Essence (philosophy)

“ There is, therefore, the good itself which is beyond essence, and there is that good which subsists according to essence; I mean the essence which is most ancient and most honourable, and by itself incorporeal. ”

“ We learn that the highest is present to the soul of man, that the dread universal essence, which is not wisdom, or love, or beauty, or power, but all in one, and each entirely, is that for which all things exist, and that by which they are; that spirit creates; that behind nature, throughout nature, spirit is present ”

“ That essence which constitutes the real man, which has passed through all the kingdoms below man, which we find specified in every human being as the monad, clothed in different garbs so as to appear distinct, that essence knows all about everything we can think of, and that part of the Universe which we can think of constitutes the omnia for man. ”

“ It is known, in fact, that the essential attributes of things are said by all philosophers to emanate from the essence, to flow from the essence, to follow from the essence, without any other thing being ever mentioned as their principle; which shows the universality of the doctrine that the essence alone is the adequate source of all its attributes. ”

“ And there is an absolute beauty and an absolute good, and of other things to which the term 'many' is applied there is an absolute; for they may be brought under a single idea, which is called the essence of each. ”

“ It is just because all meanings, in the end, will prove to be internal meanings, that this which the internal meaning most loves, namely the presence of concrete fulfilment, of life, of pulsating and originative will, of freedom, and of individuality, will prove, for our view, to be of the very essence of the Absolute Meaning of the world. ”

“ What you choose to call the essence of things may be of this character, but not what they called the essence of things. With the old philosophers the essence of things was precisely that part of them of which a clear conception could be formed: with you of the modern school it is precisely that part of them of which there can be no conception. ”

“ But these may be predicated in senses which are only analogous to each other of the composite essence, of its distinct parts, soul and body, of the attributes or essential qualities of man, and of the accidents of individual men. For instance, the human essence is essentially good; the soul and body are good each in its own order; rationality is good; learning, valor, amiability, moral virtue, sanctity, are good; but there is analogy only, not identity, in these various kinds of good. The same is true of being. ”

“ Section IV Now, since we are speaking of these things, come then, and let us praise the Good, as veritably Being, and giving essence to all things that be. He, Who is, is superessential, sustaining Cause of the whole potential Being, and Creator of being, existence, subsistence, essence, nature ”

“ As applied to individuals, the word Essence, we found, has no meaning, except in connection with the exploded tenets of the Realists; and what the schoolmen chose to call the essence of an individual, was simply the essence of the class to which that individual was most familiarly referred. ”

“ Yet when this spiritual light shall haverevealed the law of more earthly natures,—when he has learned to worship the soul, and to see that the natural philosophy that now is, is only the first gropings of its gigantic hand, he shall look forward to an ever expanding knowledge as to a becoming creator. He shall see, that nature is the opposite of the soul, answering to it part for part. One is seal, and one is print. Its beauty is the beauty of his own mind. Its laws are the laws of his own mind. Nature then becomes to him the measure of his attainments. ”

“ But if it is nothing else than their very essence itself, just as they have not more than one essence, but a single essence, so they have not more than one nature, but a single nature. For I here understand nature as identical with essence. ”

“ That is the initial question, for the intention determines the nature of the essence in everything. What is the most beautiful form in which I can express the good I intend? That is the ultimate question; for the true Beauty which our work expresses is the measure of the Power, Intelligence, Love—in a word, of the quantity and quality of our own life which we have put into it. True Beauty, mind you—that which is beautiful because it most perfectly expresses the original idea, not a mere ornamentation occupying our thoughts as a thing apart from the use intended. ”

“ And sometimes we may know some one or more of those powers or properties,—as, for example, the desires and affections of the soul,—and be ignorant of the essence, and make it the object of investigation. But in many instances, our understanding having assumed all these, the question is, in which of the essences do they thus inhere; for it is after forming conceptions of both—that is, both of essence and operation—in our mind, that we proceed to the question. ”

“ Beneath our experience of life which changes there is this great Living Essence. "I am that I am," profoundly, eternally true, self-consistent, with whom is no beginning of experience or purpose, yet controlling, harmonising, yea, originating all in the unfathomable depths of an eternal Will. ”

“ Essence, in its primary signification, means the principle of individuation, the inmost principle of the possibility of any thing, as that particular thing. It is equivalent to the idea of a thing, whenever we use the word, idea, with philosophic precision. ”

“ For, just as that is more excellent by nature which, through its natural essence, is nearer to the most excellent Being, so certainly that nature exists in a greater degree, whose essence is more like the supreme Essence. ”

“ Essence is a reality which is, or the reality of those things from which it is, and which subsists inasmuch as it is permanent. Now we can speak of the essence, or nature, or genus, or substance of anything. ”

“ But as this negativity, instead of being external to Being, is its own dialectic, the truth of the latter, viz. Essence, will be Being as retired within itself,—immanent Being. That reflection, or light thrown into itself, constitutes the distinction between Essence and immediate Being, and is the peculiar characteristic of Essence itself. ”

