Function

“ We have discriminated logic in its wider sense—concerned with the sequence of characteristic functions and attitudes in experience—from logic in its stricter meaning, concerned with the function of reflective thought. ”

“ The functions of life may be divided into two classes, those which are affected by the properties of this principle alone, and those, by far the most numerous class, which result from the co-operation of these properties with those of the principles which operate in inanimate nature. ”

“ Each comes out of the second or theoretic stage of mental functioning, with its definition of the essential nature of things, its formula of formulas prepared. The whole array of active forces of our nature stands waiting, impatient for the word which shall tell them how to discharge themselves most deeply and worthily upon life. ”

“ And this theory falls at once into the necessary categories of human thought. Life, as generally defined, is a state of organized being wherein there is functional activity; while a state, or status, is an incidence determined by environing conditions. But back of each of these--life and its status--there must lie some efficient cause, producing, in the first instance, the environing conditions, and then the functional activity dependent on organization. ”

“ But there is implied in the conception of such a theory such a location of the process of thought in the process of reality as will222 give it an import both in the meaning of things and in the individual's thinking. We have the beginning of such a doctrine in the conception of a functional value of consciousness in the conduct of living forms, and the development of reflective thought out of such a consciousness which puts it within the act and gives it the function of preparation where adjustment is necessary. ”

“ In the first place, all social actions being determined by the actions of individuals, and all actions of individuals being vital actions that conform to the laws of life at large, a rational interpretation of all social actions implies knowledge of the laws of life. In the second place, a society as a whole, considered apart from its living units, presents phenomena of growth, structure, and function, like those of growth, structure, and function in an individual body ”

“ Consciousness and change, so far as we can watch them, are as functionally interdependent as mind and matter, or condition and substance, are—for the condition of every substance may be considered as the expression and outcome of its mind. ”

“ To which may be added, that, in Nature, when the higher or organic functions are in any way checked or disturbed in their normal efficiency, the otherwise subordinate category of mechanism is immediately seen to take the upper hand. ”

“ What is insisted upon is the relative, instrumental, or working character of the distinction—that it is a logical distinction, instituted and maintained in the interests of intelligence, with all that intelligence imports in the exercise of the life functions. ”

“ To say that mind is a product or function of protoplasm, or of its molecular changes, is to use words to which we can attach no clear conception. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The laws of mind as characterized in the preceding chapter, compose the universal or abstract portion of the philosophy of human nature; and all the truths of common experience, constituting a practical knowledge of mankind, must, to the extent to which they are truths, be results or consequences of these. Such familiar maxims, when collected a posteriori from observation of life, occupy among the truths of the science the place of what, in our analysis of Induction, have so often been spoken of under the title of Empirical Laws. ”

“ Little as we know of the intrinsic nature of this Omnipresent Power, which, in our poor human talk, we call God, we do at least know, by daily and hourly experience, what is the character of its working. The whole experience of our lives teaches us that this Power works after a method which, in our scholastic expression, we call the method of cause and effect, or the method of natural law. ”

“ The problem that confronts you, then, in either kind of analysis, however formal or informal it may be, is, How shall I go to work? The first necessity is the choosing of a basis for division of the subject, whether it be in classification or partition. The necessity for this arises from the demand of the human mind for logical consistency. Life seems often wildly inconsistent, but we demand that explanation of it or any phase of it be arranged according to what seems to us some logical law of progression, some consistent point of view. ”

“ We have completed the survey of the human mind; we have created a foundation, upon which a scientific system, as the correct representation of the original system in man, may be built. In conclusion, let us take a glance at the whole. ”

“ The seemingly fixed character of such a world is found in the generally fixed conditions which underlie the type of problems which we find. We determine the important conditions incident to the working out of the great problems which face us. Our conception of a224 given universe is formed in the effort to mobilize all the material about us in relation to these problems—the structure of the self, the structure of matter, the physical process of life, the laws of change and the interrelation of changes. ”

“ Accustomed to trace the operation of general causes, and the exemplification of general laws, in circumstances where the uninformed and unenquiring eye perceives neither novelty nor beauty, he walks in the midst of wonders: every object which falls in his way elucidates some principle, affords some instruction, and impresses him with a sense of harmony and order. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This last principle, which we may call the axiom of constant result, holds good throughout all our mental operations, not only when we compare, but when we add, divide, class, or infer a given matter in any conceivable way. ”

