Speculative knowledge

“ Thus, in order that speculative truths may be connected with productive effort, they must pass out of the hands of the men who first discovered them, and be made over to men whose motive in acquiring them will emphatically not be desire of the mere pleasure of intellectual acquisition, but the desire of some marketable products with a calculable pecuniary value, in the production of which a knowledge of the truths in question will help them. ”

“ Any one who was inclined to be hypercritical might object, and object with justice, that the practical application of knowledge often lags behind the speculative attainment, and that material progress therefore, at certain times, depends on {134} some new state of the practical rather than of the speculative faculties ”

“ It is this speculative tendency which brings to light the difference of common Notions and scientific Ideas, of which we have spoken. The mind analyzes such Notions, reasons upon them, combines and connects them; for it feels assured that intellectual things ought to be able to bear such handling. Even practical knowledge, we see clearly, is not possible without the use of the reason; and the speculative reason is only the reason satisfying itself of its own consistency. The speculative faculty cannot be controlled from acting. ”

“ This process, which constitutes what formerly had to be accomplished by proof, is the internal dialectical movement of the proposition itself. This alone is the concrete speculative element, and only the explicit expression of this is a speculative systematic exposition. Qua proposition, the speculative aspect is merely the internal restriction of thought within its own substance where the return of the essential principle into itself is not yet brought out. ”

“ From the point of view of theory, therefore, it is incorrect to attach so little importance to the function of speculation; in practice it is impossible to deal intelligently with the evils of the speculative system without first recognizing its real relation to business. ”

“ It is worth remarking that, while the only efficient mode of cultivating speculative science was missed from an undue contempt of manual operations, the false speculative views thus engendered gave in their turn a false direction to such practical and mechanical aims as were suffered to exist. ”

“ The intelligence of the people increases by leaps and bounds, and goes peering curiously into all the little nooks and crannies of the world for opportunities of gain—the apotheosis of speculative enterprise.
All forms of human endeavor in material things are, or were at their beginning, speculations. Every ship that goes to sea carries with it a speculation, and leaves another one behind it at Lloyds. Every man who insures his life or his house buys a speculation, and every company that insures him sells one. ”

“ Thus the speculations to which we were first driven in the hungry teeth of savage facts by the slender hope of profit, by the overpowering fear of the ruin which stared us in the face, have slowly ceased to be speculative and become the foundations of the ordinary everyday business of life. Our postulates have grown respectable, and are now entitled axioms. ”

“ Our day is rich in the knowledge of facts; there were many truths influencing those men of the times we please to call dark, which we have ignored or forgotten. The general demand for information—for this knowledge of facts—has made it a marketable commodity, a subject of commercial speculation ”

“ These and other specialties escape, and not unaccountably, the view and the calculation of the speculative economist, who is so often astounded to find how a principle, or a theory, of unquestionable truth abstractedly, and apparently of general application, comes practically to be controlled by circumstances beyond his appreciation, or even to be negatived altogether. ”

“ Now, sir, but for some speculation that had been entered into before they were, the one would have neither had the silver spoon in his teeth, nor the other the hot joint. Without speculation, commerce could not exist. In the community where its spirit is not felt, they must be dull as horses in a ring; moving round and round as regularly and as monotonously as the wheels of a machine, to procure the every-day bread and cheese of existence. I have been a speculator all my life—I am a speculator still. ”

“ It being thus shown that perfect beatitude lies in the action of the speculative intelligence, Thomas next shows that it cannot consist in consideration of the speculative sciences—
“for the consideration of a science does not reach beyond the potency (virtus) of the principles of that science, seeing that the whole science is contained potentially (virtualiter) in its principles. But the principles of speculative sciences are received through the senses, as the Philosopher makes clear. ”

“ We have confined our discussion to the settlement of the preliminaries of one great question. We think, however, that we have indicated the true foundations upon which modern philosophy must build, that we have described the vital crisis in which speculative thought is at present labouring, while old things are passing away, and all things are becoming new. ”

“ Now almost everything affecting its future value is known with a fair degree of accuracy before the crop is harvested. This advanced information naturally becomes the subject of speculative transactions which could not have existed in former times.
97“Speculation brings into play the best intelligence as to the future of values. It has always two sides. The one that is based principally on the facts and conditions of the situation wins in the end, and the result of the conflict is the nearest possible approach to correct values. ”

“ Of course, there is the possibility for ‘thinking’ to degenerate into profitless speculation; but we are certainly as much in need of the results of thinking about the facts already accumulated as we are of more facts. ”

“ The fact of speculation having come to be practised by established companies, where before it was a kind of business that it was considered necessary to pursue as secretly as possible, proves how strong is the tendency of the age in which we live to make royal roads to wealth. ”

“ The weakness of the speculative propensity in mankind generally has not, therefore, prevented the progress of speculation from governing that of society at large; it has only, and too often, prevented progress altogether, where the intellectual progression has come to an early stand for want of sufficiently favorable circumstances. ”

“ If these terms and maxims are understood with tolerable clearness, they carry the influence of truth to those who have no direct access to its sources. Many an extravagant project in practical machinery, and many a wild hypothesis in speculative physics, has been repressed by the general currency of such maxims as we have just quoted. ”

