Factor

“ Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth.” ”

“ Mankind divides itself into two classes,— benefactors and malefactors. The second class is vast, the first a handful. ”

“ Where the objects classified are mixed states or affections, the products of interacting factors, or differently interlaced or interfused growths from common roots, as in the case of virtues, or emotions, or literary qualities, sharp demarcations are impossible. ”

“ These factors enter unequally into the formation of this individual total. The element that has really the least to do with that subtile force called character is the one by which we chiefly recognize the man. ”

“ It claims that we may recognize in them, in a more or less rudimentary state, the action of the factors which intervene in the case of living beings, the manifestation of the same fundamental properties. ”

“ To form a truth, two factors are needed—a fact and an abstraction. ”

“ By what rational title—even granting for the sake of argument that they are the genuine postulates of categorical and of conditional syllogizing—can this Subject and this Object, these correlate factors in the Self, rank as Ideas with the Idea of their conditioning Whole—the Self, that in its still unaltered identity fulfills, in Practical Reason, the high rôle of Person? ”

“ Wherefore the better to make myself understood that I mean nothing less than words, and directly to demonstrate the point which we are now upon, that is, what is the true end, scope, or office of knowledge, which I have set down to consist not in any plausible, delectable, reverend, or admired discourse, or any satisfactory arguments, but in effecting and working, and in discovery of particulars not revealed before for the better endowment and help of man's life; ”

“ Ralph was inclin'd to pursue the study of poetry, not doubting but he might become eminent in it, and make his fortune by it, alleging that the best poets must, when they first began to write, make as many faults as he did. Osborne dissuaded him, assur'd him he had no genius for poetry, and advis'd him to think of nothing beyond the business he was bred to; that, in the mercantile way, tho' he had no stock, he might, by his diligence and punctuality, recommend himself to employment as a factor, and in time acquire wherewith to trade on his own account. ”

“ If it be remembered that every attribute is grounded on some fact or phenomenon, either of outward sense or of inward consciousness, and that to possess an attribute is another phrase for being the cause of, or forming part of, the fact or phenomenon upon which the attribute is grounded; we may add one more step to complete the analysis. ”

“ And then we are told that the aggregate of the faint is what we call the mind, the subject, the ego; the aggregate of the vivid is what we call the external world, the object, the non-ego. [69] It would seem, then, that the aggregate of vivid subjective affections is the objective world so far as knowable. ”

“ Connected with the distinction just made between ‘object’ in the sense of the qualities actually before the mind and ‘object’ in the sense of the whole thing which possesses the qualities actually before the mind, is another distinction of the utmost importance for a correct analysis of the constituents necessary to a valuable whole. ”

“ Even those attributes of an object which might seem with greatest propriety to be called states of the object itself, its sensible qualities, its [pg 349] colour, hardness, shape, and the like, are, in reality, (as no one has pointed out more clearly than Brown himself,) phenomena of causation, in which the substance is distinctly the agent, or producing cause, the patient being our own organs, and those of other sentient beings. ”

“ Let me then immediately explain that I mean only to deny that the word stands for an entity, but to insist most emphatically that it does stand for a function. There is, I mean, no aboriginal stuff or quality of being, [4] contrasted with that of which material objects are made, out of which our thoughts of them are made; but there is a function in experience which thoughts perform, and for the performance of which this [Pg 4] quality of being is invoked. That function is knowing. ‘Consciousness’ is supposed necessary to explain the fact that things not only are, but get reported, are known. ”

“ Third counter proposition.—"The objective and the subjective parts of knowledge are separable in cognition. The ego and that which is presented to it as not itself, or as the non-ego, are each of them a unit of cognition. Object and subject, oneself and the thing with which one is engaged, are not one unit or minimum, but are two units or minima of knowledge. ”

“ Our preference, however, for the objects of sense, for the pen, and the sun, as typical instances of objects of ideas, arises from the fact that in case of just these objects, it is especially easy, by observing, from without, the acts of the person who has these ideas, to form confident and, for common-sense purposes, relatively exact notions of the selection to which the internal meaning of the ideas has bound the maker of any given judgment about objects. ”

“ For, as we define a concrete name by enumerating the attributes which it connotes, and as the attributes connoted by a concrete name form the entire signification of the corresponding abstract one, the same enumeration will serve for the definition of both. Thus, if the definition of a human being be this, “a being, corporeal, animated, rational, and shaped so and so,” the definition of humanity will be, corporeity and animal life, combined with rationality, and with such and such a shape. ”

“ Still the fact is duly recognized by modern Science that there are differences not only of kind but also of degree in everything—ideas, feelings, desires, actions, objects and attributes of objects—with which we are concerned. Although you may not have a word expressive of degree in every case, yet you can practically ascertain the extremes and the mean in all cases without exception, and can so order71 your conduct as to avoid the one and adopt the other in all cases. ”

“ And since it is by these laws, combined with the facts of each particular case, that the whole of the phenomena of human action and feeling are produced, it is on these that every rational attempt to construct the science of human nature in the concrete, and for practical purposes, must proceed. ”

“ It is a more subtle analysis than the familiar one, which divides the propositions that compose what we believe, into those that are the result of reasoning, and those that are known by us intuitively, and it suggests some curious questions regarding the nature and economy of certain of our intellectual functions. ”