“ That which is, is for thought, at once the fulfilment and the limit of the thinking process. The thinking process itself is a process whereby at once meanings tend to become determinate, and external objects tend to become internal meanings. Let my process of determining my own internal meaning simply proceed to its own limit, and then I shall face Being. I shall not only imitate my object as another, and correspond to it from without: I shall become one with it, and so internally possess it. ”

“ A right understanding of the mental process itself, of the conditions it depends on, and the steps of which it consists, is the only basis on which a system of rules, fitted for the direction of the process, can possibly be founded. ”

“ The attempt to show as a universal law by what mechanism in ‘Becoming’ the sequence of one condition upon another could be produced, or in what way that which we call a ‘state’ could be imparted to a subject in general, would very soon teach us that these questions are just as insoluble as the question, how ‘Being’ is made. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thus the objective explanation of a subjective fact, once entertained, tends by force of logic to become general, to include a whole class of similar phenomena, to become a system, and, if need be, a cosmological and metaphysical system. ”

“ Even those attributes of an object which might seem with greatest propriety to be called states of the object itself, its sensible qualities, its 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. ”

“ Now, the belief of a rule is a habit. That a habit is a rule active in us, is evident. That every belief is of the nature of a habit, in so far as it is of a general character, has been shown in the earlier papers of this series. Induction, therefore, is the logical formula which expresses the physiological process of formation of a habit. Hypothesis substitutes, for a complicated tangle of predicates attached to one subject, a single conception. ”

“ There are certain broad and general principles which describe very crudely and roughly and inadequately certain phases of certain processes that mind undergoes in organizing experience—perception, apperception, conception, induction, deduction, inference, generalization, and the like. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The activity of the matter is our way of recognising a combination of the measures of structure; the activity of the mind is our insight into the complex of relations whose comparability gives the foundation of those measures. ”

“ Now, the next problem which properly comes before us in this place of our exposition of the human mind, and of the degree of certainty which is attainable by it, is accurately to determine and to indicate the true intrinsic essence of science. ”

“ Between two parts of the material world, or two portions of human history, or two processes of mental effort, analogies may be traced, as well as between the evolutions of matter and the laws of mind. ”

“ Since the faculties of knowing, feeling and thinking, together with desiring, willing and the appetites generally, as also locomotion, growth, maturity and decay, are properties of the Vital Principle, let us inquire whether or not each of those properties is imparted to us by the Vital Principle as a whole—that is, does each of those faculties emanate from the Vital Principle as a whole? do we think, feel, act and suffer by it as a whole, or are different offices assigned to different parts? ”

“ The aggregates of matter we analyze by the use of other matter, adding substance after substance, and varying manipulation after manipulation;—the complex mental phenomena we analyze virtually by mere reflection; the same individual mind being the subject of analysis, the instrument of analysis, and the analysing inquirer. ”

“ This principle, which, as we have seen, is accepted as evident by the common understanding of mankind, is confirmed by all additional reflection and discipline of the mind, and is the foundation of all the theories which have been proposed concerning the processes by which the perception takes place, and concerning the modifications of the qualities thus perceived. ”

“ The system is a manual of Philosophy, a one inseparable whole of metaphysics and physic; embracing points the most interesting, laws the most important, doctrines the most essential to advance man in accordance with the spirit of the times. ”

“ When, however, we find it possible to connect many of these detached generalizations together, by discovering the more general laws of which they are cases, and to the operation of which in some particular sets of viii circumstances they are due, we gain not only a scientific, but a practical advantage ”

“ There is known to us some principle of explanation which declares that wherever any fact, p, of the type to which ɑ, b, c, etc., belong, is presented, there must exist a fact behind or beyond p, namely x, such that x explains p by standing to p in the known relation R, — say, the relation of cause to effect, or of logical condition to consequent, or of teleological explainer to that whose sense or meaning it explains. ”

“ If we contemplate the world and the creatures it contains we shall recognize a perfect order, a regular [152] system, a sequence of cause and effect, a connexion between different categories of existence, and a transformation of beings from one category of existence to another. ”

“ But as we cannot enter into this exposition without introducing a new element of complexity into this long and intricate discussion, I shall postpone it to a subsequent chapter, and shall at once proceed to the statement of two other methods, which will complete the enumeration of the means which mankind possess for exploring the laws of nature by specific observation and experience. ”

“ We must, therefore, content ourselves with what we know, and must include among the effects of causes, the capacities given to objects of being causes of other effects. This capacity is not a real thing existing in the objects; it is but a name for our conviction that they will act in a particular manner when certain new circumstances arise. ”