Intermediate

“ On the other hand, those among us who are concerned with sheer beauty of form apart both from exciting subjects and psychological curiosities, hold by the intermediate period—the period extending, let us say, from the beginning of the last five years of the Nineteenth to the end of the first five years of the Twentieth century. ”

“ We can understand how it is that all the forms of life, ancient and recent, make together a few grand classes. We can understand, from the continued tendency to divergence of character, why the more ancient a form is, the more it generally differs from those now living. Why ancient and extinct forms often tend to fill up gaps between existing forms, sometimes blending two groups, previously classed as distinct into one; but more commonly bringing them only a little closer together. The more ancient a form is, the more often it stands in some degree intermediate between groups now distinct ”

“ This dialectic process which consciousness executes on itself—on its knowledge as well as on its object—in the sense that out of it the new and true object arises, is precisely what is termed Experience. ”

“ On the contrary, the higher, over-individual ends, as they are sometimes called, — politics, industry, science, literature, art — imply a differentiation among men that in spite of its significance would defy classification. ”

“ The shifting place of ‘secondary qualities’ in the history of philosophy [80] is another excellent proof of the fact that ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ are not coefficients with which experiences come to us aboriginally stamped, but are rather results of a later classification performed by us for particular needs. The common-sense stage of thought is a perfectly definite practical halting-place, the place where we ourselves can proceed to act unhesitatingly. ”

“ Adaptation of means to an end may be produced in two ways that we at present know of; by processes of natural selection, and by the agency of an intelligence in which an image or idea of the end preceded the use of the means. ”

“ One world at a time is enough for me!' As to mediumship, or any manifestations of it, I know almost nothing. The few mediums I have met accidentally, have unfortunately failed to impress me favorably. ”

“ We must take these successive classes as we find them: we see each class in itself, developing into higher and better types; then, some maintain this improved development, some dwindle away and disappear. ”

“ The different classes have different ways of living, which they cannot change or communicate to one another; and this is the reason why connections such as these, in general, were better not be formed. ”

“ But the thorough adaptation of the scheme to man's nature is greatly more appreciable, and lies fully within the reach of observation and experience. And how thorough that adaptation is, all who have really looked at the matter ought to be competent to say. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Your future is the not yet temporally expressed region wherein you, as finite being, seek your own further expression. That future is still, in one aspect, as we shall see, causally undetermined, precisely in so far as therein something unique, that is yours and yours only, is to appear in the form of various individually designed expressions of your life-purpose, — various individual deeds. ”

“ The plans, too, which they draw up and with which they cannot dispense, any more than can any human dialectic, answer to these different tendencies—that is to say, with the one they are schemes or general types of modes of thinking, with the other schemes containing ideal personalities. ”

“ For there is a continual change of relation between that which man derives from experience,—between those ideas which rise spontaneously, and those masses of ideas which approach stability. There is, besides, an ever varying succession of diverse reproductions. ”

“ It is to study the succession of events, not as separate units, but as links of one vast chain, on every one of which is inscribed a phrase discoursing of the progress of the human race, and showing the growth of man in the complex, from infancy to adolescence. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thus slow and gradual, but permanent, are the progressive steps in the growth and development of true human science, which is founded on experience—the internal as well as external, the higher as well as the lower—and on tradition, language, and revelation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The intellectual progress involved in the conception of the reciprocal relation of entire series or groups to one another, as distinguished from the conception of the relations between individual things, is of the utmost importance and in the most expressive manner characterizes the difference between modern scientific thought and ancient thought. ”

“ I say these things after all with the sense, so founded on past experience, that, in closer quarters and the intimacy of composition, pre-noted arrangements, proportions and relations, do most uncommonly insist on making themselves different by shifts and variations, always improving, which impose themselves as one goes and keep the door open always to something more right and more related. ”

“ As we have begun by solidifying into distinct and independent things what were only phases—the main phases—of a continuous development, we go on materializing the development itself into lines of communication, contacts and impulsions. ”

“ The trains of one class differ from those of another, the trains of the merchant, for example, from those of the lawyer, not in this, that the ideas follow one an other by any other law, in the mind of the one, and the mind of the other ”

