Existence

“ If we cannot, then, properly say that the Absolute, or the Universe,—or whatever may be our chosen name for the infinite individual which is the whole of existence,—is a self or person, can we say that the finite individuals which compose it are one and all selves, and that the Absolute is therefore a society of selves? ”

“ Absolute Existence is the synthesis of the subject and object—the union of the universal and the particular—the concretion of the ego and non-ego; in other words, the only true, and real, and independent Existences are minds-together-with-that-which-they-apprehend. ”

“ Standing aloof as much as possible from our acquired and inveterate habits of thought; divesting ourselves as much as possible of our natural prepossessions, and of that familiarity which has blunted the edge of astonishment, let us consider what we know to be the fact; namely, that existence, combined with intelligence and passion in many instances, but unaccompanied by any other fact, is the general rule of creation. ”

“ Is it, in its final and pervading Power, a bad or a good sort of universe that we open our eyes upon, when we begin to exercise our senses? What are its final relations to me, and my final relations to it? Nobody doubts the existence of things and persons, so far as they are revealed to the senses. But what is our implied Common Sense of the final meaning of the Whole? ”

“ Is not this point of view, however briefly and crudely expressed, the first principle of existence as it confronts each individual to-day, as it has confronted them in the past, and as it will continue to confront them always? ”

“ The existence or definite realisation of being, that, in and for which only opposition between being and existence is present and necessarily present, is consciousness,—conscious life, the life of knowledge, thought and action. ”

“ And hence, being imbued with the opinion that all existence is particular, they made it their aim to determine, or at least to announce, what particular kind or character of existence the mind, or ego, had. ”

“ Are you the richer for your enlightened suspicion?
Yes, I believe there is existence beyond our present experience; that that existence is conscious and culturable; and that there is a noble work here and now in helping men to live into it. ”

“ Hence it must renounce the thought of itself as the only being whose existence it reveals, and regard itself rather as the image or reflection of a truly Highest and Ultimate Being revealed in human thought, and indeed its essential foundation. ”

“ The condition of existence being what it is, a fallen condition, a state in which a proclivity to sin is the universal rule, how merciful is the appointment of a discipline which should directly minister blessing to the mass of mankind in several ways! ”

“ But what is meant by existence? That separation from the general Being of the world which is involved in individual life, and in the opposition of the subject which thinks, and the object which is thought about. ”

“ Why do I say "existence", and not "existences"? Why, with a fine handsome plural ready to hand, do I wind you up and turn you off, so to speak, with a piffling little singular not fit for a half-starved newspaper fellow, let alone a fine, full-fledged, intellectual and well-read vegetarian and teetotaller who writes in the reviews? ”

“ Our chief distinctive and essential doctrines you hold as strongly as we do—the All-perfect Existence, the immortal human soul. From these necessarily follow conceptions of life and principles of conduct alien to those that have as necessarily grown up among a race which repudiates, ignores, and hates our two fundamental premises. ”

“ Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence. ”

“ We have considered the mode by which, without revelation, we arrive at a knowledge of the existence and character of one eternal, self-existent Creator, and of other eternal beings endowed with all the attributes of the human mind. ”

“ When we turn from ordinary circumstances to extraordinary ones we obtain sufficiently clear indications of the fact that the consciousness of objective existence is accompanied by an unconsciousness of subjective existence. ”

“ What need, it may be asked, for a prolonged endeavour to justify belief in the existence of the house in which we live, the planet on which it stands, or the human beings among whom we seem to play our parts? ”

“ You see here the origin of the division of the One Life of Reason into individual life, and the ground of the necessity which there is, for all who have not raised themselves by Knowledge above mere Earthly and Finite perception, to continue in the faith of this personal existence. ”

“ The knowledge of real Being and real Power, of an ultimate Reason and a personal Will, is derived from the apperception of pure reason, which affirms the necessary existence of a Supreme Reality--an Uncreated Being beyond all phenomena, which is the ground and reason of the existence--the contemporaneousness and succession--the likeness and unlikeness, of all phenomena. ”

“ What being here below, except man, can observe others, measure, calculate, forecast their motions, their effects, and unite, so to speak, the feeling of a common existence with that of his individual existence? ”

“ Now, inasmuch as all being or existence must come under one of these forms, either its phenomena, the means by which they are produced, or the cause which, through the means, has produced the phenomena, there can be but these three departments of conscious perception: the physical or intellectual, the moral or relational, and the divine or absolute, which perceives the absolute of all being. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Or, at least, life is the source from which both the external object of material existence and the inner thought, life, or consciousness, alike take their rise—in this one common notion of life, that which exists and that which is conscious meet together and are fused into one. ”

