Relation (philosophy)

“ In like manner, those suggestions of another class, which constitute our notions of proportion, resemblance, difference, and all the variety of relations, may, as I have already remarked, arise, when we have had no previous desire of tracing the relations, or may arise after that previous desire. But, when the feelings of relation seem to us to arise spontaneously, they are not in themselves, different from the feelings of relation, that arise, in our intentional comparisons or judgments, in the longest series of ratiocination. ”

“ Then relations of activity, tying terms into series involving [Pg 45] change, tendency, resistance, and the causal order generally. Finally, the relation experienced between terms that form states of mind, and are immediately conscious of continuing each other. The organization of the Self as a system of memories, purposes, strivings, fulfilments or disappointments, is incidental to this most intimate of all relations, the terms of which seem in many cases actually to compenetrate and suffuse each other’s being. [27]
Philosophy has always turned on grammatical particles. ”

“ For ‘tis a quality, which I shall often have occasion to remark in human nature, and shall explain more fully in its proper place, that when objects are united by any relation, we have a strong propensity to add some new relation to them, in order to compleat the union. In our arrangement of bodies we never fail to place such as are resembling, in contiguity to each other, or at least in correspondent points of view: Why? but because we feel a satisfaction in joining the relation of contiguity to that of resemblance, or the resemblance of situation to that of qualities. ”

“ You can never, we may argue, find qualities without relations. Whenever you take them so, they are made so, and continue so, by an operation which itself implies relation. Their plurality gets for us all its meaning through relations; and to suppose it otherwise in reality is wholly indefensible. ”

“ In a preceding part of the argument criticized, I have, in various ways, aimed to show that, alike when we analyze the product of thought and when we analyze the process of thought, we are brought to the conclusion that invariably “a thought involves relation, difference, likeness;” and that even from the very nature of Life itself, we may evolve the conclusion that “thinking being relationing, no thought can ever express more than relations.” ”

“ For the sake of explaining the world, even the view which seeks for true ‘Being’ in ‘Position’ without relation, is still compelled to assume that things do, as a matter of fact, everywhere stand in reciprocal relations ”

“ Earn it if you believe you have a right to it. The measure of my sentiments can not be prescribed to me, nor the aim of my feelings determined. We and the world have only one relation toward each other, that of usefulness. ”

“ Thus Phenomenalism, when it has banished the notion of a substantial unity in things, has to identify the world of things, as we have already seen, with qualities in relation to one another. But now the question arises, How are we to understand the conception of qualities in relation? Can we, on the one hand, reduce all qualities to relations or all relations to qualities, or, on the other, can we form an intelligible idea of the way in which a single whole or system can be formed by the union of the two? ”

“ In the first relation we find ourselves surrounded by existences, over one part of which we exercise causality, and with the other (in whom we suppose an independent causality) we are in a state of reciprocal influence. ”

“ Our relation, all round, exists—it's a reality, and a very good one; we're mixed up, so to speak, and it's too late to change it. We must live IN it and with it. ”

“ Let us make the moral relationships that we are to consider explicitly relationships amongst Selves of the type that we have been defining. Let A be one of these Selves; a conscious life, defined in its unity by its relation to some one ideal. Let B be another Self in the same world with A. From A’s point of view, from B’s point of view, and from the absolute point of view, these two lives are, first, distinct. ”

“ Hence there may be drawn these conclusions:—First, that we have an indefinite consciousness of an absolute reality transcending relations, which is produced by the absolute persistence in us of something which survives all changes of relation. ”

“ If it is easy to seize a relation, we say that it is sensible, to distinguish it from one which, because its terms are too remote, cannot be as quickly perceived. A sensible difference, or resemblance.... What is taste in the arts, in intellectual productions? What but the feeling of those relations among the parts which constitutes their merit?... Did we not feel relations we should never attain to true knowledge,... for almost all our knowledge is of relations.... We never have an isolated sensation;... we are therefore never without the feeling of relation.... An object strikes our senses ”

“ A Thing may, with perfect propriety both of thought and of language, be said to be related to another thing, or to have a relation with it—indeed to be related to all things, and to have a prodigious variety of relations with all; because every fact that takes place, either in nature or in human thought, which includes or involves a plurality of Things, is the fundamentum of a special relation of those Things with one another: not to mention the relations of likeness or unlikeness, of priority or posteriority, which exist between each Thing and all other Things whatever. ”

“ For I immediately reply, that a succession of related objects places the mind in this disposition, and is considered with the same smooth and uninterrupted progress of the imagination, as attends the view of the same invariable object. The very nature and essence of relation is to connect our ideas with each other, and upon the appearance of one, to facilitate the transition to its correlative. ”

“ In other words, we reason from what we see and can measure and describe, to that which we can not see or describe, and we end in a term of the relation which can not be present to the mind, and thus no thinkable relation can be framed. ”

“ For what have men been trying to find out, since men were men, but just those things: "Where do our true interests lie—which relations shall we call the intimate and real ones—which things shall we call living realities and which not?" A few psychological points can, however, be made clear.
Any relation to our mind at all, in the absence of a stronger relation, suffices to make an object real. The barest appeal to our attention is enough for that. ”

“ When one term of the relation is an idea capable of mental representation, as when we think of a thing cognizable by our senses, and the other term of the relation is something that lies beyond them, the law of thought, according to Mr. ”

