Second nature

“ Neither by our empirical science nor by our art do we then directly discover anything but this: Namely, that our human Internal Meanings do indeed possess some reference to a vast finite realm beyond ourselves, within which we men find our place. Out of this realm we ourselves have proceeded through the processes of evolution. Into this realm, at death, we seem to return. This realm is called Nature. ”

“ Now what faith accomplishes in the daily practice of the devout, a Theory of Being must also undertake, in so far as it is successful, to provide for us in our efforts to understand Nature and Man.
What we men call Nature comes to us as a matter of our extremely finite common experience. In dealing with nature, we feel our way; we pass from fact to fact; we collect fragments. When our special sciences succeed in joining these fragments into some sort of empirical unity, the procedure is distinctly human, and the result is always provisional. ”

“ For all that nature by her mother wit
Could frame in earth, and forme of substance base,
Was there, and all that nature did omit,
Art playing second natures part, supplyed it. ”

“ The second series I intend first to devote to the application of our fundamental conceptions to the more special problems of the nature of the human Ego, the meaning of the finite realm called the Physical World, and the interpretation of Evolution. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Hence, the external world is but an assemblage of causes, corresponding to our sensations real and possible. Now, in the analysis of Will, the personal force or the activity was a cause; and as the other force or matter is also a source of causes," so nature is sister to man—animated, active, and alive, like him."—p. ”

“ Our idea, therefore, of necessity and causation, arises entirely from the uniformity observable in the operations of nature, where similar objects are constantly conjoined together, and the mind is determined by custom to infer the one from the appearance of the other. ”

“ And these experiences of ours in the formulation and working out of our ideal give us the clue to the manner in which Nature on her part works out her ideal. We are the representations and representatives of the whole, and we may assume that the whole works in much the same way as we ourselves work. ”

“ That suggested the idea of a subtly winding parallel, a ‘rapport’ in every detail, between the human mind and the world without it, laws of nature being so many transformed ideas. Conversely, the ideas of the human mind would be only transformed laws. ”

“ The habitual interpretation of natural events by the analogy of human design, to which every hour's conversation testifies, is the evidence that to the ordinary man nature presents itself not as something external, but, like a friend, as "another himself." The true conquest of nature is but the completion of the reconciliation thus anticipated in the everyday language and consciousness of mankind. ”

“ There are thus two objects of the faculty of judgment—the beautiful in works of art and the natural products of organic life—which make known to us the unity of the Notion of Nature and the Notion of Freedom. ”

“ In doing this it is above all necessary to recollect that body and mind can in fact never be considered as distinct, but rather that both sides of nature are inseparably connected, and stand in the closest interaction. ”

“ By nature is meant those inherent properties and necessary relations derived from the realities of things. And these realities of things, though in the utmost diversity, are yet intimately connected one with the other. For these diverse realities an all-unifying agency is needed that shall link them all one to the other. ”

“ We may consider two natures in the external world, the one real, the other phenomenal; the first is particular and absolute, the second is relative to the being which perceives the phenomenon; by the first the world is, by the second it appears. ”

“ I need not tell you, my friends, how utterly wrong that system is. As humans do not think in words, but in whole [Pg 14] sentences, so Nature does not act in particulars, but in wholes. The particulars are ours, not Nature's. In making them we act arbitrarily. ”

“ We shall hold them to be so if we see them accompanied and supported by all the other circumstances which also have their spring of action in nature; for nature can only be recognized by the close and strict consistency, by the unity and uniformity of its effects. ”

“ To-day we come to a kind of attraction even more curious than the last, namely, the attraction which we find to be of a double nature—of a curious and dual nature. And I want first of all to make the nature of this doubleness clear to you. ”

“ In the midst of uniformities of nature, moving at will on the plane of natural necessities, weaving the pattern of its ideas through the warp of natural laws, runs the personal life. On the same plane and amid these uniformities, yet itself a sphere of being of another order ”

“ But as they actually come and are given, creation widens to the view of their recipients. They suggest that our natural experience, our strictly moralistic and prudential experience, may be only a fragment of real human experience. They soften nature's outlines and open out the strangest possibilities and perspectives. ”

“ How, therefore, shall we satisfy ourselves concerning the cause of that Being whom you suppose the Author of Nature, or, according to your system of anthropomorphism, the ideal world in which you trace the material? Have we not the same reason to trace the ideal world into another ideal world, or new intelligent principle? ”

“ But, Madam, I desire you to observe what I said already, viz. that the parts of Nature are as apt to divide, as to unite; for the chief actions of Nature are to divide, and to unite; which division is the cause, that it may well be said, every particular Creature hath numerous souls; for every part of rational Matter is a particular Soul, and every part of the sensitive Matter is a particular Life; all which, mixed with the Inanimate Matter, though they be Infinite in parts, yet they make but one Infinite whole, which is Infinite Nature ”

“ Have our sensations any relation to external objects, or are they merely phenomena of our nature? Can we infer the existence of an external world from the existence of that internal world resulting from the union of the scenes presented by sensations? ”