“ He hoped for a deliverance to come in the very remote future from a current of thought and feeling which would arise in the developed human mind, and which would run counter to the natural process of differentiation and division. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In practice, or in continued and varied use, in the development of thought and of language, changes necessarily occur in the word or words selected to convey a primal idea, in order to indicate other phases of the idea than that brought out or pointed to by the first chosen word. ”

“ A true perspective demands, on the part of the reader, the nicest sense of the relative values of successive and involved groups or sections of thought—those belonging to the main current of thought being brought to the front with a fulness of expression, and the subordinate groups or sections according to their several degrees of subordination, being thrown back with a corresponding reduction of expression. ”

“ The subject, then, of Psychology, is the uniformities of succession, the laws, whether ultimate or derivative, according to which one mental state succeeds another; is caused by, or at least, is caused to follow, another. ”

“ Of course by the middle is not meant a mathematical point of division into equal parts, but a psychological point, which is usually nearer the end, because the impetus of action and purpose carry forward and beyond. ”

“ Those who maintain the authority of inference accept the sign or middle term as the causer of knowledge, which middle term must be found in the minor and be itself invariably connected with the major. ”

“ The sensations and ideas, which compose the phenomena of the second class, are equally formed into clusters, with those composing the phenomena of the former class; and follow one another, in trains, according to the same laws. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For the connexion of the words, and their dependence on each other, imitates the indissoluble order of things, which always conjoins middles to extremes, and proceeds through middle genera to the last progressions of beings. ”

“ We can divide all relations into two classes; first, relations of comparison, which originate at the moment when our perfectly voluntary attention brings any two elements, or rather their mental images, into a contact with each other that is quite indifferent and unessential to the elements themselves. ”

“ In other words, there are phenomena subsequent to and arising from the characteristics of individual men, viz., the phenomena of the accommodation of volition to volition in every form of human contact. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We have found certain traits common to the old stages and certain others characteristic of recent ones, and have thus been enabled to establish some definite tendencies of development and to find out the general direction of change ”

“ Whereas, on the contrary, the same materials taken in gradually, day after day, recurring in different contexts, considered in various relations, associated with other external incidents, and repeatedly reflected on, grow into such a system, form such connections with the rest of the mind's fabric, lie open to so many paths of approach, that they remain permanent possessions. ”

“ Every mixed mode consisting of many distinct simple ideas, it seems reasonable to inquire, Whence it has its unity; and how such a precise multitude comes to make but one idea; since that combination does not always exist together in nature? ”

“ With a true instinct the Middle Ages first of all looked within this mass of knowledge for guides to its mazes, seeking a plan or scheme by the aid of which universal knowledge might be unravelled, and then reconstructed in forms corresponding to even larger verities. ”

“ All verbs fall into two great divisions, imperfective, which express the continuance of an action, without regard to its beginning or end, and perfective, which express the points of beginning or ending. ”

“ Synthesis: Conscious Relating.—In the second place all thought is integrating or combining, or, as it is commonly expressed, a process of Synthesis. In thinking we never merely isolate or abstract. We analytically resolve the presentative complexes of our concrete experience only in order to establish certain relations among them. The most appropriate term for all such conscious relating or discernment of relation is Comparison. ”

“ We are now at the threshold of the last period of abstraction, that of complete symbolism, and it is not without interest to note that what passes in the theoretical order has its equivalent in another form of human activity—the practical order—where the mechanism of exchange is again developed by the aid of an ever-increasing substitution. ”

“ The notions with which thought deals involve many subtle relations and require many nice modifications. Language has instruments, more or less perfect, whereby such relations and modifications may be expressed. ”

“ Here we have distinction, abstraction, assimilation, relation, and generalisation carried on and carried out with unchecked thoroughness, and systems of universals ascertained that not only correspond exactly with every acquired and incoming item of our experience, but are also in respect to one another continuous throughout the whole of their range. ”

“ Is there not an inward and intellectual world also which has to be studied in its historical development, from the first appearance of predicative and demonstrative roots, their combination and differentiation, leading up to the beginning of rational thought in its steady progress from the lowest to the highest stages? ”

“ We must, it affirms, postulate two aspects or phases of existence, or two lines of development, connected probably in their ultimate reality, but, as known to us, distinct from one another, and without mutual influence. ”