Postulate

“ Its universality follows from its very nature as a postulate. If we make a demand that a certain principle shall hold, we naturally extend our demand to all cases without distinction of time, past, present, and to come. The shrinking modesty which clings to the support of precedent is out of place in a postulate. A truth which we assume because we want it may as well be assumed as often as we want it and for all cases in which it may be needed. We can make it therefore as universal as we please, and usually we have no motive for not making it absolutely universal. ”

“ And to sum up, let us overcome all our difficulties by declaring that all the many Beyonds, which single significant judgments seem vaguely and separately to postulate, are present as fully realized intended objects to the unity of an all-inclusive, absolutely clear, universal, and conscious thought, of which all judgments, true or false, are but fragments, the whole being at once Absolute Truth and Absolute Knowledge. ”

“ An emotional postulate may become the guiding principle of a new science, a methodological principle may become superfluous and be discarded or be superseded by a better, a primitive desire may die down and cease to nourish a postulate, nay even a full blown axiom may be conceived as becoming otiose under changed conditions of experience. ”

“ An admitted postulate—say of truthfulness, of love, or whatever inborn original principle you please,—may be worked out as the world advances into ever new and more noble practical applications, which shall be as unconditionally right as the original diving force out of which they grew. ”

“ A postulate does not become axiomatic until it has been found to be workable and in proportion as it is so. But we deny that the two questions can be separated and logic be cut adrift from psychology and dissipated in the ether of the unintelligible. Psychological processes are the vehicles of truth, and logical value must be found in psychological fact or nowhere. ”

“ People had a difficulty, therefore, in conceiving that the most certain of all conclusions could rest on premises which, instead of being certainly true, are certainly not true to the full extent asserted. This apparent paradox will be examined when we come to treat of Demonstration; where we shall be able to show that as much of the postulate is true, as is required to support as much as is true of the conclusion. ”

“ The principles that govern our judgments, that preside over most sciences, that rule our actions,—have they in themselves an absolute truth, or are they only regulating laws of our thought? The question is, to know whether it is true in itself, that every phenomenon has a cause, and every quality a subject, whether every thing extended is really in space, and every succession in time, etc. ”

“ Let us see how, in these special classes of cases, we shall succeed in verifying the natural presupposition of common sense, which regards error as possible only when our object is not wholly present to mind, and which assumes that a judgment can have an object that is yet only partially present to mind. In choosing the classes of cases, we shall first follow common sense as to their definition. We shall take just the assumptions of daily life, and shall show that they lead us into difficulty. We are not for the first bound to explain why these assumptions are made. ”

“ But your hypotheses about particular problems must be judged by themselves. Your body of central truth is subject only to the test just mentioned. And you call this truth “absolute” merely because you conceive that it bears this test. Whether it does so is a question of fact, not of authority. And every man must, in such a matter, look for himself before judging about what is offered to him.
As to the principal special features of this discussion, they are: (1) The definition and comparison of what I have called the Four Historical Concepts of Being. ”

“ The discourse, then, which you delivered yesterday, which asserted that all things consist by art, and measure, and reason, does not fully persuade me that it is mind and reason that has made the world; for I have many things which I can show to consist by competent measure, and form, and species, and which yet were not made by mind and reason. Then, besides, I see that many things are done in the world without arrangement, consequence, or justice, and that nothing can be done without the course of genesis. ”

“ I assent to the veracity of sense, and I believe that the very perception or sensible image is the external object, and on no account whatever will I consent 'to disclaim this principle.' Your philosophy—your more rational opinions— representation—your reasonings which, you say, necessitate me to depart from my primary instincts—all these I give, without reservation, to the winds. ”

“ By a consciously self-realising principle is meant a principle that is determined to action by the conception of its own perfection, or by the idea of giving reality to possibilities which are involved in it and of which it is conscious as so involved; or, more precisely, a principle which at each stage of its existence is conscious of a more perfect form of existence as possible for itself, and is moved to action by that consciousness. ”

“ But the infinite variety of circumstance which is formed in this externality by the light of the essence shining in it,—all this infinite material, with its regulations,—is not the object of philosophy.... To comprehend what is, is the task of philosophy: for what is is reason. ”

“ These, which are states of the person's mind, are the real antecedent in the sequence, the real cause in the causation, asserted by the proposition. But these are also the real ground, or foundation, of the attribute Prudence; since wherever these states of mind exist we may predicate prudence, even before we know whether any conduct has followed. And in this manner every assertion respecting an attribute, may be transformed into an assertion exactly equivalent respecting the fact or phenomenon which is the ground of the attribute. ”

“ And, as we have already seen, and in the present lecture shall further illustrate, the relation of partial and total meaning is, at the same time, the relation of any finite will to the expression of the complete intent of that same will. Without contradiction, therefore, you are unable to assert the real Being of any world, unless you conceive that world as the expressed will whose partial momentary embodiment you even now observe, whenever you get any rational idea before your mind. ”

“ It remains to note that such phrases as 'Being and Nothing are the same,' or 'The unity of Being and Nothing'—like all other such unities, that of subject and object, and others—give rise to reasonable objection. ”

