Elements

“ When we know the elements out of which our bodies are composed, elements in common to the humblest vegetable plants, can it signify whether the All-Wise combined those elements out of one form more than another, in order to create that in which He has placed the capacity to receive the idea of Himself, and all the varied grandeurs of intellect to which that idea gives birth? ”

“ We take elements which at the first glance are unconnected; these arrange themselves in an unexpected order, and form a harmonious whole. We cannot believe that this unexpected harmony is a mere result of chance. ”

“ Neither can I admit in reason that the Elements should be called, first, pure, and simple beings; we might as well call all other creatures, first, pure, and simple beings: for although the word Element sounds as much as Principle, yet they are in my reason no more Principles of Nature, then other Creatures are, there being but one Principle in Nature, out of which all things are composed, viz. the onely matter, which is a pure and simple corporeal substance ”

“ Such a relation as we have asserted between the individual whole of Reality and the elements or terms within the whole is necessarily unique, and cannot be adequately illustrated from any less perfect type of systematic unity recognised by everyday or by scientific thought. ”

“ The matter, which is the direct position of God, which fills the whole universe, which is the time in a state of tension and motion, the formed space, the heavy primary essence, I call the Primary matter, the matter of the world, cosmic matter, Æther. The æther is the first realization of God, the eternal position of the same. It is the first matter of creation. ”

“ Nature could only be understood from its highest forms; the Ideal, which revealed itself to the world of men at their highest development, was present, in possibility and intent, in the first germ, in the mist of primeval creation, before it divided itself into organic and inorganic elements. ”

“ Intermingled with this space there exists all the varieties of the elements, properties, or things of which intelligence takes cognizance; which elements or things taken altogether compose what is called the Universe. ”

“ And if we admit, with the ancient philosophers, that every such substance is resolvable into one or more of the elements, and that all the elements are but different modifications of one common matter, how wonderful a thing must Form be, since it imparts such varied appearances and qualities to one common substratum? ”

“ We have heretofore, in the discussion of association of ideas, very frequently represented the states of consciousness as fixed elements that approach one another, cohere, separate, come together anew, but always unalterable, like atoms. ”

“ WE have given the appellation of Ideas to certain comprehensive forms of thought,—as space, number, cause, composition, resemblance,—which we apply to the phenomena which we contemplate. But the special modifications of these ideas which are 31 exemplified in particular facts, we have termed Conceptions; as a circle, a square number, an accelerating force, a neutral combination of elements, a genus. ”

“ We know that earth, water, fire and air, in their various compositions subserve us, and we also know that these elements are devoid of reflection, reason, or design; from whence we may easily infer, that a wise, understanding, and designing being has ordained them to be thus subservient. ”

“ Taking the factors just named as the direct factor, and contrasting them with the less directly associated elements as the indirect factor, I should say that the former decidedly outweighs the latter in what we call beauty of form. Every beautiful form will, I think, be found to owe its charm in the main either to the specially pleasurable character of its elements (ocular or tactual) , or to the presence of a large number of distinct aspects of variety and unity. ”

“ What is the world made of? According to the ancient doctrine of the Four Elements, all things are formed of fire, air, earth, and water; and the varieties and differences in the properties of bodies depend entirely on the proportion in which these great principles are mingled. ”

“ The prevalent view of the subject, that the elements are elementary, is held by philosophical chemists in a purely provisional way. We need a convenient working hypothesis, and these sixty-three substances are elements for aught we absolutely know to the contrary. ”

“ Indeed when I considered that the Tenents concerning the Elements are as considerable amongst the Doctrines of natural Philosophy as the Elements themselves are among the bodies of the Universe, I expected to find those Opinions solidly establish’d, upon which so many others are superstructed. ”

“ When once this arbitrary abstraction of some one part or aspect of the stream of events from its context has been made, we are compelled to recognise the existence of the context from which we have abstracted by saying that any effect may enter into or form part of a variety of different larger effects, according to the nature of the context in which it occurs. ”

“ Reality, we have seen, is to be thought of as a systematic whole forming a single individual experience, which is composed of elements or constituents which are in their turn individual experiences. In each of these constituents the nature of the whole system manifests itself in a special way. Each of them contributes its own peculiar content to the whole system, and as the suppression or change of any one of them would alter the character of the whole, so it is the nature of the whole which determines the character of each of its constituents. ”

“ The combination of the two elements, the subjective or ideal, and the objective or observed, is necessary, in order to give us any insight into the laws of nature. But different persons, according to their mental habits and constitution, may be inclined to dwell by preference upon the one or the other of these two elements. ”

“ They may or may not be homogeneous. The highest or organic purities are composed of many elements in an entirely helpful state. The highest and first law of the universe—and the other name of life, is, therefore, “help.” ”

“ Besides the invisible and imperishable forms of the elements, and the visible images of these Forms—namely, the elements themselves—there is a third kind of being, a formless space or chaos, where these images are stored up, and which is the source and nurse of all generation. ”

“ Of the kinds of compounds, what relation they stand in to the Elements, and what relation there is betwixt the Elements themselves, and the soul, senses, and dispositions of men.
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Chap. 8. How the Elements are in the Heavens, in Stars, in Divels, in Angels, and lastly in God himself. ”