“ As the what it means the Essence of things, or the Esse Essentiæ. In this sense, by the Being of a man, you mean simply the definition of what a man as an idea means. As the that, Being means the Existent Being, or Esse Existentiæ. The Esse Existentiæ of a man, or its existent being, would be what it would possess only if it existed. ”

“ There is an only essence, an only substance and an only form, from which are all the essences, substances and forms that have been created. That one only essence, substance and form, is the Divine Love and Wisdom, from which are all things that have relation to love and wisdom. It is also Good itself and Truth itself, to which all things have relation. And those are the life from which are the life of all things and all things of life. ”

“ But if we hold that the substance of things is to be found in that which is the truth for all, that the essence of things centres in that which is the truth for all intelligence, in other words, that the essence of things is to be apprehended by the universal faculty in man ”

“ This essence is a living essence; and, therefore, has inherently the power and principles of action: It is a rational essence, and therefore, must act according to the eternal principles of reason and right: It is a benevolent essence, and therefore, all its actions must be infinitely good and kind. Absolute perfection, infinitude, and sovereignty in all these respects, constitute the Being we call God. ”

“ For so closely are the soul and the sense joined together, that the more part of men affirm the soul and the sense to be one and the same thing, dividing it by operation and not by essence, calling it the sensitive, vegetative, and intellectual soul. ”

“ For the essence of man is that, which we denominate to be his nature, out of or above which he is as void of sensation, apprehension, reflection and understanding, as nonentity may be supposed to be; therefore such revelation as is adapted to the nature and capacity of man, and comes within his powers of perception and understanding, is the only revelation, which he is able to receive from God or man. ”

“ Since, then, it is most patent that the essence of all beings, except the supreme Essence, was created by that supreme Essence, and derives existence from no material, doubtless nothing can be more clear than that this supreme Essence nevertheless produced from nothing, alone and through itself, the world of material things, so numerous a multitude, formed in such beauty, varied in such order, so fitly diversified. ”

“ On these grounds, then, since there is obviously no difference between possessing an essence and being an essence, just as the one possesses the essence of the other, so the one is the essence of the other, that is, the one has the same existence with the other. ”

“ With utmost seriousness he declared that in man was an essence which was his life, and that at death of the body this essence, which was intelligent, took form and somewhere continued to exist. That these essences, not the gods, peopled space, and that, under certain conditions, he had even seen these essences in form, had conversed with them, had been touched by them, and, most incredible of all, he claimed to have recognized in certain forms, friends and loved ones who had gone into the silence. ”

“ Without Knowledge of the Human Nature. “Varied, according to character, are the demands made by heart and mind,” assures us a representative of modern philosophy, “corresponding to them is the image of the world to which the individual turns by inner necessity. ”

“ My purpose, in imagining these illustrations, was to render obvious and palpable the limitations of the intellect, when it attempts to translate feelings into terms of reason, or when it attempts to substitute scientific calculations for spontaneous emotions. The essence of one is [Pg 177] feeling; the essence of the other is logic ”

“ It is soul,—one in all bodies, pervading, uniform, perfect, preeminent over nature, exempt from birth, growth, and decay, omnipresent, made up of true knowledge, independent, unconnected with unrealities, with name, species, and the rest, in time past, present, and to come. The knowledge that this spirit, which is essentially one, is in one’s own, and in all other bodies, is the wisdom of one who knows the unity of things. ”

“ V THE PLACE OF AFFECTIONAL FACTS IN A WORLD OF PURE EXPERIENCE [75]
Common sense and popular philosophy are as dualistic as it is possible to be. Thoughts, we all naturally think, are made of one kind of substance, and things of another. Consciousness, flowing inside of us in the forms of conception or judgment, or concentrating itself in the shape of passion or emotion, can be directly felt as the spiritual activity which it is, and known in contrast with the space-filling objective ‘content’ which it envelopes and accompanies. ”

“ This something—reason, consciousness, soul, call it what you will—unites us to the world; for everywhere in the world reason is at home, and gradually finds itself; it makes us aware of a great order in which we move; it breaks down the barriers of sense between us and the absolute consciousness, the eternal life—"not ourselves," yet in us and akin to us!—whence, if there is any validity in human logic, that order must spring. ”

“ Now regarding the question whether the faculties of the mind and the human soul are one and the same. These faculties are but the inherent properties of the soul, such as the power of imagination, of thought, of understanding; powers that are the essential requisites of the reality of man, even as the solar ray is the inherent property of the sun. ”

“ And that each of these principles (has boundless powers ... everything which you perceive by your mind or which you pass over for lack of thought) [23] is formed by nature to become [each of the principles] as in the human soul every art is to be learned. ”

“ This universal soul, he calls Reason: it is not mine or thine or his, but we are its; we are its property and men. And the blue sky in which the private earth is buried, the sky with its eternal calm, and full of everlasting orbs, is the type of Reason. ”

“ Now as essence is an actualization, and not a potentiality, it unites both terms (existence and intuition, object and subject) , and, without separating them, it makes of intuition essence, and of essence intuition. Essence is the unshakable foundation of all things, and support of their existence; it derives its possessions from no foreign source, holding them from itself, and within itself. ”