“ If objects are compared in reference to the succession {107} of our conceptions or perceptions, we gain the ideas of such relations as are expressed by the terms firstly, secondly, and thirdly. If objects are compared in reference to the degree of any quality, we gain an idea of such relations as are expressed by the terms brighter, sweeter, harder, louder. If objects are compared in reference to proportion, we gain ideas of such relations as are expressed by the terms an eighth, a half. ”

“ Every social phenomenon results from an immense aggregate of general and special causes; and we may either take the phenomenon itself as intrinsically momentous, or, along with other phenomena, may take it as indicating some inconspicuous truth of real significance. ”

“ We have presented to you, in a brief way, the fundamental principles of the science of character analysis and the nine fundamental variables in man to which those principles apply. Are we not justified in saying that a body of knowledge which has been so classified and organized that the main fundamental facts of it can be presented in a few pages, is, indeed, a science? ”

“ Let us re-state the principle of causality as a universal and necessary law of thought. "All phenomena present themselves to us as the expression of POWER, and refer us to a causal ground whence they issue." ”

“ We know by these, that if an analysis is good, there must be present in each instance of the phenomenon the causes assigned, one or more; and should one exist in a low degree, or be entirely wanting, the others must have a compensating intensity. ”

“ When, therefore, we find that like results are produced through the instrumentality of totally dissimilar causes, we must attribute the analogy to some prior and more potent cause, influencing the whole alike. ”

“ In a word, as we understand by the measure of celestial bodies the relation resulting from the comparison of these bodies with each other, so, by the measure of values, we must understand the relation which results from their comparison. ”

“ For distinction's sake, every fact which is solely composed of feelings or states of consciousness considered as such, is often called a Psychological or Subjective fact; while every fact which is composed, either wholly or in part, of something different from these, that is, of substances and attributes, is called an Objective fact. We may say, then, that every objective fact is grounded on a corresponding subjective one ”

“ Thus we may say that a word embodies a vague idea when its effects are appropriate to an individual, but are the same for various similar individuals, while a word embodies a general idea when its effects are different from those appropriate to individuals. ”

“ Our Theory of Being had especially this character, namely that it did not undertake to demonstrate a priori what particular facts we should meet with anywhere in the world, but that it did undertake to show us a certain method whereby we ought to proceed in attempting to estimate those facts, to interpret them, to find what rank they held in the realm of Being. ”

“ At bottom the process is one of conception, and is everywhere, even in the sphere of simple sensible qualities, the same as that by which we are usually understood to attain to the notions of abstract goodness, perfect felicity, absolute power, and the like: the direct perception of a difference between compounds, and the imaginary prolongation of the direction of the difference to an ideal terminus, the notion of which we fix and keep as one of our permanent subjects of discourse. ”

“ These are the physical and the mental, or, as they are sometimes called, the moral sciences. The proper subjects of the first are the properties of matter; those of the second are the sensations, faculties, and habits of the human mind. ”

“ If we could list all the traits, each representing some one characteristic of human nature, and measure the amount of each of them possessed by a man, we could represent his nature—read his character—in a great equation. ”

“ Once more the attention of the reader is called to the relations which exist between the five essentials and which are then found in the five properties, then found in the five categories, then found in the five properties of change, then in the five properties of life, then in the five properties of mind. Kinds are not alone classified, but forms, forces, qualities, and concepts are classified. ”

“ The student in philosophy will perceive that I allude to the distinction on which so much stress was laid by the schoolmen, and which has been retained either under the same or under other names by most metaphysicians to the present day, viz., between what were called essential, and what were called accidental, propositions, and between essential and accidental properties or attributes. ”

“ In estimating the characters or explaining the conduct of acquaintances or of public men, we frame hypotheses as to their dispositions and principles. 'That we should not impute motives' is a peculiarly absurd maxim, as there is no other way of understanding human life. ”

“ Yet the elementary mechanisms of our life are presumably so uniform that what is shown to be true in a marked degree of some persons is probably true in some degree of all, and may in a few be true in an extraordinarily high degree. ”

“ Hence it has been said,
By Hui Tzŭ. 'The objective emanates from the subjective; the subjective is consequent upon the objective. This is the Alternation Theory.' Nevertheless, when one is born, the other dies. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The instances of new theories agreeing with and explaining old empiricisms, are innumerable. All the just remarks made by experienced persons on human character and conduct, are so many special laws, which the general laws of the human mind explain and resolve. ”

“ Causes are preferable, both as being the surest and most direct of marks, and as being themselves the properties on which it is of most use that our attention should be strongly fixed. But the property which is the cause of the chief peculiarities of a class, is unfortunately seldom fitted to serve also as the diagnostic of the class. Instead of the cause, we must generally select some of its more prominent effects, which may serve as marks of the other effects and of the cause. ”

“ The common quality of all states of mind would be the quality designated by the word "mental"; and besides this we should have to suppose that each separate person's states of mind have some common characteristic distinguishing them from the states of mind of other people. ”

“ Having established the worth of the principles of consciousness, of evidence, and of contradiction, in relation to the dignity of fundamental, we will now examine the intrinsic value of the different criteria. ”

“ Problems.—But in the theoretic as well as in the practical life there are interests of a more acute sort, taking the form of definite images of some achievement which we desire to effect. The train of ideas arising under the influence of such an interest constitutes usually the thought of the means by which the end shall be attained. ”