“ Hence bodies may be discovered, which,—from the imperfections of science,—resisting our means of analysis, must, for a time, be regarded as new elements, whereas they are possibly only altered states of the same substance. ”

“ We must reckon among the things which are the topic of discussion, human persons, animals, plants, greater and smaller inorganic masses, in a word, whatever the most matter-of-fact common-sense thinking recognises as possessed of a character in virtue of which it can as a whole determine the course of experience at a given moment. The character or aspect in virtue of which such a whole determines the course of experience in this one special way rather than another, is by this definition excluded from our conception of a thing ”

“ The earliest ideas that have come down to us concerning the natures of the elements were wrong; and only in quite recent times has the composition of matter in its various forms been better understood. ”

“ Thus by these five elements of Matter put forth from primary energy and these five sense relations through which Matter is known is evolved what;we would call in modern language tine objective aspect of cosmic existence. ”

“ They are constituent parts of the universe, in which as yet no distinctions reside. So soon as distinctions occur in the elements, they cease to be general matters, and become particular or individual things. The sum of the individuals is the Kingdoms of Nature. ”

“ In the present Book we shall discuss some of the leading characteristics which everyday thought and scientific thought respectively assign to the physical order, and shall ask how these characteristics compare with those we have seen ground to ascribe to Reality, i.e. we shall attempt to form a theory of the place of physical existence in the whole system of Reality. ”

“ What the principle of Ground and Consequence says is, that the whole of existence is a single coherent system in which every part is determined by the nature of the whole as revealed in the complete system. ”

“ I had discovered, early in my researches, that their doctrine was no merely chemical phantasy, but a philosophy they applied to the world, to the elements and to man himself; ”

“ Substance and Quality. The identification of the substance of things with their primary qualities, though useful in physical science, is metaphysically unjustifiable. § 5. Substance as an “unknowable substratum of qualities” adds nothing to our understanding of their connection. § 6. The thing cannot be a mere collection of qualities without internal unity. § 7. The conception of a thing as the law or mode of relation of its states useful but metaphysically unsatisfactory. ”

“ In our view of the underlying reality of the physical order, as explained in the last chapter, we have scarcely gone further, except in the explicitness of our phraseology, than we should be followed by many who profess a complete disbelief in metaphysical construction and an exclusive devotion to positive natural science. ”

“ Matter is, in its constituent elements, the same as spirit; existence is one, however manifold in its phenomena; life is one, however multiform in its evolution. ”

“ We analyse experience with a view to discovering its implications, and we analyse our various scientific and unscientific theories of the contents of the world-system for the same purpose. Also, once having determined what are the formal characteristics of an all-embracing, systematic whole of experienced fact, we criticise our various concepts and theories by reference to these characteristics as an ultimate standard of reality and truth. ”

“ Again, before we can attack these momentous problems with any reasonable hope of success, we shall need to know which among the categories employed by the various sciences dealing with mental life are of fundamental significance, and what is the logical relation of those sciences to the concrete realities of immediate experience, and to the constructions of physical science. ”

“ Now this attitude of scientific investigation is clearly not the only one which we can take up towards the ultimately real. We may, for instance, seek to gain emotional harmony and peace of mind by yielding up the conduct of our practical life to the unquestioned guidance of what we directly feel to be the deepest and most abiding elements in the structure of the universe. ”

“ To regard all things and principles of things as inconstant modes or fashions has more and more become the tendency of modern thought. Let us begin with that which is without—our physical life. Fix upon it in one of its more exquisite intervals, the moment, for instance, of delicious recoil from the flood of water in summer heat. What is the whole physical life in that moment but a combination of natural elements to which science gives their names? But these elements, phosphorus and lime and delicate fibres, are present not in the human body alone: ”

“ Thus has arisen a theory of the division of existence into 195two great orders, the physical and the psychical, which so dominates our ordinary thought about the world, that all the efforts of philosophers, both spiritualist and materialist, to reduce the two orders once more to one seem powerless to make any impression on the great majority of minds. ”

“ We must remember that many of the divisions between things which we adopt in our descriptive science may be merely subjective demarcations, convenient for our own special purposes but possibly not answering to any more fundamental distinctions founded on the nature of the realities of the physical order themselves. ”

“ The internal evidence, derived from examination of the fundamental concepts of scientific Mechanism, thus confirms the view we have already adopted on different grounds, that the whole physical order is merely the appearance of a more ultimate reality of a kind akin to our own sentient and purposive life. ”

“ What canst thou see elsewhere, that thou canst not see here? Behold the Heaven and the earth and all the elements; for of these are all things created. ”

“ Again, in dealing with the more complex special problems of Metaphysics, it is natural to recognise a distinction corresponding to the separation of Cosmology from Rational Psychology. Common language shows that for most of the purposes of human thought and action the contents of the world of experience tend to fall into the two groups of mere things and things which are sentient and purposive—Physical Nature on the one hand, and Minds or Spirits on the other.other. ”

“ By making a distinction between reality and appearance the sciences remove some of these contradictions, but themselves lead to further difficulties of the same sort; hence the need for systematic inquiry into the meaning of the distinction between the real and the apparent, and the general character of reality as such. ”

“ The identity of every Different, or of all things among themselves and with the highest unity, is the essence of things. The limitation or definition of the Ideal is their form. Limitation is the Impartient of form. ”