“ Now, it seems difficult to imagine that any relation can be discovered betwixt our passions, volitions and actions, compared to external objects, which relation might not belong either to these passions and volitions, or to these external objects, compared among themselves. ”

“ All relations terminate in simple ideas. First, That it is evident, that all relation terminates in, and is ultimately founded on, those simple ideas we have got from sensation or reflection : so that all we have in our thoughts ourselves, (if we think of anything, or have any meaning) , or would signify to others, when we use words standing for relations, is nothing but some simple ideas, or collections of simple ideas, compared one with another. ”

“ We can conceive three sorts of relation of man with himself: I mean the sensuous part of man with the reasonable part. From these three relations we have to seek which is that one which best suits him in the sensuous world, and the expression of which constitutes the beautiful. ”

“ The common sense, imperfect recognition of our neighbor implies rather realization of the external aspect of his being, as that part of him which affects us, than realization of his inner and peculiar world of personal experience. ”

“ Besides, each time that we affirm that such a man is there, we are creating a double relation, namely, the relation of the man who is there, with the place where he is, and the relation of the containing place and the contained man. ”

“ In judging of the soundness of this reasoning, the first thing to be done is to determine what we are thinking about when we compare the finite with the infinite, or when, to put it as Mr. Spencer does, we have two terms of a relation, one of which is a thing open to the observation of our senses, and the other of which lies beyond them. In this case, does all thinkable relation lapse, or fade into an impossible conception, when we undertake to conceive of that which lies beyond what we see? ”

“ Now one of the first things that strike us in connection with moral laws or rules is that they are all statements of relation. Such moral commands as "Thou{175} shalt not steal," "Thou shalt not kill," the commands to be truthful, kind, dutiful, etc., all imply a relation to others. ”

“ Sounds as well as thoughts have relation both between each other and towards that which they represent, and a perception of the order of those relations has always been found connected with a perception of the order of the relations of thought. ”

“ It has schemes, forms, and objects proportionate to its wider field, which our mental fields are far too narrow to cognize. By ourselves we are simply out of relation with each other, for it we are both of us there, and different from each other, which is a positive relation. ”

“ Let every simplest relation towards human being, if it be embodied but in the act of buying a reel of cotton or a knife, be recognized as a relation with, a meeting of that human soul. In its poor degree let its outcome be in truth and friendliness. ”

“ One definite intuition is expressed—that of relationship; relation between person and person, relation between person and machine, relation between person and some ever-ruling Order, be it Fate, Chance, or God also personal. It is the reality of personal inter-relationship that underlies all literature, be it love-poem, novel, or some drama of Fate in which personal relationship is overshadowed by the impersonal, or at least the unsympathetic; or else it is the one-sided relation of a person to a thing, as in descriptive science, which has only the beauty of order. ”

“ Hence, man's relation to things is a different one according to the grade of his knowledge. In so far as this is adequate, that is, corresponds to the truth of actuality, his relation is an active one ”

“ But if one regards the relation R itself as a transcendent relation, a new mediating relation, R', is needed to make valid any argument for the transcendent reality of the first relation R; and an infinite regress becomes necessary. ”

“ The Problem of Relation.—More perplexing than the problem of Substance and its Qualities is the question to which the pre-scientific assumption that the world consists of a number of interrelated things gives rise. This problem of Relation becomes still more prominent when reflection upon the problem of Substance and Quality has made it manifest that what we call the qualities of things are one and all dependent upon their relations either to our perceptive organs or to other things. ”

“ It has often struck me that the relation of two important members of the social body to one another has never been sufficiently considered, or treated of, so far as I know, either by the philosopher or the poet. ”

“ Relation, then, to our topic or interest is constantly felt in the fringe, and particularly the relation of harmony and discord, of furtherance or hindrance of the topic. When the sense of furtherance is there, we are 'all right;' with the sense of hindrance we are dissatisfied and perplexed, and cast about us for other thoughts. ”

“ Of all your relations, which is most potent to develop your manhood, to unfold to yourself, and to all, the hidden wealth and depths of your being; to vitalize and call into manly activity all the powers of your physical and intellectual nature? ”

“ We are conscious of all these; we encounter them all in one common field, which is the subject that experiences them. What necessity, then, is there to imagine intermediate beings in order to bring the faculties of the soul into communication with each other? ”

“ Relations imply a unity in which they subsist, and apart from which they have no meaning or existence. (c) Every kind of diversity, both terms and relations alike are adjectives of one reality, which exists in them and without which they are nothing. ”

“ Accordingly, instead of reducing qualities to relations, it seems to me a much more intelligible view to consider relations as abstract ways of taking qualities in general, as qualities thought of in their function of bridging a gap or making a transition between two bits of reality that have previously been taken as separate things. ”

“ But if this relation consists in these inconceivable things, in a communication of life, light and power, if these are enjoyed in God, and in ourselves, in a manner not to be explained by any thing that we ever heard, or saw; then we must necessarily be poor judges of what is fit for God to require of us, because of this relation. It teaches us nothing but the superficialness of our own knowledge, and the unfathomable depths of the divine perfections. ”

“ The relation of the individual person to the species he belongs to is the most intimate of all relations. ”

“ The mode which is derived from relation rests on the doctrine that no object is ever perceived independently and entirely by itself, but always in its relation to something else; so that it is impossible to know its nature correctly. ”