Knowing

“ To know a little, would be worth the expense of this world." "You read of but one wise man," says Congreve, "and all that he knew was—that he knew nothing." "The curiosity of knowing things has been given to man for a scourge." "If God," said Lessing, "held all truth shut in his right hand, and in his left nothing but the restless instinct for truth, though with the condition of forever and ever erring, and should say to me, Choose! ”

“ And what does it mean to me, after all? What does all this knowing mean to me? It means nothing.'
'You are merely making words,' he said; 'knowledge means everything to you. Even your animalism, you want it in your head. ”

“ But to know is more than to feel, than to perceive, more than to remember, more than to compare. No doubt words are much abused. We speak of a dog knowing his master, of an infant knowing his mother. In such expressions, to know means to recognize. ”

“ The whole content of consciousness might be that impression." These Impressions, with the Pleasure and Pain, are represented by him as knowledge; this without a thing knowing or a thing known. It is such knowledge with which man starts, such knowledge as man can attain, and the foundation of all other knowledge. ”

“ Knowing, feeling, and willing, therefore, are merely convenient terms that express the varying, changing modes of consciousness, which at one time may be predominately feeling, at another knowing, and again willing. ”

“ But there are two ways in which we may speak of that by which we live and have sensation just as also that by which we know may be employed to denote either knowledge or the mind, by both of which we are in the habit of speaking of people as knowing. ”

“ People disparage knowing and the intellectual life, and urge doing. I am very content with knowing, if only I could know. ”

“ For those things which are known not by their actuality, but by their want of it, are known, if our expression may be allowed and understood, by not knowing them, that by knowing them they may be not known. ”

“ Ah, not in knowledge is happiness, but in the acquisition of knowledge! In for ever knowing, we are for ever blessed; but to know all were the curse of a fiend. ”

“ Knowledge is the knowing that we cannot know. ”

“ And such are perception, thinking, doubting, believing, reasoning, knowing, willing, and all the different actings of our own minds;—which we being conscious of, and observing in ourselves, do from these receive into our understandings as distinct ideas as we do from bodies affecting our senses. ”

“ Beings who talk like this know their minds,—a rather unwonted circumstance among the sons of men,—and knowing them, they do the next most natural thing in the world, which is to speak the minds they have. ”

“ The power to guess the unseen from the seen, to trace the implication of things, to judge the whole piece by the pattern, the condition of feeling life in general so completely that you are well on your way to knowing any particular corner of it—this cluster of gifts may almost be said to constitute experience, and they occur in country and in town, and in the most differing stages of education. If experience consists of impressions, it may be said that impressions are experience, just as (have we not seen it?) they are the very air we breathe. ”

“ For, surely, that which we always know, and cannot help knowing, must be that which we are best acquainted with, that which lies nearest to our hand, and which may be most readily laid hold of This reflection might have been expected to bring him to the question, What, then, is that which we are most familiar with, and cannot help knowing, during every conscious moment of our lives? ”

“ Were our topic Absolute Mind instead of being the concrete minds of individuals dwelling in the natural world, we could not tell whether that Mind had the function of knowing or not, as knowing is commonly understood. ”

“ The great thinkers of the first rank who have undertaken to sound the significance of rational knowledge, {xxxv} and who have appreciated the meaning of the synthetic unity of the knowing mind and the world of objects that submit to its forms of thought, have recognized that there must be some deep-lying fundamental relation between the mind that knows and the world that is known, some Reality common to both outer and inner realms. ”

“ for he who chooses to know for the sake of knowing will choose most readily that which is most truly knowledge, and such is the knowledge of that which is most knowable; ”

“ "but those as knows the least « 14 » have a habit of thinkin’ they know all there is to know, while them as knows the most admits what a turr’ble big world this is. It’s the knowing ones that realize one lifetime ain’t long enough to git more’n a few dips o’ the oars of knowledge." ”