“ All nature in its myriad forms of life is changeable, impermanent, unenduring. Only the informing Principle of nature endures. Nature is many, and is marked by separation. The informing Principle is One, and is marked by unity. ”

“ The combination of the two elements, the subjective or ideal, and the objective or observed, is necessary, in order to give us any insight into the laws of nature. But different persons, according to their mental habits and constitution, may be inclined to dwell by preference upon the one or the other of these two elements. ”

“ Nay, further we may ask, what kingdom is there of nature, what corner of space, in which there is any thing that can be examined by us, where we do not fall upon contrivance and design? The only reflection, perhaps, which arises in our minds from this view of the world around us, is that the laws of nature everywhere prevail; that they are uniform and universal. But what do we mean by the laws of nature? ”

“ These were facts of Nature, of Man as a part of it, of man's nature, habits, history, thoughts, conduct, and social relations,—in fact, all that pertains to the phenomena of Nature and Human Life and Relations. ”

“ There is a kind of reason and true insight in the personification of the forces of Nature, and especially of vital force. All forces, by progressive dynamic individuation, are on the way toward entity or personality, but fully attain that condition only in man.
3. Again, to perceive relations and properties abstracted from material things, to form abstract or general ideas, to form not only percepts but also concepts, is admitted to be a characteristic of man—a characteristic on which all our science and philosophy rest. ”

“ We are trying to find out how men came to think that there are in reality two categories of things, radically heterogeneous and incomparable to each other. Now how could the spectacle of nature give rise to the idea of this duality? Nature is always and everywhere of the same sort. ”

“ The unit of natural existence is neither force nor matter, but sentience, and through this all the material and dynamic phenomena of nature may be explained." From the unifications of these sensitive principles, or elementary souls, which take place in the combinations of matter, higher and higher manifestations of sentience appear, constituting the various activities displayed in crystals, in plants, and in animals. ”

“ Starting with a hundred instincts such as this, that older unmechanical, spiritual, or Platonic, philosophy envisages nature rather as the unity of a living spirit or person, revealing itself in various degrees to the kindred spirit of the observer, than as a system of mechanical forces. ”

“ But in no part of their argument have they more signally failed in accounting for the observed facts, and in no part have they more seriously outraged the common sense and natural taste of men. In point of fact, we have here one of those great correlations belonging to the unity of nature—that indissoluble connection which has been established between the senses and the æsthetic sentiments of man and certain things in the external world. ”

“ The functions of life may be divided into two classes, those which are affected by the properties of this principle alone, and those, by far the most numerous class, which result from the co-operation of these properties with those of the principles which operate in inanimate nature. ”

“ It does not in the least follow from our view of nature as the manifestation to our senses of a system of sentient individuals, that the relations between those individuals are adequately represented by the relations between the different factors of the material world as it is constructed in our various scientific hypotheses. ”

“ Now, which are those original determinations, and the absolute creatures of nature? The world of individuals. The individuals, therefore, in consequence of their moral destinations, are the only true and actual in nature, and their creation completes nature in general. ”

“ There are not two worlds—a world of Nature and a world of human nature—standing over against one another in a sort of antagonism, but one world of Nature, in the orderly evolution of which human nature has its subordinate part. ”

“ Hasn’t a phase of the duality of our nature ever struck you? We have a primary or everyday nature—a thing of habit, tradition, circumstance; and we also have a secondary nature which clamours for various sensations and is quite contented with vicarious gratification. ”

“ Thus, when we say nature, in the abstract, meaning physically, we should be understood as alluding to those general, uniform, absolute, consistent, and beautiful laws, which control and render harmonious, as a great whole, the entire action, affinities, and destinies of the universe ”

“ We are merely endeavouring to exhibit the type of relations which hold between the entities which we in fact perceive as in nature. We are not called on to make any pronouncement as to the psychological relation of subjects to objects or as to the status of either in the realm of reality. ”

“ For example, most of us attach great importance to the conception which we entertain of the position of man in this universe and his relation to the rest of nature. We have almost all been told, and most of us hold by the tradition, that man occupies an isolated and peculiar position in nature ”

“ Every explanation of anything by states of our consciousness, includes as part of the explanation a succession between those states; and it is useless attempting to analyse that which comes out as an element in every analysis we are able to make. Antecedence and consequence, as well as likeness and unlikeness, must be postulated as universal conditions of Nature, inherent in all our feelings whether of external or of internal consciousness.—Ed. ”

“ For two minds, the discerned components of the general facts exhibited in their respective acts of sense-awareness must be different. For each mind, in its awareness of nature is aware of a certain complex of related natural entities in their relations to the living body as a focus. ”

“ If it is true on the one hand that the interpretation of nature by the supposition of ends external to it, with reference to which its processes are directed, has been discarded, and that its rejection has been the condition of growth in an exact knowledge of nature, on the other hand the recognition of ends immanent in nature, of ideas realised within it, is the basis of a scientific explanation of life. ”

“ And thus, in every case where we fancy ourselves sure of a simple law of Nature, we must remember that a great deal of the fancied simplicity may be due, in the given case, not to Nature, but to the ineradicable prejudice of our own minds in favor of regularity and simplicity. ”