominion, and was hence the most honorable. ”

“ If our judgments were not verified until after they are acted on, the race would be overwhelmed by disaster. We have already seen that erroneous judgments vie in multiplicity with valid judgments. If a man should act on erroneous judgments, they would lead him into such mistakes that, almost every hour in the day, he would perform some act causing irreparable mischief. The food which he selects must be properly chosen, but the many things which he might select for food, which are injurious, or even deadly, outnumber the articles which should constitute his proper food. ”

“ Rose-water was the essential extract of the rose, violet-water of the violet, and men were pleased with the idea that they could make of that which constitutes a thing or kind a decoction for a lady’s dressing table. ”

“ All the mythology of the time assumes the existence of the midworld as an island surrounded by an ocean. During the same epoch in human culture the unseen atmosphere was discovered. As the cardinal worlds were gradually abandoned, these properties and qualities of bodies that had previously been classified in the world scheme, came to be classified by a very natural change, as attributes of molar bodies. ”

“ Hence, we find, in the study of Greek philosophy, which primarily is cosmology, the first, or άρχή, of the elements still to be the subject of dispute, and the first is taken as the one from which all others are derived, and hence to have dominion, and so the most honorable. ”

“ So far the deduction of their unity is completely analytical: indeed the whole progress of philosophising in every case, if it be a methodical, that is to say, a necessary, progress, merely renders explicit what is implicit in a notion. It is as correct however to say that Being and Nothing are altogether different, as to assert their unity. The one is not what the other is. ”

“ If any one should be asked, what is the subject wherein color or weight inheres, he would have nothing to say, but the solid extended parts; and if he were demanded what is it that solidity and extension adhere in, he would not be in a much better case than the Indian before mentioned, who, saying that the world was supported by a great elephant, was asked what the elephant rested on ”

“ The word comprehend is used as a sign of a mental and also of a physical act. I may say that I comprehend the pen, when I mean that I understand the pen, or I may say that the different parts of the pen are comprehended in one, as the pen itself. ”

“ Hegel accepted not only void space and void time as realities, but he accepted void essence and other nothings which he included under the term being, and sometimes under the term absolute. The world of sense is seen by every one to be a world of change, and he called it becoming ”

“ And he that inquired might have taken it for as good an answer from an Indian philosopher,—that substance, without knowing what it is, is that which supports the earth, as we take it for a sufficient answer, and good doctrine from our European philosophers,—that substance, without knowing what it is, is that which supports accidents. ”

“ The snares, the pitfalls, the precipices, the floods, which beset his path, are so many that his way must carefully be chosen. The forces which are encountered, as men, beasts, and natural powers, are so many that he must constantly avoid antagonisms. ”