“ We have already spoken of acts of will; and the popular view declares that we are conscious of an activity which causes states of consciousness to exist within ourselves, and acts to come into existence outside of ourselves, and which is therefore responsible for the actual production of new Being in the universe. ”

“ The answer to the first question: the souls of the children of the Kingdom, after their separation from the body, ascend unto the realm of everlasting life. But if ye ask as to the place, know ye that the world of existence is a single world, although its stations are various and distinct. ”

“ Neither the existence nor the essence of objects is unknown to us. The existence of the soul, the world, and God is known to us, the essence of these partially knowable by the effects which they produce in us and which consist in thoughts and perceptions. ”

“ Unity, Truth, and Goodness.—So far, we have analysed the notions of Real Being, of Becoming or Change, of Being as Possible and as Actual, of Essence and Existence. Before approaching a study of the Categories or Suprema Genera Entis, the highest and widest modes in which reality manifests itself, we have next to consider certain attributes or properties of being which reveal themselves as co-extensive with reality itself. ”

“ By that which is self—caused, I mean that of which the essence involves existence, or that of which the nature is only conceivable as existent. ”

“ But when we speak of self-existence, and, helped by the above analogies, form some vague symbolic conception of it, we delude ourselves in supposing that this symbolic conception is of the same order as the others. ”

“ He had opened up for me the world of the real, of which I had known practically nothing and from which I had always shrunk. I had learned to look more closely at life as it was lived, to recognize that there were such things as facts in the world, to emerge from the realm of mind and idea and to place certain values on the concrete and objective phases of existence. ”

“ Now the sort of 'fact of experience' on which in my book I have proposed to compromise, is the so-called 'mental state,' in whose existence not only common men but philosophers have uniformly believed. ”

“ Every human feeling is greater and larger than the exciting cause, ­ a proof, I think, that man is designed for a higher state of existence; ”

“ It can be regarded from some absolute and transcendental standpoint which humanity can only pretend to attain to. It can be regarded as the highest and best idea which the human mind has as yet been able to form. It can be regarded as dominating and including all existence, [ 381] and as synonymous with all existence when that is made sufficiently comprehensive. ”

“ The direct experiences of the soul, as joy, grief, hope, fear, are purely subjective; the outward causes of these experiences, as prosperity, bereavement, disappointment, are objective. That which has independent existence or authority apart from our experience or thought is said to have objective existence or authority ”

“ But when we look beyond human affairs and the properties of the surrounding bodies: when we carry our speculations into the two eternities, before and after the present state of things; into the creation and formation of the universe; the existence and properties of spirits ”

“ It has been the persuasion of an immense majority of human beings in all ages and nations that we continue to live after death,—that apparent termination of all the functions of sensitive and intellectual existence. Nor has mankind been contented with supposing that species of existence which some philosophers have asserted; namely, the resolution of the component parts of the mechanism of a living being into its elements, and the impossibility of the minutest particle of these sustaining the smallest diminution. ”

“ These interests are, in fact, the eternal and universal forces of spiritual existence, the essential cravings of the human heart, the spontaneous and inevitable objects of human action, justifiable and rational in virtue of their own character, and consequently the very universal powers to which we have referred. ”

“ It is a truth of very wide, if not of universal, application, that every living creature commences its existence under a form different from, and simpler than, that which it eventually attains. ”

“ Thus thoughts and feelings, minds and physical objects exist. But universals do not exist in this sense; we shall say that they subsist or have being, where 'being' is opposed to 'existence' as being timeless. ”

“ Your fine-spun hypotheses, concerning the origin of the human soul, [3] its nature and the mode of its existence subsequent to. physical dissolution, are too meager and unsound,—aye! void as is a vacuum of substance and solidity; nor with all your loudly trumpeted knowledge of the state and status of the soul after its departure from the barbarisms of earthly life, to the true social state in realms where civilization is first truly known, have ye much else than the faintest glimmering of the great reality. Philosophers! ”

“ Such primary assumptions as the real existence of outward things; our own individual personal existence; and the existence of God, are held with very different degrees of intelligence, by the indolent and thoughtless and by those who reflect. ”

“ Such an existence might perhaps be defined as one which, looked at from a purely objective point of view, or, rather, after cool and mature reflection--for the question necessarily involves subjective considerations,--would be decidedly preferable to non-existence ”

“ In this intellectual progress the cruder conceptions of 'matter' and 'self' and 'God,' as well as of the final physical and the moral relations of the three postulated existences, are purified and expanded ”

“ and the bowels of existence do not speak unto man, except as man. ”

“ Whatever things may have been in their origin, they are what they are, both in themselves and in regard to their indications respecting other beings or influences the existence of which may be implied in theirs. ”

“ It is likewise evident that that which is produced with intention has passed over from non-existence to existence. ”