Law of reflection

“ The essence as reflected being is the reference to itself only as it is a reference to something other. We apply to this being the term reflected analogously with the reflection of light, which, when it falls on a mirror, is thrown back by it. As now the reflected light is, through its reference to another object, something mediated or posited, so the reflected being is that which is shown to be mediated or grounded through another. ”

“ Reflections are seen in light. In darkness they are obscure, and their meaning seems to lie only in shifting interpretations, rather than in themselves. The reflection of God needs no interpretation. It is clear. Clean but the mirror, and the message that shines forth from what the mirror holds out for everyone to see, no one can fail to understand. ”

“ In sense-perception or picture-thought we have the object before us as a whole, our reflection distinguishes, apprehends different sides, recognises the diversity in them, and severs them. In this act of distinguishing, reflection does not keep firm hold of their unity. Sometimes it forgets the wholeness, sometimes the distinctions ”

“ Is it not also evident, that we do not begin by reflection, that reflection supposes an anterior operation, and that this operation, in order not to be one of reflection, and not to suppose another before it, must be entirely spontaneous; that thus the spontaneous and instinctive intuition of truth precedes its reflection and necessary conception?
Reflection is a progress more or less tardy in the individual and in the race. It is, par excellence, the philosophic faculty; it sometimes engenders doubt and skepticism, sometimes convictions that, for being rational, are only the more profound. ”

“ Every thing throws light upon every thing,—though the reflection,—which is, in many cases, so bright, as to force itself upon common eyes—may, in other cases, be so faint, as to be perceptible only to eyes of the nicest discernment. ”

“ The immediate, in the sense which concerns us, is not at all, or at least is no longer for us the passive experience, the indefinable something which we should inevitably receive, provided we opened our eyes and abstained from reflection.
As a matter of fact, we cannot abstain from reflection: reflection is today part of our very vision; it comes into play as soon as we open our eyes. ”

“ Reflection alone can give us the idea of what perception is.
What perception is, every one will know better by reflecting on what he does himself, when he sees, hears, feels, &c., or thinks, than by any discourse of mine. Whoever reflects on what passes in his own mind cannot miss it. And if he does not reflect, all the words in the world cannot make him have any notion of it.
3. Arises in sensation only when the mind notices the organic impression. ”

“ To reflect is to throw an atmosphere about what is in your mind,—an atmosphere which holds all the colors of your life. Reflection summons all associations, and they so throng and move that they dominate the mind’s stage at once. ”

“ Reflection, indeed, must move within certain limits; it must take certain things for granted. We have already seen that reflection arises in a crisis of greater or lesser degree; it settles ambiguities, resolves the obscure and doubtful phases of situations. ”

“ You perceive the force of a word. He who wants to persuade should put his trust, not in the right argument, but in the right word. The power of sound has always been greater than the power of sense. I don't say this by way of disparagement. It is better for mankind to be impressionable than reflective. Nothing humanely great—great, I mean, as affecting a whole mass of lives—has come from reflection. ”

“ Every thought has its reflection in a visible object which repeats it like an echo, reflects it like a mirror, rendering it sensible first to the senses by the visible image, then to the thought by the thought. ”

“ Reflection underlines in the chaotic continuum of sense and longing those aspects that have practical significance; it selects the efficacious ingredients in the world. The trustworthy object which is thus retained in thought, the complex of connected events, is nature, and though so intelligible an object is not soon nor vulgarly recognised, because human reflection is perturbed and halting, yet every forward step in scientific and practical knowledge is a step toward its clearer definition. ”

“ The meaning is thus made clear. By observation through one or more of our senses we perceive things; mental impressions are secured; these are now to be bent or turned so that we can see them again, but the process is to be purely mental. Reflection in itself implies recognition or memory, for without memory there could be nothing upon which to reflect. Every normal human being has the power to bend again, to turn back, and over and over again the impressions he has received through observation. ”

“ Now, of necessity, the only method, by which another can aid our efforts in the work of reflection, is by first reflecting himself, and so pointing out the process and marking the result by words, that we can repeat it, and try the conclusions by our own consciousness. If he have reflected aright, if he have excluded all causes of self-deception, and directed his thoughts by those principles of truth and reason, and by those laws of the understanding, which belong in common to all men, his conclusions must be true for all. ”

“ Reality, then, in spite of the sceptic’s objections, is truly known to be a connected and self-consistent, or internally coherent, system; can we with equal confidence say anything of the data of which the system is composed? Reflection should convince us that we can at least say as much as this: all the materials or data of reality consist of experience, experience being provisionally taken to mean psychical matter of fact, what is given in immediate feeling. ”

“ In this sense, reflection must be the source of all our ideas, whether of external objects, or the operations of our own minds, for in the same sense it may be argued, that the first impression of a sensible object is not the source of the idea we have of it, till the soul comes to reflect on and consider that original impression. But it might be said with equal propriety, that we have one source of ideas, viz., sensation, and another source of ideas, viz. ”

“ But it is in vain to wish for what nature has not put within the reach of our power. Reflection, the only instrument by which we can discern the powers of the mind, comes too late to observe the progress of nature, in raising them from their infancy to perfection. ”

“ Reflected likeness If you speak, the lips of this likeness move in accord with yours. Now compare man before the mirror to his divine Principle, God. Call the mirror divine Science, and call man the reflection. Then note how true, according to Christian Science, is the reflection to its original. As the reflection of yourself appears in the mirror, so you, being spiritual, are the reflection of God. ”

