John Wesley Powell

“ I have tried to demonstrate that an ultimate particle, and hence every body, has five essentials or concomitants, these terms being practically synonymous. It has been shown that there is something absolute and something relative in every one. The essentials of the particle are unity, extension, speed, persistence, and consciousness, which are absolute. The relations which arise from them, in order, are multeity, position, path, change, and choice, which give rise to number, extension, motion, time, and judgment, as properties that can be measured. ”

“ The doctrine that motion as speed emanates from one body as a substance or substrate and passes to another, comes from this source. This relic of ancient philosophy clings to much of modern physics, and is the foundation of a body of speculation in which scientific men indulge when they theorize about the dissipation of motion, the exhaustion of the heat of the sun, and the general running down of the solar system into a state in which life will be impossible. ”

“ In a very brief and inadequate way I have tried to set forth the origin and history of fundamental fallacies relating to properties. This history commences with the early Greeks, but we cannot understand its origin without going back to an earlier stage of society than that in which history presents the philosophy of the Hellenic tribes.
In tribal society all honor is due to the progenitor of a tribe for his goodness and wisdom, and his commands have perpetual authority. The ancient time was the golden age; the present is a time of degeneracy. ”

“ In the development of time into causation, persistence becomes state and change becomes event. In the development of judgment into conception, consciousness becomes recollection and choice becomes inference. ”

“ The unreality of properties when they are confounded with qualities finds expression in many ways. Thus it is affirmed that man is the measure of things, or that man is the measure of qualities, meaning that things or their qualities are generated by the mind. This is true of qualities, as I use the term, but it is not true of properties. Still, the ancients retained sanity, and believed in the thing-in-itself, and called it a noumenon. An attribute of a thing which seems to vary with the point of view is called a phenomenon. ”

“ When a group of kindred is considered with parents and children, and collateral lines of consanguineal members, and further lines of kinship by affinity, the whole group organized into a tribe with authority in the relative elder, and all the items of authority parceled out in a hierarchy of real or conventional relative ages, we have the tribal plan of government.
Honor for ancestors is the most profound sentiment of savage men and is daily and systematically inculcated, so that the younger always yields obedience to the elder, and the elder is always held in reverence. ”

“ At last, in comparatively modern times, another substrate was developed in speculation as a something to which the attributes could inhere. This reification still holds a place in the speculation even of scientific men and vitiates our popular physics. It is the chimera of substrate, this thing in itself as noumenon that leads to the belief in the world only as phenomenon. Since Berkeley and Hume a special school of metaphysicians has been developed who have the custody of this ghost and are its leal defenders. The fifth property, or consciousness as mind, is their ghost. ”

“ In tribal society to say that a man is elder is to say that he is wiser and better and must be obeyed. An ancient who lived in the ancient of days was supremely wise and good. He who can trace his ancestry farthest into antiquity has the most honorable beginning. The most ancient, the first, the progenitor, the prototype, is the one to whom all glory must be given. ”

“ Chiefs, who may be called the priests of the phratry when they become remarkable for their ability or for success in shamanism as diviners, medicine-men, and soothsayers, are held for a long time in great reverence, and their accomplishments are repeated in many a story. So in barbaric society the patriarch—the ancient—is held to be the progenitor or prototype of the gens, the phratry, or the tribe, as the case may be. In gentes, phratries, and tribes there is a constant veneration of ancestral ancients. ”

“ All particles of plants, rocks, and stars have judgments as consciousness and choice, but having no organization for the psychical functions they have not recollection and inference; they therefore do not have intellections or emotions. ”

“ In the last class the particles do not lose their three degrees of freedom of motion, but this freedom is transmuted into coöperative reciprocality. The freedom of the particles by development of motility as a mode of motion becomes the self-activity of the individuals, which is exhibited in promoting the welfare of the individual and of the demotic body.
Properties are not creations of the mind; they are founded in nature and are recognized in nature in the plainest manner, hence they are not artificial, but natural. ”

“ In this realm mind first appears as conception, for concepts require memory and inference, thus only animals have minds; plants do not have minds, but their particles have judgment, for particles have affinity and make judgments of association, and only such judgments. ”

“ In barbarism there comes another element to increase this respect, for the elder is not only obeyed, but is worshiped as a deity. In this manner often the chief of the gens, which is a group within the tribe, and also the chief of the tribe, is worshiped. Dead ancestors are also worshiped as ghosts. Clans of the savage tribe become gentes of the barbaric tribe, and the gentes are grouped in phratries as religious brotherhoods, and the dead chief of the phratry is usually worshiped, while other departed members of the phratry are also worshiped. ”

“ In these chapters it has been affirmed that every particle or body may be considered severally in its essentials or concomitants, and that if we consider one property and not the others we consider it abstractly. Abstraction, therefore, is the consideration of one property of a body, neglecting the others which we are compelled to posit. ”

“ It has been held that mind itself belongs to the inanimate realm, when it should have been held that consciousness and choice only are inherent in this realm, which is developed into psychic faculties only by the organization of animate bodies. ”

“ As all particles, except those of the ether, are organized into bodies, all of these bodies may be viewed or considered from two standpoints—internal and external. If we consider the body internally we consider its particles externally to one another ”

“ In savagery, authority, wisdom, honor, and parentage are so intimately associated in the minds of tribal men, that their demotic organization is dependent upon this compound concept, taken as a single principle. ”

“ Before the birth of chemistry man believed the elements to be earth, air, fire, and water, which elements were mixed in all of the bodies of the world, and it becomes necessary for us to understand how the attributes of bodies were assigned to the several elements. ”

“ I here speak of habitual judgments of intellection as intuitive, as in a later work I shall speak of habitual judgments of emotion as instinctive, and consider presentative judgments as being inductive, and representative judgments as being deductive. ”

“ In molecules numbers are organized into kinds and series, that is, into classes, the kinds appearing as substances and the series as totalities of substances. In stars spaces are integrated and differentiated as figures and structures, and hence forms are primarily organized in stars. In geonomic bodies motions are organized as forces, being integrated and differentiated as coöperative spheres. ”

“ In plants times are organized as causations, antecedent and consequent, as parents and children, and heredity thus appears. In animals judgments are organized, in which times become states as memories and changes as inferences. ”

“ This principle leads to a gradation of the people of a savage tribe into recognized ranks by relative age, and if a man is promoted within a tribe, such promotion is a formal advancement in age, and kinship terms are readjusted so that the age received by promotion may be recognized in terms of address. ”

“ In the ether we do not know of the existence of bodies, but it seems probable that only particles exist. We do know of astronomical bodies, geonomic bodies, phytonomic bodies, zoönomic bodies, and demotic bodies. ”

“ Having set forth the reciprocal properties of bodies, a brief chapter is given to explain how properties become qualities, in which it is demonstrated that qualities arise through the consideration of properties in relation to the purposes of animal bodies, especially of human bodies. ”