“ When they themselves say that they perceive the things by an immediate act of a faculty given for that purpose by their Creator, it would be said of them by their opponents that they find an idea or conception in their own minds, and from the idea or conception, infer the existence of a corresponding objective reality. ”

“ Having established the worth of the principles of consciousness, of evidence, and of contradiction, in relation to the dignity of fundamental, we will now examine the intrinsic value of the different criteria. ”

“ Results in philosophy must needs lead to new problems. With this definition in mind of what it is to be, how shall we next undertake to describe that more special constitution of the world which our concept of Being involves? ”

“ Positive logic abstains, as we see, from speculating upon the leading principles of knowledge, principles of identity, of contradiction of causality, etc. These kinds of principles are not objects of examination or of discussion. ”

“ Or our attention may be drawn to ideas which the moment we analyze them involve a contradiction, such as 'beginning' or 'becoming,' or to the opposite poles, as they are sometimes termed, of necessity and freedom, of idea and fact. We may be told to observe that every negative is a positive, that differences of kind are resolvable into differences of degree, and that differences of degree may be heightened into differences of kind. ”

“ We find the inner ground for this systematisation of judgments in the circumstance that when the Notion, which is the unity of Being and Essence in a comprehensive thought, unfolds, as it does in the judgment, it must reproduce these two stages in a transformation proper to the notion. ”

“ If you adopt, as absolute, a criterion of right which is so only relatively, your results will not be absolutely right. Those who trust to their senses become, as it were, slaves to objective existences. Those alone who are guided by their intuitions find the true standard. ”

“ And since it is by these laws, combined with the facts of each particular case, that the whole of the phenomena of human action and feeling are produced, it is on these that every rational attempt to construct the science of human nature in the concrete, and for practical purposes, must proceed. ”

“ Without attempting in this place to justify my opinion, or even to define the kind of justification which it admits of, I merely declare my conviction, that the general principle to which all rules of practice ought to conform, and the test by which they should be tried, is that of conduciveness to the happiness of mankind, or rather, of all sentient beings ”

“ Whether, therefore, we conform to the practice of those who have made the subject their particular study, or to that of popular writers and common discourse, the province of logic will include several operations of the intellect not usually considered to fall within the meaning of the terms Reasoning and Argumentation. ”

“ The first and most necessary topic in philosophy is that of the use of moral theorems, such as, "We ought not to lie;" the second is that of demonstrations, such as, "What is the origin of our obligation not to lie;" the third gives strength and articulation to the other two, such as, "What is the origin of this is a demonstration." For what is demonstration? What is consequence? What contradiction? What truth? What falsehood? The third topic, then, is necessary on the account of the second, and the second on the account of the first. ”

“ The answer is, that the objects of thought about which we make judgments are suppositions, and our judgments {88} concern their fulfilment, and their fulfilment is a relation external to them—it is their agreement or disagreement with reality. ”

“ Let us re-state the principle of causality as a universal and necessary law of thought. "All phenomena present themselves to us as the expression of POWER, and refer us to a causal ground whence they issue." ”

“ In all our knowledge of general principles, what actually happens is that first of all we realise some particular application of the principle, and then we realise that the particularity is irrelevant, and that there is a generality which may equally truly be affirmed. ”

“ In other words, they must occupy their own place in a general philosophy, there appearing as so many links in a chain attached, on the one hand, to laws and theories which account for them, and, on the other, to laws and theories which without them cannot be explained. ”

“ Hence we may claim, even here, that our conceptions shall be ‘truthful,’ ‘consistent with fact,’ and so on, by which we mean that they are to be in accordance with universal convention upon such subjects. ”

“ From the Companion of two or more Ideas clearly Conceived arises a Judgment, which we may lay down for a Principle, and as we have occasion Argue from. Always observing that those Judgments which we take for Axioms or Principles, be such as carry the highest Evidence and Conviction, such as every one who will but in the least Attend may Clearly see, and be fully convinced of, and which need not another Idea for their Demonstration. ”

“ Then what remains to be discovered is the object which partakes equally of the nature of being and not-being, and cannot rightly be termed either, pure and simple; this unknown term, when discovered, we may truly call the subject of opinion, and assign each to their proper faculty,—the extremes to the faculties of the extremes and the mean to the faculty of the mean. ”

“ When the principles of Essence are taken as essential principles of thought they become predicates of a pre-supposed subject, which, because they are essential, is 'Everything,' The propositions thus arising have been stated as universal Laws of Thought. ”

“ We must not, however, conclude that the generality of the principle is merely verbal; it will be found on inspection to be no vague or unmeaning assertion, but a most important and really fundamental truth. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The instances of new theories agreeing with and explaining old empiricisms, are innumerable. All the just remarks made by experienced persons on human character and conduct, are so many special laws, which the general laws of the human mind explain and resolve. ”

“ That moral notions, or notions of rightness in conduct, are formed in the mind by the perception of certain relations to which human conduct is incident; that they are exactly akin in nature, therefore, to mathematical notions, and have their genesis in the operation of the same faculties ”

“ Instead of recognizing, as in the Cours de Philosophic Positive, an essentially sound view of philosophy, with a few capital errors, it is in their general character that we deem the subsequent speculations false and misleading, while in the midst of this wrong general tendency, we find a crowd of valuable thoughts, and suggestions of thought, in detail. ”