External world

“ Waking the visionary gleams
Around the colder present cast.
Two worlds there are—one, chill and stern,
Is the external world alone,
Whose lessons all mankind must learn,
Whose troubles all mankind have known. ”

“ Order of the external World, as revealed by Science—By it the selfish affections are controlled; the unselfish strengthened—Our conception of this External Order has been gradually growing from the earliest times, and is but just complete—Even where not modifiable, its influence on the character is of the greatest value—But in most cases we can modify it ”

“ In our present inquiry, we shall restrict ourselves to the consideration of the great change which the question regarding man's intercourse with the external world has undergone, in consequence of this discovery ”

“ And it is the social consciousness that defines a most important attribute of externality. None of the qualities of external things, upon which the psychologists who consider the isolated consciousness have insisted, neither the persistence, nor the involuntary intrusiveness, nor the vividness of our perceptions of the external, nor the feeling of resistance which our muscles give us when we touch objects, nor the regularities of our experience of the physical world, seem to me characters sufficient to explain our present consciousness of external reality. ”

“ Thus, then, I insist, neither vividness, nor intrusive resistance to our will, nor peculiarly insistent relation to our muscular experiences, nor regular recurrence, suffice to define the notes of externality as we now are aware of them. It is social community that is the true differentia of our external world.
If I am right, then, a child never gets his belief in our present objective world until he has first got his social consciousness. ”

“ Well, just so, the infant playing with its fists in the field of vision, or making its first efforts at grasping, is indeed meaning to deal with what we call the external world. But it has as yet no such thought of externality as we have, and it can have no such thought; for our notion of externality involves one great element which cannot be present to the consciousness of the infant until the gradually evolving social consciousness has reached a decidedly advanced stage. ”

“ That which other people become aware of when, and on the same grounds, as I do, seems more real to me than that which they do not know of unless I tell them. The world of Possible Sensations succeeding one another according to laws, is as much in other beings as it is in me; it has therefore an existence outside me; it is an External World. ”

“ And this, the conditio sine qua non of our social communications regarding the objects of our common sense perceptions, may itself be expressed as a principle determining a priori the nature of whatever experiences you and I are to learn to regard as standing for external things.
Every external thing must occupy, at any moment, one exactly definable portion of space; this is a simple axiom, but it is by no means self-evident. ”

“ It is extraordinarily difficult to see just what the arguments prove; but if we are to make any progress with the problem of the external world, we must try to make up our minds as to these arguments. ”

“ The ties by which our various diverging tendencies are held together would be quite inadequate for their purpose, without a basis of support in the external world, which is unaffected by the spontaneous variations of our nature. ”

“ And if we find that in our experience of the outward world there are analogous properties and qualities of matter, analogous possibilities and impossibilities, then it will show to us that we in our turn are under analogous limitations, and that what we perceive as the external world is both the external world and our own conditions. ”

“ I, of course, do not doubt that the infant, in the early stages of its life, before its social consciousness is developed, and while its perceptive consciousness is slowly clearing, gets a notion of something that has many important elements in common with what you and I now call our external world. ”

“ Thus, instead of referring the events of the external world to space and time, to sensible connection and causation, men attempted to reduce such occurrences under spiritual and supersensual relations and dependencies ”

“ Nevertheless, any realistic world must contain some objects that are outside of any knowing process whatever, since the relations between the various knowing processes and their objects, even in a world of conscious minds, would have to be external relations, in order to save the realistic type of independence. ”

“ Hence, the external world is but an assemblage of causes, corresponding to our sensations real and possible. Now, in the analysis of Will, the personal force or the activity was a cause; and as the other force or matter is also a source of causes," so nature is sister to man—animated, active, and alive, like him."—p. ”

“ Therefore, as only the definably localizable in space can be independently verified and agreed upon by a number of socially communicating beings, and as only what all can agree upon can stand the social test of externality, the principle that what is for all must, if in space at all, occupy a definite place, and have definite size and boundaries, becomes a relatively a priori principle for the things of the verifiable external world. ”

“ They employ philosophical reasonings to explain what is the least philosophic thing in the world, respect for force and the fear which transforms that respect into admiration.' But the fact remains that the characters of nations frequently change, or rather that what we call national character is usually only the policy of the governing class, forced upon it by circumstances, or the manner of living which climate, geographical position, and other external causes have made necessary for the inhabitants of a country. ”

“ He defines it as "the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations." This definition, when first formulated, was received by all the materialists of Europe with the wildest enthusiasm. It was absolutely perfect. All the phenomenal facts of life fitted into it, as one box, in a nest of them, fitted into another. The universal world was challenged to show that any other phenomenal fact than the one of life would fit into this prodigious formula of Mr. ”

“ It gives them nations, instead of neighborhoods, to look upon and think about. They catch110 glimpses of the international connections of their trades, of the universal application of law, of the endless variety of life, of diversities of race, of a world teeming with men like themselves, and yet full of strange customs, puzzled by dim omens, stained by crime, ringing with voices familiar and unfamiliar. ”

