Senses

“ Invoke the aid of reason, of habit, of the senses, the head, the heart, and explain it if you can. You will find nothing but two bodies, one here, the other there, and between them, what? Air, space, immensity. O blind fools! who fondly imagine yourselves men, and who reason of love! ”

“ It is as if there were in the human consciousness a sense of reality, a feeling of objective presence, a perception of what we may call 'something there,' more deep and more general than any of the special and particular 'senses' by which the current psychology supposes existent realities to be originally revealed. If this were so, we might suppose the senses to waken our attitudes and conduct as they so habitually do, by first exciting this sense of reality; ”

“ For manifestly these senses unite into one nature, call it the soul or what you will. And it is with this central form, through the organs of sense, that we perceive sensible objects.”Dewey, Psychology, 21—“Knowledge and feeling are partial aspects of the self, and hence more or less abstract, while will is complete, comprehending both aspects.... ”

“ The distinction is not a purely sentimental one—not a belief founded simply on emotion. There is a physical world—the world as known to our senses, and there is a psychical world—the world of feeling, consciousness, thought, and moral life. ”

“ That the feelings we have by these senses are generically distinct from the emotions of Sublimity and Beauty, might, I imagine, be trusted to an appeal to each man’s consciousness. There are innumerable cases, however, which may be regarded as decisive experiments upon the subject. ”

“ Examine thine own self, and behold how thy motion and stillness, thy will and purpose, thy sight and hearing, thy sense of smell and power of speech, and whatever else is related to, or transcendeth, thy physical senses or spiritual perceptions, all proceed from, and owe their existence to, this same faculty. ”

“ All senses are used, not disused, but used in a sort of overtone of function which perceives without contact and translates with the deeper perception of the essence-sense rather than the crude extracts of the old senses. ”

“ We are not only "in matter," therefore, but we sub-create the matter, through our God-given modes of sensuous receptivity, and can only escape from it through an entire change of those modes, called "senses." ”

“ The senses are either outward or inward: and the inward senses are either natural or supernatural; we have an example of the inward natural sense in being angered or pacified, in love and hatred; or when we perceive and discern any natural truth, such as the natural maxims, to wit, that the whole is greater than the part, &c. ”

“ Man has no Body distinct from his Soul for that called Body is a portion of Soul discernd by the five Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age. ”

“ The senses bring us new impressions, and we take these and analyze them, tear them into the parts which compose them, compare them with previous sensations, recognize difference in things which seem to be alike, and resemblances in things which seem to be different ”

“ The bodily senses alone can get at the full content, the deep inside of nothing, no matter how pronounced its objectivity, “The truly real is a thing that has an inside.” [3] The more pronounced or attractive the external [24] substance and form of a material object and the closer we are to it, the greater the difficulty for the average character to gain cognition of its spiritual essence. ”

“ In addition to the higher or more interior endowments of the mind,—rational thought and deep affection,—the Creator has furnished us with senses or sensory faculties, which find their exercise and delight in things of the outward world ”

“ A selfish pursuit had cramped and narrowed me, until your gentleness and affection warmed and opened my senses; I became the same happy creature who, a few years ago, loved and beloved by all, had no sorrow or care. When happy, inanimate nature had the power of bestowing on me the most delightful sensations. A serene sky and verdant fields filled me with ecstasy. ”

“ We must all die; nor leave survivor nor heir to the wide inheritance of earth. We must all die! The species of man must perish; his frame of exquisite workmanship; the wondrous mechanism of his senses; the noble proportion of his godlike limbs; his mind, the throned king of these; must perish. Will the earth still keep her place among the planets; will she still journey with unmarked regularity round the sun; will the seasons change, the trees adorn themselves with leaves, and flowers shed their fragrance, in solitude? ”

“ I lay upon the grass surrounded by a darkness which not the slightest beam of light penetrated—There was no sound for the deep night had laid to sleep the insects, the only creatures that lived on the lone spot where no tree or shrub could afford shelter to aught else—There was a wondrous silence in the air that calmed my senses yet which enlivened my soul, my mind hurried from image to image and seemed to grasp an eternity. ”

