Segundo

“ We can define the Other, the true Being, as that which, if present to us in this moment, would end our conflict. In so far it seems something desirable and desired, — an object of longing. On the other hand, we may, and often do, regard Being as that in terms of which our ideas are to be controlled, set right, or, if necessary, wholly set aside as useless. In so far Being appears as a sort of fate, or perhaps as a supreme authority, which judges our ideas and which may thwart them. ”

“ SOCRATES: My answer is, that all things instrumental, remedial, material, are given to us with a view to generation, and that each generation is relative to, or for the sake of, some being or essence, and that the whole of generation is relative to the whole of essence.
PROTARCHUS: Assuredly.
SOCRATES: Then pleasure, being a generation, must surely be for the sake of some essence? ”

“ One kind which exists in those things in which that chief good is brought to perfection: and they are qualities of either the mind or body. But these things which are external, that is to say, which are in neither mind nor body, such as friends, parents, children, relations, or one's country, are indeed dear to me for their own sake, but still are not of the same class as the other kind. Nor, indeed, could any one ever arrive at the chief good, if all those things which are external, although desirable, were contained in the chief good. ”

“ Side by side, my brother, we have studied modern history, meditating over those great catastrophes which are at once lessons to rulers and a warning to the people. Side by side, we have also thought over and formed a common judgment that every century ought to have, and actually has, its legitimate necessities and natural aspirations. ”

“ A second class comprehends all that knowledge which relates to man's welfare, so far as it is determined by his own acts, or what we call his conduct. It answers to moral and religious philosophy. Practically, it is the most directly valuable of all forms of knowledge, but, speculatively, it is limited and criticised by that which precedes and by that which follows it in my order of enumeration. ”

“ A deeper study of the great universal order reveals to us at length the ruling power within it of the true Great Being, whose destiny it is to bring that order continually to perfection by constantly conforming to its laws, and which thus best represents to us that system as a whole. This undeniable Providence, the supreme dispenser of our destinies, becomes in the natural course the common centre of our affections, our thoughts, and our actions. ”

“ But what Reason itself is, and in what a Life according to Reason consists, and what are the relations which are ordered by Reason in a life so governed by it;—these things have been indeed indicated in many ways, but not yet anywhere placed in a clear light. In our last lecture, however, we said—‘Reason embraces only the One Life, which manifests itself as the Life of the Race. ”

“ In our last lecture we set forth the principle directly opposed to that of the Third Age which we have undertaken to characterize,—the principle of the Life according to Reason;—this, namely,—that the personal life of man should be devoted to the Life of the Race, or, as we further defined this expression, to Ideas; and we found it desirable to prolong our consideration of this principle, as one of the more luminous points in our inquiry. ”

“ Such a double life, with double thoughts, double duties, and double social classes, must give rise to double words and double ideals, and tempt the mind to pretence or to revolt, to hypocrisy or to radicalism. ”

“ But in order to know what state will best suit our end, we must reflect. We must interrogate the experience of our past falls, the causes of our sins, the nature of our aptitudes, the excellences, the advantages, the dangers, of the several states of life. ”

“ In limited, close historical argument—in the power to infer a third proposition from a second, a second from a first—the power to expand a fact, either proved or assumed as a trifling postulate, into a series of facts, with undeniable cogency—I think we must go far to find his equal. ”

“ The second proof is derived from the nature of the soul: seeing that the individual soul, like the State, has been divided by us into three principles, the division may, I think, furnish a new demonstration. ”

“ All true political science is, in one sense of the phrase, a priori, being deduced from the tendencies of things, tendencies known either through our general experience of human nature, or as the result of an analysis of the course of history, considered as a progressive evolution.—Mill, Inaugural Address, 51. ”

“ All the doctrines which ascribe absolute goodness to particular forms of government, particular social arrangements, and even to particular modes of education, without reference to the state of civilization and the various distinguishing characters of the society for which they are intended, are open to the same objection—that of assuming one class of influencing circumstances to be the paramount rulers of phenomena which depend in an equal or greater degree on many others. ”

“ This first divine law of nature, if we may so speak, by virtue of which labour and struggle [44] became from the beginning the destiny of man, has retained its full force through all succeeding ages, and is applicable alike to every class, and every nation, to each individual as well as to mankind in general, to the most important, as to the most insignificant, relations of society. ”

“ The second principle is the substratum or essence of the last three "qualities"—the tendencies toward unity, harmony, order, love, which he calls the light-principle. The third principle produces the union or synthesis of the other two—the principle of realization in body and form, the triumph over opposition of these two opposing principles in the exhibition of the real, the actual, the living, the conscious, where dark and light are both joined, but are dominated by another irreducible principle. ”

“ On the contrary, the higher, over-individual ends, as they are sometimes called, — politics, industry, science, literature, art — imply a differentiation among men that in spite of its significance would defy classification. ”

“ The great truth revealed in the doctrine of the Grand Man, as already explained, is, that the order, connection, mutual dependence, unity, harmony, and diversity existing among the heavenly societies, are similar to what we find among the various members and organs of the human body ”

“ Absorbed in a thousand trifles, how has the Nation all at once come to a stand! Men begin, as in 1779 and 1640, to discuss principles, to weigh characters, to find out where they are. Haply we may awake before we are borne over the precipice. ”

“ For the theory of universal order—that is, order as presiding both in the origin and administration of the world—we have the testimony of a vast number of facts in nature, and this one in addition—that whatever is reft from the domain of ignorance and made undoubted matter of science, forms a new support to the same doctrine. ”

