Natural faculty

“ Can we administer to such mental deformity any relief? Will it be absurd to ask him to deduce from nature, as it is found to operate, that the various grades of subjection spread through the animal world exist in conformity to the natural law? ”

“ Now these strongest tendencies, in the harmonious play of which natural good or perfection is said to consist, are themselves the result of the courses of conduct which have been most vigorous and successful in ancestral organisms, and they may therefore, perhaps, be taken as a survival and index of the antecedent state of human nature. ”

“ What would be thought of a naturalist, were he, in composing a treatise on fishes, first of all, to set about proving to himself and others that there were such creatures? Would he not be thought rather a natural than a naturalist? Such very reasonably might I have been thought, if I had ever dreamt of proving to the world, either that Knowledge was, or that Being was. ”

“ Since one and all of the members of the human body, under the wise arrangement of Nature, agree or differ with the several objects in the world of creation, by a certain sympathy or antipathy of nature, it follows that there has been implanted by the providence of Nature, both in the several members and in natural objects, a reciprocal instinct, which impels them to seek after those things which are similar and consequently beneficial to themselves, and to avoid and shun those things which are antagonistic or hurtful. ”

“ It must be remembered that when these notions originated, comparatively nothing was known of the nature of the human body, its organic needs and the desirability of rational control of the natural functions of the organism. ”

“ Is the Law of Nature, common to all Animals, from Man the Lord of all, down to the smallest Animalcules, discernible by Glasses? Are all the Rules of natural Law, which men are obliged to observe, incumbent upon all Birds, Beasts, fishes.
Temperance, Prudence, Justice, and Fortitude, are Duties of the Law of human Nature. But have the Beasts and Birds and Fishes, given any Proofs that they have any Idea of these Virtues? ”

“ It is enough to say that my source of information is entirely reliable. By your own act you have placed yourself outside of the pale. If you break a natural law, Nature exacts the just penalty. It is the same in the moral field. ”

“ But there exists a still higher range of faculties the spiritual. They are, as we might say, distinctly above the others, as those are above the merely physical. The natural mind may develop without limit on the range of its purely natural faculties. ”

“ In this connection the question may be in order, as to why the student of the natural sciences, who is in the habit of proclaiming, so loudly, the necessity or at least the constancy of everything in nature, should yet elect to assign to consciousness the character of the non-essential, that is the accidental. ”

“ The constancy of the laws of nature is the foundation of the industry and foresight of the husbandman, the indefatigable ingenuity of the artificer, the skilful researches of the physician and anatomist, and the watchful observation and patient investigation of the natural philosopher. To this constancy we owe all the greatest and noblest efforts of intellect. ”

“ But that is not what is meant by this phrase; nature is again used to mean a mere part of nature; only this time the part meant is not so much the normal as an arbitrary minimum of what is necessary for life. And when this minimum is recommended as ‘natural’—as the way of life to which Nature points her finger—then the naturalistic fallacy is used. ”

“ But Nature has answered her purpose with the curly, dimpled lunatic. She has tasked every faculty, and has secured the symmetrical growth of the bodily frame, by all these attitudes and exertions, — an end of the first importance, which could not be trusted to any care less perfect than her own. ”

“ According as the body is constituted and composed, as it is influenced by heredity, race, and [pg 285] selection, by nutrition, mode of life, climate, and other circumstances, there are developed in a hundred different ways what we call the natural disposition or character, inclinations, virtues or vices, passions or temperaments. Even the names given to the different temperaments emphasise this dependence of what is innermost in us, the deepest tendencies of our being, on the bodily organisation and the nature of its physiological constitution. ”

“ Natural law being mind ruling matter, every method employed in research into organic Nature must respect and take into account the inseparable mental factor in each type of sentient life, or it becomes unscientific, and may promote fallacy, not truth. ”

“ We see sequences of natural phenomena, which we call natural laws, and we can no more realize the antecedents of these phenomena than we can conceive an era when our so-called natural laws were neither existent, necessary, nor consequent. ”

“ The instruction I drew from these occurrences was that, without knowledge of the structure and functions of a living organism, and its relations to the natural objects to which it is adapted and which influence its conditions, the best intentions may inflict only suffering when pleasure is meant to be given; and that this holds as true in the case of human beings as in that of rabbits. ”

“ And this Natural Order, in turn, requires the moral sense to humbly and obediently go to school to it. "You want to be good?" says Nature. "You dare to believe that even I in my mightiness am set to help you to be good? ”

“ Æsthetics, in fact, are to Ethics in the sphere of conscious civilisation, what, in the sphere of the external world, sexual is to natural selection. Ethics, like natural selection, make existence possible. ”

“ The ability and pugnacity of the partisans of natural science make them formidable persons to contradict. The tone of tentative inquiry, which befits a being of dim faculties and bounded knowledge, is the tone I would wish to take and not to depart from. At present it seems to me, that those who are for giving to natural knowledge, as they call it, the chief place in the education of the majority of mankind, leave one important thing out of their account: the constitution of human nature. ”

“ The use of the word ‘natural’ begs the question. We acquire those characteristics which our circumstances and environment demand, and then transmit them to our children in whom, being inherited, they are termed natural. ”

“ He has also to acknowledge what he owes to Nature, what is his duty to Nature. And that duty he has to perform and her authority he has to admit. He can retain his freedom and initiative and enterprise. But he has to obey the laws of Nature, acknowledge her authority, submit to her discipline. ”