“ For why does He desire that His name should be known by us but for our sakes, that the light of that great Name may come to us, 'sitting in darkness and in the shadow of death,' and that, knowing Him for what He is, we may have peace, and rest, and joy, and love, and purity? It is pure benevolence that makes Him act, 'for the glory of His great name'; sweeping away the clouds that a darkened earth may expand and rejoice, and all the leaves unfold themselves, and every bird sing, in the restored sunshine. ”

“ In fact it resembles knowledge only in being an attitude and a feeling very similar to some attitudes and feelings which may and often do accompany knowledge. But ‘Knowledge’ is an immensely potent emotive word engendering reverence towards any state of mind to which it is applied. And these ‘feelings of significance’ are those among our states of mind which most deserve to be revered. That they should be so obstinately described as knowledge even by those who most carefully remove from them all the characteristics of knowledge is not surprising. ”

“ Knowledge pulsates in me, as I receive it, communing with myself on my unquiet or tearful pillow—or as it visits me, brought on the streaming moonlight, or from the fields afire with noon-splendour, or looking at me from human eyes, and stirring round and around me in the tumult of men—Your knowledge comes in a holy stillness and chillness, as if spelt off tombstones. ”

“ Well, to come back to 'knowledge,' a man might be imagined, originally unsceptical, long-suffering, well-meaning, and a little sentimental, who would simply be ground to powder and wrecked by psychological clearness of vision. ”

“ I reply that, in fact, all true insight is, to my mind, rational insight, upon one or another level of the development of our power to become rational beings. But you will remember that insight, as I defined it, also means knowledge which is intimate and manifold, as well as knowledge which views facts and relations in their unity. The words intuition and experience are often used to lay stress upon that aspect of our insight which either makes it intimate or else brings it into touch with many and various facts. ”

“ Those that prudently seek knowledge shall certainly get knowledge, for God never said to such, Seek in vain, but, Seek and you shall find. If the ear seeks it, the heart gets it, and keeps it, and is enriched by it. We must get knowledge, not only into our heads, but into our hearts, get the savour and relish of it, apply what we know to ourselves and experience the power and influence of it. ”

“ To discuss all the ways in which one experience may function as the knower of another, would be incompatible with the limits of this essay. I have treated of type 1, the kind of knowledge called perception, in an article in the Journal of Philosophy, for September 1, 1904, called 'Does consciousness exist?' This is the type of case in which the mind enjoys direct 'acquaintance' with a present object. In the other types the mind has 'knowledge-about' an object not immediately there. ”

“ Thy real knowledge, that of thy sensations or affections, is to thee like an imperfect knowledge, which, as thou sayest, requires to be completed by another. This other new knowledge thou conceivest and describest to thyself,—not as something which thou hast, for thou hast it not,—but as something which thou shouldst have, over and above thy actual knowledge, if thou hadst an organ wherewith to apprehend it. ”

“ How do we gain knowledge of a human being, that is to say of his motives? "By observing his actions in many different circumstances, especially in extremities of joy, sorrow, fear, temptation, and then by comparing his actions with what we, or others, have done in the same circumstances?" ”

“ Now, inasmuch as there are four things in which the truth resides—Sensation, Understanding, Knowledge, Opinion,—intellectual apprehension is first in the order of nature; but in our case, and in relation to ourselves, Sensation is first, and of Sensation and Understanding the essence of Knowledge is formed; and evidence is common to Understanding and Sensation. Well, Sensation is the ladder to Knowledge; while Faith, advancing over the pathway of the objects of sense, leaves Opinion behind, and speeds to things free of deception, and reposes in the truth. ”

“ But, while I am descanting [599] upon the conduct of the understanding, and the best mode of acquiring knowledge, some men may be disposed to ask, “Why conduct my understanding with such endless care? and what is the use of so much knowledge?” What is the use of so much knowledge? What is the use of so much life? What are we to do with the seventy years of existence allotted to us? ”

“ And now, if for a paragraph or two I may be even offensively abstruse, the conditions of our positive experience, of our actual knowledge, are such, and are commonly recognized to be such, that there must always be an unknown. ”