“ Each student adheres, by temperament and by habit, to the first or to the second of these gods of the mind. By religion, he tends to unity; by intellect, or by the senses, to the many. A too rapid unification, and an excessive appliance to parts and particulars, are the twin dangers of speculation. ”

“ As we re-ascend along the several lines of progress toward the primitive ages of mankind, and eliminate one after the other, in the order in which they appeared, inventions and discoveries on the one hand, and institutions on the other, we are enabled to perceive that the former stand to each other in progressive, and the latter in unfolding relations. ”

“ Of the three phases through which human opinion passes—the unanimity of the ignorant, the disagreement of the inquiring, and the unanimity of the wise—it is manifest that the second is the parent of the third. ”

“ The Two Principles of the New Life.—First Principle: to arrange one's life on the most secure and tangible basis, not as hitherto upon the most distant, undetermined, and cloudy foundation. Second Principle: to establish the rank of the nearest and nearer things, and of the more and less secure, before one arranges one's life and directs it to a final end. ”

“ In our world all particulars of conduct and goodness, as well as deviations from them, are known; nothing on these heads is, or indeed can be concealed. I am now speaking of an advanced period of my reign; for at first, and in what I may call the intermediate or transition period, it was otherwise. Then there were many laws and precepts established which are now all but obsolete,—for since, the occasion for appealing to them scarcely arises. ”

“ Therefore, in comparison with what we call country—that is, our particular form of government, or our particular set of rulers, or our particular stake in it—what you call the sacredness of human life occupies a very subordinate position. ”

“ Not only the men from our earth who lingered in the world of spirits until 1757 are judged, but the principles which actuated them, the motives, the life, the thoughts, all the spiritual causes which created and perpetuated the civilization of the past. ”

“ In other words, it is a doctrine for a purpose, a kind of tool in a class-war—the end being to bring all men into one class. Second, the doctrine is the reflection of a certain matter-of-fact resemblance or process causing resemblance—which is accomplishing itself in the modern world. ”

“ When any dominant idea, principle, or social force of any kind, characteristic of any phase of civilization, declines, it does not perish, but becomes incorporated into the next higher phase of civilization as a subordinate force or principle. ”

“ The second class, on the contrary,—that of objective relations,—expresses a proportion which is not merely constituted between things by our thinking in an arbitrary way, but which is really extant for the things themselves in such manner that they are reciprocally affected in this same proportion. ”

“ We may readily grant that it is, in one sense or another, a doctrine for chosen spirits, but if history makes anything clear it is that chosen spirits are the necessary instruments of all progress and therefore the chief hope of society. ”

“ Theodore Merz of the Durham University, at the end of his grand survey of the Scientific Thought of Europe in the 19th Century,59 says: "The scientific mind advances from the idea of Order or arrangement to that of Unity through the idea of Continuity." ”

“ So two persons who, starting from these two definitions of progress, set to work to judge the past and the present, Europe and America, will never succeed in7 understanding each other, any more than two persons who, wishing to measure a thing together, adopt two different measures. And the discussion will be the more vain and confused, the less clearly and precisely the thought of each disputant apprehends the primary definition of progress, which does duty as a measure for each. ”

“ The first and most necessary division in philosophy is that which has to do with the application of the principles, as, for example, Do not lie. The second deals with the demonstrations, as, for example. How comes it that we ought not to lie? ”

“ Less clear than the understanding, and not so decided or definite as the will, with more vitality and life than the reason, but at the same time more narrowly limited than the fancy, the immediate sphere of individual existence—feeling, occupies the central space between the four fundamental faculties, as well as between the four intermediate faculties of the second order. ”

“ The first two Lectures embrace, along with the Introduction, the question of man's relation towards the earth, the division of mankind into several nations, and the two-fold condition of humanity in the primitive world. ”

“ Their new thought, which gave foundation to their moral ideals, was the thought of the perfect equality of all men in the presence of the universal Reason, to which all alike ought to conform. Everyone, they said, ought to be rational; everyone ought to try to extend the empire of reason. ”

“ These subordinate peculiarities will depend first on the peculiar genius, idea and work of the nation, and next on the transient circumstances, geographical, climactic, historical and secular, to which the nation has been exposed. The past helped form the circumstances of the present age, and they the character of the men now living. ”

“ For these two terms are more appropriately chosen to describe plurality in the supreme Being, because the word person is applied only to an individual, rational nature; and the word substance is ordinarily applied to individual beings, which especially subsist in plurality. ”

“ The power in the word, then, which I wish you now to notice, is in its employment with respect to doctrinal divisions. You do not say that one man is of one piety, and another of another; but you do, that one man is of one religion, and another of another. ”

“ This division of the functions of the State is based upon the threefold division of the soul. To the rational soul correspond the philosopher-rulers, to the nobler half of the mortal soul the warriors, to the appetitive soul the masses. ”

“ The two great principles which move the [186] world are, the love of wealth and the love of knowledge. These two principles respectively represent and govern the two most important classes into which every civilized country is divided. ”

“ Such historical knowledge as I possessed taught me that a struggle like that just beginning between two great principles, both of which had been gathering force for nearly a century, and each of which had drawn to its support millions of devoted men, was not to be ended so easily ”

“ Confronted by the existing order and the ordinary prose of life they appear before us as individuals with personal aims of love, honour, ambition, and ideals of world reform, ideals in the path of which that order presents obstacles on every side. ”