Rational nature

“ Let us, then, employ the term rational to that characterization of the nature of things which to metaphysics is thus inevitable and indispensable. The world must in the last analysis be rational in its constitution, and its agencies and forms of being must be construed as rational in their type. ”

“ Sensitive and Rational knowledg lives in sensitive and rational Matter, and Animate liveth in Inanimate matter, I mean they are all several parts and actions of the onely infinite matter inseparable from each other; for wheresoever is matter, there is also self-motion, and wheresoever is self-motion, there is sense and reason, and wheresoever is sense and reason, there is sensitive and rational knowledge, all being but one body or substance, which is Nature. ”

“ It expresses, therefore, the highest ascent of the rational intelligence, where, overlooking the whole realm of existence and relations known in other forms of knowledge, it sees, and through the emotional nature, feels, how to live as life ought to be lived. ”

“ For although I confess, that there is but one kind of Life, and one kind of Soul in Nature, which is the sensitive Life, and the rational Soul, both consisting not onely of Matter, but of one kind of Matter, to wit, Animate; nevertheless they are of different degrees, the matter of the rational Soul being more agil, subtil and active, then the matter of the sensitive Life; which is the reason that the rational can act in its own substance or degree of matter, and make figures in it self, and its own parts ”

“ Not any nature of things which may seem to be will also seem to be ipso facto rational; and if it do not seem rational, it will afflict the mind with a ceaseless uneasiness, till it be formulated or interpreted in some other and more congenial way. The study of what the mind's criteria of rationality are, the definition of its exactions in this respect, form an intensely interesting subject into which I cannot enter now with any detail. ”

“ And when I say, That, if all the heads of Mankind were put into one, and sufficient quantity of Rational Matter therein, that Creature would not onely have the knowledge of every particular, but that Understanding and Knowledge would increase like Use-money, my meaning is, that if there were much of those parts of rational matter joyned, they would make more variety by self-change of corporeal motions.
When I name Humane sense and reason, I mean such sensitive and rational perception and knowledge as is proper to the nature of Man ”

“ And as reason is given to rational animals according to a more perfect principle, it follows, that to live correctly according to reason, is properly predicated of those who live according to nature. For nature is as it were the artist who produces the inclination. ”

“ An unjust composition never fails to contain error and falsehood. Therefore an unjust connection of ideas is not derived from nature, but from the imperfect composition of man. Misconnection of ideas is the same as misjudging, and has no positive existence, being merely a creature of the imagination; but nature and truth are real and uniform; and the rational mind by reasoning, discerns the uniformity, and is thereby enabled to make a just composition of ideas, which will stand the test of truth. ”

“ Well, of two conceptions equally fit to satisfy the logical demand, that one which awakens the active impulses, or satisfies other æsthetic demands better than the other, will be accounted the more rational conception, and will deservedly prevail. ”

“ And thus the intellectual satisfaction which at first comes to him without reflection, at last excites in him the conscious wish to find realized throughout the entire phenomenal world those rational continuities, uniformities, and necessities which are the fundamental element and guiding principle of his own thought. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is, indeed, a sense, in which, according to our view, any rational idea in the whole universe seeks and in its complete development finds, as the expression of its ultimate meaning, the whole of the universe. ”

“ Upon the basis of the general theory of human knowledge thus broadly sketched, we shall next pass to a study of the questions offered to our scrutiny by Nature, when viewed in its relation to Man. Here our main purpose shall be to apply our general idealistic doctrine, concerning what is meant by Reality in general, to the problem as to the sense in which Nature and Man are real. ”

“ The understanding may err, just because it is conscious; but experience always corrects these mistakes. Nature, as gifted with mind, is no new nature; the laws of thought are the natural laws of the mind. ”

“ To which my answer is in short, that the Rational part of Matter in One composed figure, as in Man, or the like Creature, may make such figures, as the senses did never make in that composed Figure or Creature; And though your Authour reproves those that say, [2] Imaginations rise of themselves; yet, if the self-moving part of Matter, which I call Rational, makes Imaginations, they must needs rise of themselves; for the Rational part of matter being free and self-moving, depends upon nothing, neither Sense nor Object, I mean, so, as not to be able to work without them. ”

“ My Ought is my own will more rationally expressed than, at the instant of a capricious activity, I as yet consciously recognize. The consciousness of the more rational purpose, — of a purpose looming up, as it were, in the distance, beyond my present impulses, and yet even now seen as their own culmination, like a mountain crowning the ascent from the foothills, — the consciousness, I say, of such a purpose, is what we mean in Ethics by the Ought. ”

“ I proceed to the pleasures of the understanding, which possess a high rank in point of dignity. Of this every one will be sensible, when he considers the important truths that have been laid open by science; such as general theorems, and the general laws that govern the material and moral worlds. The pleasures of the understanding are suited to man as a rational and contemplative being ”

“ Interior light, or reason, teaches us by the processes of thought those intellectual truths which are fixed in the human mind by physics, logic, and ethics, through rational, natural, and moral action on the will, the conduct, and the speech, which are the triple functions of the understanding, and on the three faculties of the reason—apprehension, judgment, and action; this interior light acts on outward things by physics, mathematics, and metaphysics, and perceives God in all things by logic, by physics, and by ethics. ”