“ Reflect on your own thoughts, actions, circumstances, and—which will be of especial aid to you in forming a habit of reflection,—accustom yourself to reflect on the words you use, hear, or read, their birth, derivation and history. For if words are not things, they are living powers, by which the things of most importance to mankind are actuated, combined, and humanized. Finally, by reflection you may draw from the fleeting facts of your worldly trade, art, or profession, a science permanent as your immortal soul ”

“ The distinction is regarded as real because reflection is held to assure us that it is in the reality itself independently of the mind, and not merely imposed by the mind on the reality because of some ground or reason in the reality. ”

“ This circumstance I would call the law of contrast between perception and imagination, and between the objects of perception and the objects of imagination. This law may be either present or absent when these faculties are at work, When this law is present, and when the imagination is at work, then I hold with Dr Reid that the objects of the imagination are accompanied with no belief in their reality; for we believe these objects to be unreal, we pronounce them to be unreal by means of the comparison which we draw between them and the more permanent and real objects of perception. ”

“ When on the other hand reflection stops to challenge and question the fleeting object, not so much to prepare for its possible return as to conceive its present nature, this reflection is turned no less unmistakably in the direction of ideas, and will terminate in logic or the morphology of being. ”

“ Since every thing that bears the character of reflection cannot be primitive, and supposes an anterior state, it follows, that the principles which are the subject of our study could not have possessed at first the reflective and abstract character with which they are now marked, that they must have shown themselves at their origin in some particular circumstance, under a concrete and determinate form, and that in time they were disengaged from this form, in order to be invested with their actual, abstract, and universal form. ”

“ So far as we compare our thoughts, the objects of our knowledge and faith, and by reflection refer them to their common measure in the universal laws of reason, so far the instinct of reason impels us to reject whatever is contradictory and absurd, and to bring unity and consistency into all our views of truth. ”

“ We misconceive therefore the nature of reason if we exclude reflection or mediation from ultimate truth, and do not take it to be a positive moment of the Absolute. It is reflection which constitutes truth the final result, and yet at the same time does away with the contrast between result and the process of arriving at it. ”

“ Our chief aim in reflective behavior is to discover ways and means by which a harmony may be achieved, a harmony of Page 431 those very instincts which, left to themselves, would be in perpetual collision, frustrating and checking each other.
Reflection not only seeks to find a way of life in which no natural impulse shall be frustrated, but it is through reflection that desires are broadened, and that new desires arise. ”

“ The consideration of these two senses, sight and hearing, with their appropriate objects, light and sound, sufficiently explains and illustrates our point. For what holds good with regard to them, holds equally good with regard to all our other perceptions. The moment the objective part of any one of them is thought, we are immediately constrained by a law of our nature which we cannot transgress, to conceive as one with it the subjective part of the perception. We think objective weight only by thinking the feeling of weight. ”

“ Reflection is voluntary, spontaneity is involuntary; reflection is personal, spontaneity is impersonal; reflection is analytic, spontaneity is synthetic; reflection begins with doubt, spontaneity with affirmation; reflection belongs to certain ones, spontaneity belongs to all; reflection produces science, spontaneity gives truth. ”

“ One can readily understand this condition in the objective mind from the observation of physical phenomena. It is equally comprehensible how the subjective mind, or soul, may be deprived of a conscious existence when we remember the fundamental law of its being, the law of suggestion. We have already seen how the law of suggestion operates upon the soul in cases of cataleptic trance, where the suggestion is made that the patient is dead. ”

“ The opposition of the elements as in turn they crowd each other out does not, however, interfere with the harmony, for they have an existence all together in memory, where the law binding them can be felt,—a law which each element as it comes into consciousness is recognized as fulfilling. ”

“ Reflection, as an inward psychical fact, has certainly been observed by psychologists and philosophers in all civilized times, and instinctively by every one; nor could it be otherwise, since reflection is one of the facts most evident to human consciousness. ”

“ The limits of reflection as a modifier of instinct and habit. While our impulses and habits may be subjected to the criticism of reflection in the light of the consequences which it can forecast, reflection is itself seriously limited by our original impulses and our acquired habitual ones. On reflection, we may not follow our first impulse, but to act at all is to act on some original or acquired impulse or a combination of them. Which original tendency we shall follow reflection can tell us; it cannot tell us to follow none. ”

“ Before going on to speak of the effect of our own activity upon our knowledge, when attention is combined with active recognition of impressions, we want to formulate the law that governs the action of attention upon sense-impressions apart from recognition. ”

“ When a subjective reality is made objective, distortions invariably show up; that is why such things cannot be accepted as evidence of objective reality in court." He paused. "To put it another way, my child: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." ”

“ Reflection gathers experiences together and perceives their relative worth; which is as much as to say that it expresses a new attitude of will in the presence of a world better understood and turned to some purpose. The limits of reflection mark those of concerted and rational action; they circumscribe the field of cumulative experience, or, what is the same thing, of profitable living.
The Life of Reason a name for all practical thought and all action justified by its fruits in consciousness. ”

“ It is only at a later stage, when reflection goes back over the many cases in which such thought and such action occurred, and collects and compares them together, that there is found for the secret motives by which we have been guided an expression through which they now become, for the first time, objects to our consciousness. ”