“ The commonest objection which the doctrine there laid down runs up against is drawn from the existence of our ‘affections.’ In our pleasures and pains, our loves and fears and angers, in the beauty, comicality, importance or preciousness of certain objects and situations, we have, I am told by many critics, a great realm of experience intuitively recognized as spiritual, made, and felt to be made, of consciousness exclusively, and different in nature from the space-filling kind of being which is enjoyed by physical objects. ”

“ Soul, mind, spirit, these old and simple words are the strongest, the profoundest, the surest; age cannot antiquate them, nor science undo them; they last with the rocks, and still go beyond. But, having in view rather the operation than the cause, we find a use also in such alternative phrases as “mode of thinking,” “mode of feeling and thinking,” “habit of thought,” “moral and intellectual character or constitution,” and the like. ”

“ V THE PLACE OF AFFECTIONAL FACTS IN A WORLD OF PURE EXPERIENCE [75]
Common sense and popular philosophy are as dualistic as it is possible to be. Thoughts, we all naturally think, are made of one kind of substance, and things of another. Consciousness, flowing inside of us in the forms of conception or judgment, or concentrating itself in the shape of passion or emotion, can be directly felt as the spiritual activity which it is, and known in contrast with the space-filling objective ‘content’ which it envelopes and accompanies. ”

“ My purpose, in imagining these illustrations, was to render obvious and palpable the limitations of the intellect, when it attempts to translate feelings into terms of reason, or when it attempts to substitute scientific calculations for spontaneous emotions. The essence of one is [Pg 177] feeling; the essence of the other is logic ”

“ Whichever way you turn, and whatever object you behold, that consciousness is always present to your thought,—the consciousness of a race of beings intensely original, individual, passionate, authoritative, and magnificent. ”

“ But solemnity, and gravity, and all such emotional attributes, admit of various shades; and, do what we will with our defining, the truth must at last be confronted that we are dealing with a field of experience where there is not a single conception that can be sharply drawn. ”

“ By the side of the intellectual element, by which we estimate our thoughts and actions, there is feeling; that is, the sensibility which modifies the judgment and enlightens the deep thought determining our responsibility. ”

“ To these four sections, the four operations of the soul correspond,—conjecture, faith, understanding, reason. As every pool reflects the image of the sun, so every thought and thing restores us an image and creature of the supreme Good. ”

“ By the Sensation, we mean the whole state of consciousness, under an actual or present impression of sense, as in looking at the moon, in listening to music, in tasting wine. By the Idea is meant the state of mind that remains after the sensible agent is withdrawn, or that may be afterwards recovered by the force of recollection. ”

“ For perceptions of sense are the instrumentality by which the will vivifies the heart, so disposing the particulars of the surrounding universe as to give the definite form of thoughts to consciousness. ”

“ The mind, it is evident, may, like the body to which it is united, or the material objects which surround it, be considered simply as a substance possessing certain qualities, susceptible of various affections or modifications, which, existing successively as momentary states of the mind, constitute all the phenomena of thought and feeling. ”

“ The pleasant feeling which is to result from an act may be presented in imagination, and thought of as the end to be reached; or the thought of myself to be pleased as much as possible generally, and here by such means and in such a way, may be the end which I take as the principle and motive of my action. ”

“ An eye—a soul—or ill or good;
⁠Demon, or angel mystery.
Mentor or siren, friend or foe,
⁠The wily tongue may weave its spell;
But there outlooking stands the soul,
⁠A steadfast tale of truth to tell. ”

“ They are the outward and visible expressions of two distinct and supplementary portions of our complex human nature—distinct, but [Pg 1161] not opposed, the one working by the dry light of the intellect, the other in the warm glow of the emotions; the one ever seeking to interpret and express the beauty of the universe, the other ever searching for its truth. ”