“ Now this country, so wrapt up in itself and the carrying out of its notions of life—among the most precious notions in my judgment that mankind have—finds itself for a long period really the center of the world’s interests. ”

“ We feel it to be some sort of a product (if such a product only could be calculated) of his inner virtue and his outer place,—neither singly taken, but both conjoined. If the outer differences had no meaning for life, why indeed should all this immense variety of them exist? They must be significant elements of the world as well. ”

“ Such an understanding is, after all, but a step towards that iternationalisation of thought, that common fund of human culture and knowledge, which sets itself as an ideal before the nations of the world. ”

“ The very existence of your great country, the principles upon which it is founded, its geographical position, its present scale of civilization, and all its moral and material interests, would lead on your people not only to maintain, but necessarily more and more to develop your foreign intercourse. Then, being in so many respects linked to mankind at large, you cannot have the will, nor yet the power, to remain indifferent to the outward world. And if you cannot remain indifferent, you must resolve to throw your weight into that balance in which the fate and condition of man is weighed. ”

“ This new realm we name civilization. It is super-imposed upon the physical world, but is as distinct from it as thought from the molecules of the brain. Nature furnishes the basis, but social relations furnish the conditions of the human energy that has lifted itself into the mighty edifice we call civilization. ”

“ But to return to things external and sensible from things internal and intellectual...You well know our external state, the character of our men, the sort of food for which they long, and for which they offer themselves to the absyss of death... ”

“ Send your thoughts abroad, send them into the universe to drink deeply of knowledge and learning, to delve into the wells of profound interest that surround us on every side—and forget about the petty commonplaces of life, the unimportant everyday conventionalities. ”

“ But what I see and hear of the outer world is purely and simply a selection made by my senses to serve as a light to my conduct; what I know of myself is what comes to the surface, what participates in my actions. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I suggest we start from scratch in discussing international relations, and do so on the 'societal' pattern of mankind without using the traditional split into 'international law', 'international politics', 'world trade', 'history', etc. Let us regard - thus continuing the Utilitarian approach-the whole fabric of international human relation as producing human happiness and unhappiness. ”

“ But believe me, dear reader, the times and the country, the climate and the water, do make very great difference in the notions which obtain regarding customs, and even morals,—ay, morals. Half the morals in the world are made by society,—and all the customs. ”

“ The establishment of correlation and equivalence between the forces of the outer and the inner worlds serves to assimilate either to the other, according as we set out with one or the other. He who rightly interprets the doctrine propounded in "First Principles" will see that neither the forces of the outer, nor the forces of the inner, world can be taken as ultimate. ”

“ For the past few years our thoughts, quite naturally and rightly, have been abroad, and we have been grappling with world problems because they were more vital to us than the problems of our every day lives. ”

“ In that part of the world, upon that new-found half of the globe, mankind, late in its history, was thus afforded an opportunity to set up a new civilization; here it was strangely privileged to make a new human experiment. ”

“ It is possible that recent events will modify in certain important ways, external contemplation of us as a nation, that, in spite of certain new effects which we may be accused of producing, a consciousness and a recognition of our definite maturity may have some responsive effect in ourselves. ”

“ If you had more knowledge of the world you would understand, perhaps. There's an air about him of the shady Continental adventurer, whose purpose in society, wherever he may seek it, is never a disinterested purpose. ”

“ You could help us greatly by explaining your life to us, who are so different; make it possible that in the future trade and cultural intercourse might spring up between the two alien ways of life. There will be no peace without understanding, you realize! ”

“ If we could realise that round world beyond, then indeed we should go circumspectly.... If the world were like a whispering gallery, what whispers might we not hear now—from India, from Africa, from Germany, warnings from the past, intimations of the future.... ”

“ But independent of these things it should be remembered that every man—private or public—can acquire full world citizenship by learning to think in world terms and developing the world consciousness which makes you feel that you are a necessary part of all that exists. ”

“ The mind therefore becomes, with the progress of civilization, more capable of perceiving relations—more imbued with a knowledge of these relations—more comprehensive—more capable of making remote deductions. ”

“ Supposing we should succeed in exchanging thoughts with the inhabitants of distant worlds and should, through them, acquire the elements of a civilization superior to our own, would this knowledge prove a blessing to us or the reverse? ”

“ Is there to be seen that knowledge of human nature, and especially that peculiar kind of science, most necessary in these affairs—an acquaintance with the character of foreign countries and of the chief actors in the scene? ”

“ This twentieth century not only turns a new page in the book of the world, but opens another and a startling chapter. Vistas of strange futures unfold for man, of world-embracing cultures half weaned from Europe, of hitherto undreamed responsibilities for nations and races. ”

“ If, therefore, the productions of the externals of life differ so profoundly in a complete society, we must expect and allow equally great differences in all the feelings, instincts, and requirements. ”

“ We may conclude our work, by a retrospective view of society, considered in reference to that invisible world and higher region, from which the operations of this visible world proceed, in which its great destinies have their root, and which is the ultimate and highest term of all its movements. ”