Intermediate form

“ It is now clear that the action of bodies upon each other, according to their forms, prepares the substance for receiving the action of an incorporeal being, or Form. The existence of actions of purely incorporeal beings, in every case of change that does not originate in the mere combination of elements, is now firmly established. ”

“ Here we are introduced to the truth next to be dealt with: that not only do conditions determine the various forms which compound heads assume, but that conditions determine the various changes they undergo. There are two leading kinds of such changes—those through which the compound head passes toward a less popular form, and those through which it passes toward a more popular form. ”

“ Categories as modes of understanding, schemata as modes of productive imagination, data of sense as modes of affection, are linked together, and appear to have a nature and existence independently of one another, and of the synthesis in which they are combined. ”

“ The organic form, on the other hand, is innate; it shapes, as it develops, itself from within, and the fulness of its development is one and the same with the perfection of its outward form. Such as the life is, such is the form. ”

“ We have given the history of the different forms which they successively assume, and we have shown, that in all these changes they remain the same, and of the same authority, whether they enter spontaneously and involuntarily into exercise, and apply themselves to particular and determinate objects, or reflection turns them back upon themselves in order to interrogate them in regard to their nature, or abstraction makes them appear under the form in which their universality and their necessity are manifest. ”

“ First, we have shown that the essentials of properties are their substrates severally; unity is the substrate of number, extension is the substrate of space, speed is the substrate of motion, consciousness is the substrate of judgment.
Second, we have shown that the quantitative properties are the substrates of the categoric properties; number is the substrate of kind, space is the substrate of form, motion is the substrate of force, time is the substrate of causation, and judgment is the substrate of conception. ”

“ But by the fluctuations and permutations of which we have spoken, we come to form a pretty good notion of the direction in which each element differs from the rest, and so we frame the notion of it as a terminus, and continue to mean it as an individual thing. In the case of many elements, the simple sensibles, like heat, cold, the colors, smells, etc., the extremes of the directions are almost touched, and in these instances we have a comparatively exact perception of what it is we mean to abstract. ”

“ It is equally certain, however, that the elements of its composition, if they did not exist in one form, must exist in another; and that the combinations which they would form, must so long as they endured, derive support for their peculiar mode of being from their fitness to the circumstances of their situation. ”

“ In the development of number into class, unity becomes kind and plurality becomes series. In the development of space into form, extension becomes figure and position becomes structure. In the development of motion into force, speeds becomes velocity and path becomes inertia. In the development of time into causation, persistence becomes state and change becomes event. In the development of judgment into conception, consciousness becomes recollection and inference becomes conception. Hence the classific properties are class, form, force, causation, and conception. ”

“ If we examine the matter closely, we will see that all the cases considered come under the head of form—worlds, plants, animals, men. But there is another great class of cases which fall under the head of forces or principles, and these when carefully examined are found not to be variables but constants—the constants of nature. ”

“ The definite combination of heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and successive, is a formula which fails to call up an adequate conception. And it fails from omitting the most distinctive peculiarity—the peculiarity of which we have the most familiar experience, and with which our notion of Life is, more than with any other, associated. ”

“ To the foregoing examples from physical science, let us add another from mental. The following is one of the simple laws of mind: Ideas of a pleasurable or painful character form associations more easily and strongly than other ideas, that is, they become associated after fewer repetitions, and the association is more durable. This is an experimental law, grounded on the Method of Difference. ”

“ By the side of these concentrations caused by continuous apperceptions, the primitive concrete thinking, along with all the intermediate steps between the concrete object and the abstract concept, always preserves its own value peculiar to each of these steps. ”

“ These mixed modes, being also such combinations of simple ideas as are not looked upon to be characteristical marks of any real beings that have a steady existence, but scattered and independent ideas put together by the mind, are thereby distinguished from the complex ideas of substances. ”

“ The statement, that the uniformity of the course of nature is the ultimate major premiss in all cases of induction, may be thought to require some explanation. The immediate major premiss in every inductive argument, it certainly is not. ”

“ In this last case as much as in that of specific difference, we ought to find divergent form the embodiment and organic expression of divergent opinion. Form is mind made manifest in flesh through action: shades of mental difference being expressed in shades of physical difference, while broad fundamental differences of opinion are expressed in broad fundamental differences of bodily shape. ”

“ When we do meet with a clear and unmistakable series of such progressive magnitudes or ratios, manifesting themselves in a progressive series of “allied” forms, then we have the phenomenon of “orthogenesis.” ”

“ A classification, then, as formerly observed, represents a cross-section of nature as developing in time: could we begin at the beginning and follow this development down the course of time, we should find no classes, but an ever-moving, changing, spreading, branching continuum. ”

“ We may, then, add to our experience on the assumption of a uniformity in nature; we may fill in our picture of what is and has been, as experience gives it us, in such a way as to make the whole consistent with this uniformity. ”

“ If the diversities were complementary aspects of a process of connection and distinction, the process not being external to the elements or again a foreign compulsion of the intellect, but itself the intellect’s own proprius motus, the case would be altered. Each aspect would of itself be a transition to the other aspect, a transition intrinsic and natural at once to itself and to the intellect. ”

“ As has been already pointed out, this is all that art can do. To test a generalization, by showing that it either follows from, or conflicts with, some stronger induction, some generalization resting on a broader foundation of experience, is the beginning and end of the logic of Induction. ”