“ All, to be sure, as yet exists in promise; but the believer in promises calculates the aggregate as solid capital, and falls back in amazement at the amount of public wealth, "the unexampled state of public prosperity!"
Now is the time for speculative and dreaming or designing men. They relate their dreams and projects to the ignorant and credulous, dazzle them with golden visions, and set them maddening after shadows. The example of one stimulates another; speculation rises on speculation ”

“ Their splendid institution has grown to its present importance and power through economic development that could not have been foreseen nor prevented. Speculation on a large scale has accompanied its growth, and contributed to it; and speculation, as we have seen, is a highly desirable and useful part of all business. This speculation numbers among its adherents people in all parts of the world who have a perfect right to speculate, and who do vastly more good than harm in their operations. ”

“ On the contrary, the speculative element represents for the most part men of uncommon shrewdness and foresight; men of studious and analytical minds; men who are, or have been, masters of every situation in their own professions or commercial vocations, even though most of them act like children when they get tangled up in the meshes of stock speculation.
Nor should it be imagined that the stock market is primarily a guessing game, or a game of chance ”

“ Through vast combinations of trade, forlorn hopes of speculation, you trace them up to a clear head and a self-earned sixpence. It is the same with all large mental accumulations: they begin with a steady brain and the first solid result of thought, however small—the nucleus of speculation. The true aim of the scholar is not to crowd his memory, but to classify and sort it, till what was a heap of chaotic curiosities becomes a museum of science. ”

“ A writer, too wise to publish his writings, once remarked that "more ideas are stolen than pocket-handkerchiefs." Perhaps in course of time we may have an Exchange for thought; in fact, even now ideas, good or bad, have their consols, are bought up, imported, exported, sold, and quoted like stocks. ”

“ The professional speculative element in the community sniffs this movement on the part of the public with the accuracy of a pointer that has found his bird, and they commence to draw the credulous by fictitious prices, now and then unloading to be ready when the relapse comes, to commence anew when another favourable opportunity offers. ”

“ Speculation has become an increasingly important factor in the economic world without receiving a corresponding place in economic science. In the field in which it acts, in the trade in grain and cotton and securities and the like, speculation is the predominant influence in determining price, and, as such, is one of the chief directive forces in trade and industry. ”

“ Nor can any system of speculation be constructed on a sound basis which has neglected to dig about the foundations of human knowledge, to ascertain what our thoughts can and what they cannot compass, and what are the varying degrees of assurance with which the various classes of propositions may be accepted by us. ”

“ They set forth an exhaustive array of statistics, instructions and warnings; they furnish elaborately charted plans indicating many of the pitfalls of speculation; they tell how to avoid these, how to buy, what to buy, when to buy and how to make money; but while the theories advanced are oftentimes sound and easily comprehended, very few people profit by them, because when once caught in the maelstrom of stock speculation the average man becomes more or less mesmerized, and at critical moments his conservatism, his resolutions and his theories all take flight. ”

“ New scientific truth is utterly unsaleable; no one will purchase it. Whilst the real or intrinsic value of it is great, its extrinsic value is small and is the sum of money it will sell for in the market. ”

“ If, at the close of the speculation, an issue of paper had been made, sufficient to keep prices up to the point which they attained when at the highest, no one would have been more disappointed than the speculators ”

“ Are you aware that in catering to your instinct to "invest," methods to get you to part with your money are so artfully and deftly applied by the highest that they deceive you completely? Could you imagine it to be a fact that in nearly all cases when you find you are ready to embark on a given speculation, ways and means that are almost scientific in their insidiousness have been used upon you? ”

“ From which we may conclude that in stock trading, all speculators, whether experienced or inexperienced, are subject to those inscrutable laws of psychology which Nature herself seems to have designed for the discomfiture of those who play at the wheel of Fortune. ”

“ Now, sir, it is my conviction, that where there is no speculation, there can be no luck. As well might a man with his hands in his pockets expect a guinea to drop into them. People who, perhaps, have been born with a silver spoon in their mouths, or had enough to purchase them a hot joint every day, thrust upon them by accident, will tell you, in speaking of any particular subject, "Oh, I will have nothing to do with it—it is only a speculation." ”

“ A real distinction exists between speculation which is carried on by persons of means and experience, and based on an intelligent forecast, and that which is carried on by persons without these qualifications. ”

“ It is true nothing as yet had been realized, nor could in some time be realized, from these distant sources, even if productive; but the imaginations of speculators are ever in the advance, and their conjectures are immediately converted into facts. Lying reports now flew from mouth to month, of sure avenues to fortune suddenly thrown open. ”

“ Far more profitable work than the construction of speculative theories, may be done by collecting facts or groups of facts leading to direct inferences. When both fact and inference are sound, every such argument is a step gained, while if either be unsound, a distinct statement of fact and issue is the best means of getting them corrected, or, if needful, discarded altogether. A principal object of the present chapter is to bring forward a variety of instances drawn from sources where indirect evidence bearing on our early history is to be sought. ”

“ The bane of nearly all speculators of the soft-grained type—by which we mean men whose will and judgment bends this way and that, like a reed that nods allegiance to any quarter of the world according to the blow of the wind—is, that they are for ever on the itch to do something. ”

“ The advocates of speculating say that the speculator plays an important and necessary role in the great drama of political economy; that his gains are the results of superior sagacity, deeper insight, prompter decision and more adventurous daring. ”