“ Thoughts are nearer, more akin to our personality than actions are, for they are primary expressions from personality, always preceding conscious speech and action. Of all the indices to our personality of which we have knowledge thoughts are the clearest; we are as our thoughts are. In compliance with that grand mandate, “Know Thyself,” why scan life’s page of speech and actions—shadows—when a vast volume of thoughts—realities—expressions of our personality, lies open to us for finding knowledge of self? ”

“ We must ask, and find out, what we know, and what we think;—in other words, we must inquire whether matter per se be what we know or think, or whether we have not, all along, been practising an imposition upon ourselves in imagining that this was what we knew, when, in truth, this was not what we knew. ”

“ Our knowledge of all the truths of revelation, can be of no further use to us than as they are thus, by being habitually referred to, wrought into the frame of our mind, till they become principles of action and motives of conduct. ”

“ It will come from those philosophers to whom 'thought,' in the sense of a knowledge of relations, is the all in all of mental life; and who hold a merely feeling consciousness to be no better—one would sometimes say from their utterances, a good deal worse—than no consciousness at all. ”

“ What we wish to contemplate here are the plain facts, the knowledge of which enlivens and enriches one’s mind and nature. If the contemplation of them kindles one’s fancy or excites one’s emotions, these results at least will not be second-hand. ”

“ This conviction, or impression if you will, has become stronger with years and with the knowledge of life; years have imparted, and time has but confirmed me in, the notion that any skill I possess lies in the detection of character, and the unravelment of that tangled skein which makes up human motives. ”

“ We may have gained a deeper knowledge of the mind of God, and a deeper insight into ourselves. Truths which once seemed mere words, received our heed and heart. Our understanding may have become part of ourselves. ”

“ Again, we have insight when, as I insist, our acquaintance with our object is not only coherent but close and personal. Insight you cannot obtain at second hand. You can learn by rote and by hearsay many things; but if you have won insight, you have won it not without the aid of your own individual experience. ”

“ Is it not indeed plain that, as we ourselves have often heretofore said, when we talk of Being, we are indeed seeking for what, if present, would satisfy or tend to satisfy our conscious needs and meanings? Let us take this very character as the sole basis of our definition of what it is to be. Let us first say that whenever we talk of Being we mean a definitely Possible Fact of experience, viewed just as something possible for us. ”

“ Understanding, or the force of conceiving and combining, independently of the sensible order, is another of the data furnished by our own experience. As this is a fact of consciousness, we know it by intuition, not by abstract ideas; it is the exercise of an activity which we feel within ourselves; it is the me which we ourselves are. ”

“ Nay, whatsoever proceedeth from these Mines of divine Wisdom and these Treasuries of eternal knowledge is truth, and naught else but the truth. The saying: “Knowledge is one point, which the foolish have multiplied” is a proof of Our argument, and the tradition: “Knowledge is a light which God sheddeth into the heart of whomsoever He willeth” a confirmation of Our statement. ”

“ The awe and veneration with which such a subject must be approached, are increased by the conviction that though we may flatter our fond hopes with the idea that some knowledge has been gained, we are still lost in the same labyrinth of doubt and uncertainty that we ever were. ”

“ To know thyself—to know, for example, thy possibilities of health and strength for strenuous bodily or mental labour, to know thy worldly status, and what of influence is there open to thee or closed against thee; to know thyself, not as the crowd regards thee, but in all the secret workings of thy heart, controlling thy actions, biassing thy thoughts, influencing thy motives; to step aside out of the bustle of life and quietly take stock of thyself; to know how thou standest in view of eternity—that is wisdom. ”

“ The 'Topic' of the Thought.—If we then consider the cognitive function of different states of mind, we may feel assured that the difference between those that are mere 'acquaintance' and those that are 'knowledges-about' is reducible almost entirely to the absence or presence of psychic fringes or overtones. Knowledge about a thing is knowledge of its relations. ”