“ We demonstrate, from mediums, of a following order or genus, as when we prove man to be a substance, at one one time from his being rational, at another from his being a biped; and these mediums, in part, mutually contain each other. ”

“ And as in the fabrication of wholes the paradigm is intelligible animal, so in the arrangement of partial natures, the paradigm is intellectual animal, in which all forms shine forth in a divided manner, according to their own nature. ”

“ Certainly you very rightly observe that the forms (which are too often changed by quite respectable people into formulas) "First Subject, Middle Subject, After Subject, etc., may very much grow into a habit, because they must be so thoroughly natural, primitive, and very easily intelligible." ”

“ As the several circumstances that determine the early or late recognition of uniformities, are circumstances that determine the number and strength of the impressions which these uniformities make on the mind; it follows that the progression conforms to a certain fundamental principle of psychology. We see à posteriori, what we concluded à priori, that the order in which relations are generalized, depends on the frequency and impressiveness with which they are repeated in conscious experience. ”

“ Mental processes are not only plastic but shifting, varying, unstable, and undergo modifications of structure almost from moment to moment. We describe a complex schematically as if it had a fixed, immutable, and well-defined structure. ”

“ The more deeply we perceive, the more striking becomes the evidence that a uniform plan links every form in manifold nature.” ”

“ To express the varieties of these modes, we say, WE MOVE, THEY MOVE; and as this motion is continual, though not uniform, we express our conception of the diversities of its course by—IT HAS BEEN, IT IS, IT SHALL BE. These diversities are events or objects, and are essential, considered relatively to human identity, for the existence of the human mind. For if the inequalities, produced by what has been termed the operations of the external universe, were levelled by the perception of our being, uniting and filling up their interstices, motion and mensuration, and time, and space ”

“ The cause of making mixed modes. If we should inquire a little further, to see what it is that occasions men to make several combinations of simple ideas into distinct, and, as it were, settled modes, and neglect others, which in the nature of things themselves, have as much an aptness to be combined and make distinct ideas, we shall find the reason of it to be the end of language ”

“ These two views are combined when we 264remember that mechanical laws are nothing but acquired habits, like all the regularities of mind, including the tendency to take habits, itself; and that this action of habit is nothing but generalization, and generalization is nothing but the spreading of feelings. But the question is, how do general ideas appear in the molecular theory of protoplasm?
The consciousness of a habit involves a general idea. In each action of that habit certain atoms get thrown out of their orbit, and replaced by others. ”

“ Assuming the uniformity of nature, I carry forward and backward both the mental and the material series. A uniformity is observed in each, and a parallelism is observed between them, whenever observations can be made. ”

“ But this general method of comparison is subdivided into three or four sub-methods. Nature has prepared not only one but three or four series, not identical, not mere duplicates of each other, but varied, yet resembling and illustrating each other. ”

“ Such is the metaphysical faculty, which enables us to form abstract conceptions of a kind the most remote from all practical applications, to discuss the ultimate causes of things, the nature and qualities of matter, motion, and force, of space and time, of cause and effect, of will and conscience. ”

“ IN what precedes, we have shown by various considerations that we necessarily and universally assume the perception of secondary qualities to take place by means of a medium interjacent between the object and the person perceiving. Perception is affected by various peculiarities, according to the nature of the quality perceived: but in all cases a medium is equally essential to the process. ”

“ He desired to make abstraction of the intellect as the determining and dynamical element of the progression, eliminating the more dependent set of conditions, and treating the more active one as if it were an entirely independent variable. ”

“ From these separate threads of connection between parts of the great whole which we term nature, a general tissue of connection unavoidably weaves itself, by which the whole is held together. If A is always accompanied by D, B by E, and C by F, it follows that A B is accompanied by D E, A C by D F, B C by E F, and finally A B C by D E F; and thus the general character of regularity is produced, which, along with and in the midst of infinite diversity, pervades all nature. ”

“ We know that the fundamental mechanism of cognition may be reduced to two antagonistic processes, association and dissociation, assimilation and dissimilation; to combine, to separate; in brief, analysis and synthesis. [71] In the formation of the generic image, as we have seen, assimilation plays the principal part; the mind works only upon similarities. In proportion as we recede from this point, we have the contrary; the mind works more and more upon differences; the primitive and essential operation is a dissociation ”

“ When one concept determines or limits another in any way we may call it a mode of the latter. If there is no real distinction between the determining and the determined thought-object, the mode is called a metaphysical mode: as rationality is of animality in man. Again, created things are all “modes” of being ”

“ And, finally, we have found that in actual life abstraction and duplicity make activity conventional and utilitarian, that is to say, consciously instrumental or—let me now say—experimental. In just these conditions, then, the general abstraction and duplicity, the conscious formalism and regard for utility, and the sense of experimentation, we have the determinant, formative influences of science's attitude and method, for any given set of conditions always makes the method with which the conditions themselves are met. ”

“ Every idea is either an image or a symbol—it has therefore objective397 reference, a material aspect. Every object is a synthesis of feelings—it has therefore subjective reference, a material aspect. Thus while all the evidence points to the identity of Object and Subject, there is ample evidence for the logical necessity of their ideal separation as Aspects. This I have explained as a case of the general principle which determines all distinctions—namely, the diversity in the modes of production of the products, which—subjectively—is diversity in the modes of apprehending them. ”