“ Our enumeration commenced with Feelings. These we scrupulously distinguished from the objects which excite them, and from the organs by which they are, or may be supposed to be, conveyed. Feelings are of four sorts: Sensations, Thoughts, Emotions, and Volitions. What are called Perceptions are merely a particular case of Belief, and Belief is a kind of thought. Actions are merely volitions followed by an effect. ”

“ Life is complex in its expression, involving more than percipience, namely desire, emotion, will, and feeling. ”

“ Viewing a thing from the outside, considering its relations of action and reaction with other things, it appears as matter. Viewing it from the inside, looking at its immediate character as feeling, it appears as consciousness. ”

“ But if we take reason strictly, not for the faculty of mental perception in general, but for ratiocination, or a power of inferring by arguments; I say, if we take reason thus, the perceiving of spiritual beauty and excellency no more belongs to reason than it belongs to the sense of feeling to perceive colors, or to the power of seeing to perceive the sweetness of food. ”

“ Let us rend the melancholy veil which hides from our eyes the eternal chain of the world and the glory of the Creator.... External objects form ideas in the mind, these ideas form sentiments, these sentiments volitions, these volitions actions in ourselves and outside of ourselves. ”

“ As is observed by the author of the Analysis, the exposition in detail of the associations which enter into our various feelings of the sublime and beautiful, would require the examination of the subject on a scale not suited to the character nor proportioned to the dimensions of this Treatise. Of all our feelings, our acquired pleasures and pains, especially our pleasures, are the most complex; resulting from the whole of our nature and of our past lives, and involving, consequently, a greater multitude and variety of associations than almost any other phenomena of the mind. ”

“ What we wish to contemplate here are the plain facts, the knowledge of which enlivens and enriches one’s mind and nature. If the contemplation of them kindles one’s fancy or excites one’s emotions, these results at least will not be second-hand. ”

“ It is more than mere feeling or emotion; it is not blind, but rational, and above deception, having its ground in our moral and religious nature. It extends to the whole person, to body, mind, and spirit, to the character as well as to the face and form. ”

“ In the series of states in which the mind has existed, from the first moment of our life, to the present hour, the feelings of extension, resistance, joy, sorrow, fragrance, colour, hope, fear, heat, cold, admiration, resentment, have often had place ”

“ But, and this is my reply, they do so by other parts of their nature than those that energize physically. One thought in every developed activity-series is a desire or thought of purpose, and all the other thoughts acquire a feeling tone from their relation of harmony or oppugnancy to this. ”

“ What he has thought and what he has done become objective: thought-forms, having been consciously visualized and allowed to take root and grow and blossom and produce, now pass in a solemn and mighty panorama, as the consciousness-content of his personality. ”

“ Leaving out of view the Will, which is a simple homogeneous mental state, forming the link between feeling and action, and not admitting of subdivisions; our states of consciousness fall into two great classes—Cognitions and Feelings. ”

“ We should propose to ourselves nobler views, namely, to recreate and exalt the mind with a prospect of the beauty, order, extent, and variety of natural things: hence, by proper inferences, to enlarge our notions of the grandeur, wisdom, and beneficence of the Creator," etc., etc., etc. ”

“ Mind as creator appealed to her less than mind as recorder, reasoner, and ruler; and for one gem of poetry or other beauty of purely literary value which she quotes, there are fifty records of principles of action. ”

“ But the universal form in which any opinion comes to your consciousness, and gets its definition for your own mind, is this form of an appeal to an insight that is superior in grasp, in unity, in coherence, in reasonableness to your momentary insight. ”

“ It is within the bounds of the same occupation that the greatest contrasts, the greatest distance, the greatest gulfs of feeling are to be found. I value an otherwise painful experience because it exhibited that philosophic truth in so vivid and striking a manner. ”

“ Now by soul is here meant the thinking, conscious, knowing, hating, loving, aspiring principle—that mysterious something about whose origin, nature, perdurability or co-perishability with the body, so much has been said, sung, and written, until philosophers generally have got by the ears, while waging the fiercest of all intellectual battles. ”