“ As a matter of fact, however, we find the relations of consciousness [Pg 340] and physiological process as constant as those of the different forms of material force, and while discovering no grounds upon which to pronounce either consciousness or physiological process the more essential, find none, either, for pronouncing one more than the other independent of what we call natural law. ”

“ There38 is, indeed, no validity in the claim of some recent psychologists that the term must be abandoned on the ground that psychology discovers only mental acts, without a psychic subject with distinct faculties back of the acts. Yet the term faculty has often been used and understood in a way inconsistent with the essential and conscious unity of the personal ego or self, making the soul seem a bundle of independent and separately acting parts of a psychical organism. ”

“ The development of the Stable from the Unstable explains to us the evolution of function in the direction of the preservation of the organic forms of which it is the function, as well as the evolution of harmonious movement in the heavenly bodies. The explanation of the natural and necessary elimination of the inharmonious covers the whole ground, and seems to assign a cause for every form of preservative action, for the harmonious conduct which preserves the state or the family as a collection of individuals, as well as for the harmony of function that preserves the individual. ”

“ For the moral qualities are advanced either directly or indirectly, much more through the effects of habit, the reasoning powers, instruction, religion, &c., than through the natural selection, through to this latter agency may be safely attributed the social instincts which afforded the basis for the development of the moral sense. ”

“ What may be called a strong animal nature—a nature, that [pg 124] is, in which the passions are in vigorous, and at the same time healthy, action—is that in which we should most naturally expect to find several moral qualities. ”

“ On the contrary, Great Master: an honest natural scientist believes in the unconditional rule of natural laws in the world, without, however, taking up any position in regard to the ethical or intellectual value of these laws. ”

“ The last class of objections to the theory of natural moral perceptions which it is necessary for me to notice, arises from a very mischievous equivocation in the word natural.132 The term natural man is sometimes regarded as synonymous with man in his primitive or barbarous condition, and sometimes as expressing all in a civilised man that is due to nature as distinguished from artificial habits or acquirements. ”

“ The materialist objects that if the physical side of nature is the essential one, the psychical cannot be essential. On what grounds is this claim based? Is the color of an object not essential to it because its shape is essential, or do the actual existence and change of color according to natural law interfere with the actual existence and change of shape according also to natural law? Does only one of our senses give us truth? ”

“ Of course there can be no faculty without an organ of faculty. But the potency of all the faculties is primarily in the human essence. The soul, necessarily a complete human form, having organs for all its faculties, is the real, sentient being. ”

“ I can only say that the tendency of modern natural sciences, in physiology as well as psychology, has overruled the illusions of those who would fain persist in watching psychological phenomena merely within themselves and think that they can understand them without any other means. On the contrary, positive science, backed by the testimony of anthropology and of the study of the environment, has arrived at the following conclusions: The admission of a free will is out of the question. ”

“ We simply say that in incidents such as this, where what are called ‘natural’ causes are eliminated from the field of consideration by the fact of their absence, it is reasonable to fall back on what is called the ‘supernatural.’ As I have been careful to explain to you more than once, this may be a branch of the natural, and may be recognised some day as a legitimate subject for scientific research by those who now treat us with derision. ”

“ Now this want of harmony between the features imprinted on animal nature in virtue of the laws of physical necessity, and those determined with the spiritual and independent faculty of man, is precisely the point by which that super-sensuous principle is discovered in man capable of placing limits to the effects produced by physical nature, and therefore distinct from the latter. The purely animal part of man obeys the physical law, and consequently may show itself oppressed by the affection. ”

“ The question had become summed up in one of superlative importance, namely, the distinction that existed between the natural and supernatural sides of our existence. The materialistic school had practically done away with the latter in its entirety, had said that nature is capable of being explained by mechanical means, and that these must necessarily suffice for us. ”

“ Making all allowance for the temptation and tendency to read our own thoughts into the minds of animals, and also for the effect upon the animals themselves of man's moral control, it yet remains certain that the materials out of which conscience has been constructed are everywhere discernible, like the rough unhewed stones of a quarry, in animal life and in Nature itself. ”

“ Structure the ground of faculty and faculty of duty.
A naturalist not ashamed to indulge his poetic imagination might easily paint for us the drama of these diverse loves. It suffices for our purpose to observe that the varying passions and duties which life can contain depend upon the organic functions of the animal. ”

“ Q. Self Love and Self Preservation, and the Desire of Propagation, are common to all Animals. But the Law of Nature, which teaches other Species to nurse their Young, teaches man to imbue the tender Minds of Children, with Knowledge and Virtue. ”

“ There is an apparent want of discrimination here between the faculties which are the privilege and distinction of higher creatures and the functions which are essential to life, and without which there can be neither animal nor living being. In a subsequent paragraph the rational faculty or mind (καὶ ὁ καλούμενος νοῦς) is excluded from all participation in corporeal movements, and held to have no part in sentient perception. ”

“ In treating of the effects of physical causes upon the moral faculty, it might help to extend our ideas upon this subject, to reduce virtues and vices to certain species, and to point out the effects of particular species of virtue and vice ”

“ Now, the fundamental doctrine of the naturalists, which they sufficiently make known by their very name, is that human nature and human reason ought in all things to be mistress and guide. Laying this down, they care little for duties to God, or pervert them by erroneous and vague opinions. ”

“ Observe what your nature requires in so far as you are governed by mere physical nature; then do that and accept that, if only your nature as part of the animal world will not be rendered worse. Next you are to observe what your nature as part of the animal world requires and to take it all, if only your nature as a reasonable being will not be rendered worse. ”