“ Whether true or false, any view of the universe which shall completely satisfy the mind must obey conditions of the mind's own imposing, must at least let the mind be the umpire to decide whether it be fit to be called a rational universe or not. ”

“ And, quite apart from the particular event of the discovery, how can we account for the very fact that nature - at least on a certain level of her existence - exhibits rules of action expressible in terms of logical principles immanent in the human mind? ”

“ How in the concrete it takes place, in what special ways our consciousness is at once transcended, and included in a wider experience, it is the purpose of our whole present series of discussions to make clearer; and not until the end of the undertaking can one judge the degree of our success.
We proceed next to the characterization of certain more special principles that consciously determine us, at any moment, to acknowledge as real one rather than another fact or system of concrete facts, such as the existence of our fellows, or of Nature, or our own past lives. ”

“ All that remains for us, in that impossibility which nature has imposed on us of attaining a more intimate knowledge of the essence and constitution either of mind or of matter, is to attend to the phenomena which they present, analysing whatever is complex, and tracing the order of every sequence. ”

“ For what is your famous "two aspects" principle more than the postulate that the world is thoroughly intelligible in nature? And what the practical outcome of the distinction between whatness and thatness save the sending us to experience to ascertain the connections among things, and the declaration that no amount of insight into their intrinsic qualities will account for their existence? ”

“ I have tried to show that an idealist is not obliged either to ignore or to make light of physical facts in order to maintain his theory of the Absolute. That the latter theory is, in the only reasonable sense, itself an empirical doctrine, I have set forth in the former series of these lectures. Here I attempt to point out what links connect our general idealistic interpretation of all experience with our special interpretation of our experience of Nature. ”

“ Before we can show that reason explains, that is, rationalizes the world, we must surely first show that reason itself is rational, or rather, to be more accurate, that our conception of reason is rational. There must not be any mere inexplicable facts, any mysteries, any dark places, in our notion of reason. It must be penetrated through and through by the light of reason. It must be absolutely transparent, crystalline. How can we hope to explain the world, if our very first principle itself contains irrationalities? ”

“ Thus the world grows more orderly and rational to the mind, which passes from one feature of it to another by deductive necessity, as soon as it conceives it as made up of so few and so simple phenomena as bodies with no properties but number and movement to and fro. ”

“ The senses are well calculated to make discoveries of external objects and to communicate those notices, or simple images of things to the mind, with all the magnificent simplicity of nature, which opens an extensive field of contemplation to the understanding, enabling the mind to examine into the natural causes and consequences of things, and to investigate the knowledge of moral good and evil, from which, together with the power of agency, results the human conscience. ”

“ Such a tossing to and fro of values is, I think, not foreign to our view that the world-stuff behind the pointer readings is of nature continuous with the mind.
In viewing the world in a practical way values for normal human consciousness may be taken as standard. ”

“ The Theory of Being requires us to view every fact of nature, and of man’s life, as a fragmentary glimpse of the Absolute life, as a revelation, however mysterious and to us men now in detail illegible, of the unity of the perfect Whole. Why we hold this to be a true theory, we have set forth at length in the foregoing series of lectures; and the detailed proof of the general thesis concerns us here no longer. ”

“ Only on the basis of a rational theory as to the purposes subserved by the various mental sciences, and the possible limitations imposed by those purposes on the use of the corresponding categories, can we decide how far the interpretation of existence as a whole in terms of Psychology, Sociology, or Ethics, is legitimate. ”

“ 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, your system of representation, your reasonings which, you say, necessitate me to depart from my primary instincts, all these I give, without reservation, to the winds. ”

“ It is not surprising that these various indications of something like a capacity for thought should be of universal interest, but it also has a deeper meaning, which it is the office of science and philosophy to explore, and which relates to the profound and mysterious problem of "mind in nature." ”

“ Whatever comes forth from the rational soul in the way of generality, of that the rational soul gives an account by means of images in the way of particularity, and brings it home to common sense by way of allegories. ”

“ And the proof, that the Sensitive and Rational Parts of Human Creatures, may make Perceptions, or rather Conceptions, without Forrein Objects, is, That many men in this world have had Conceptions, both amongst the Rational and Sensitive, which Man names Visions, or Imaginations ”

“ This realism is complemented by a corresponding theory of knowledge, according to which reason is the gradual product of an experience more or less long, and gives a faithful representation of the order in the external world. These premises condition the adoption of the 'natural' method, which consists in always reasoning from the physical to the moral, from the inferior to the superior. ”

“ Our belief in the ideal is thus shown to be the principle from which our subsequent acts of will can be logically deduced, just as Nature's uniformity can be shown to be the principle from which the conclusions of science logically flow. ”

“ But the foundation of our inductive processes is the thought that, since the real world is a perfectly rational and united body of truth, that hypothesis which reduces to relatively rational unity the greatest number of facts is more apt to represent the truth of things than any hypothesis of less scope, and of less rational significance. ”