Understanding

“ But, while I am descanting [599] upon the conduct of the understanding, and the best mode of acquiring knowledge, some men may be disposed to ask, “Why conduct my understanding with such endless care? and what is the use of so much knowledge?” What is the use of so much knowledge? What is the use of so much life? What are we to do with the seventy years of existence allotted to us? ”

“ If considered as a mere receptacle for Latin and Greek, Mathematics and Metaphysics, Science and Literature, we may, without moral turpitude or virtue, abstractly considered, follow our own inclinations; but the Understanding will all the time be growing either stronger or weaker, wiser or more foolish, whether we study them or whether we let them alone. This action of the Understanding cannot go on without influencing the Affections. ”

“ To this nobler purpose the man of understanding will devote the energies of his life. And in the first place, he will honor studies which impress these qualities on his soul, and will disregard others? ”

“ As the fancy is the apprehension or seizing of an object, the reason a combination or distinction, so the understanding is the faculty which penetrates, and, in its highest degree, clearly sees through its object. We understand a phenomenon, a sensation, an object, when we have discerned its inmost meaning, its peculiar character and proper significance. ”

“ The most immediate task which life demands from us in the understanding of ourselves and of others is, therefore, to interpret our ideas, to draw the consequences of our will, to appreciate the attitudes, to measure them by higher standards. ”

“ The bases of our lives and of our understanding of life is the interpretation which our own experiences put upon it, and the interpretation which the experiences of others put upon it, and the experiences of others as contained in literature. ”

“ The understanding which alone gives value to knowledge is the understanding that, when we employ the formula "I am, therefore I can, therefore I will," the "I AM" with which the series starts is a being who, so to speak, has his head in heaven and his feet upon the earth, a perfect unity, and with a range of ideas far transcending the little ideas which are limited by the requirements of a day or an hour. ”

“ 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 ”

“ But as, on the other side, the understanding makes of this simple fact of the world of sense a transcendent usage, and in lending it a higher signification inasmuch as he marks it, as it were, with his image, we have equally the right to transport the beautiful, subjectively, into the world of intelligence. ”

“ If the will is to judge, or take cognizance of the reasons and inclinations which the understanding or the senses offer it, it will need another understanding in itself, to understand what it is offered. ”

“ The understanding is that faculty by which we contemplate mere sensations and ideas, pursue truth, and assent to, or dissent from, propositions.
The affections have the pleasures and pains for their objects; as the understanding has the mere sensations and ideas. By the affections we are excited to pursue happiness, and all its means, and to fly from misery, and all its apparent causes. ”

“ Evidently all rational beings have will as well as understanding; God wills, the Angels will, man wills. Indeed, how could knowledge progress but for the will to know? Yet of the two, considered in themselves, understanding is higher than will—
“for its object is the ratio, the very essential nature, of the desired good, while the object of will is the desired good whose ratio is in the understanding.... ”

“ The understanding is the faculty in man, given him as the guide of his life and actions, to teach and direct him what course to pursue, in all things, whether natural or spiritual: and to this faculty and its teachings the whole mind and man should be subjected. ”

“ That the majesty of generalities, and the divine nature of the mind in taking them, if they be truly collected, and be indeed the direct reflexions of things, cannot be too much magnified. And that it is true, that interpretation is the very natural and direct intention, action, and progression of the understanding, delivered from impediments. ”

“ Reading ought to mean understanding; writing ought to mean knowing something; believing ought to mean comprehending; when you desire a thing, you will have to take it; when you demand it, you will not get it; and when you are experienced, you ought to be useful to others. ”

“ Under this shape Understanding is visible in every department of the objective world; and no object in that world can ever be wholly perfect which does not give full satisfaction to the canons of understanding. ”

“ Men’s views of things are the result of their understanding alone: their conduct is regulated by their understanding, their temper, and their passions. ”

“ He that wanteth understanding thinketh vain things, and the foolish, and erring man, thinketh foolish things.
16:24. Hearken to me, my son, and learn the discipline of understanding, and attend to my words in thy heart.
16:25. And I will shew forth good doctrine in equity, and will seek to declare wisdom: and attend to my words in thy heart, whilst with equity of spirit I tell thee the virtues that God hath put upon his works from the beginning, and I shew forth in truth his knowledge. ”

“ The understanding, like the eye, whilst it makes us see and perceive all other things, takes no notice of itself; and it requires and art and pains to set it at a distance and make it its own object. ”

“ The power of perception is that which we call the UNDERSTANDING. Perception, which we make the act of the understanding, is of three sorts:—1. ”

“ EXTERNAL OBJECTS furnish the mind with the ideas of sensible qualities, which are all those different perceptions they produce in us; and THE MIND furnishes the understanding with ideas of its own operations. ”

“ Observe, Those who have their eyes opened, and have some understanding in the things of God, have need to be more and more enlightened, and to have their knowledge more clear, and distinct, and experimental. ”

“ Spiritual understanding is the firmament that distinguishes between Truth and error, and the signification of the sun is Love. Remember that Divine Mind, not matter, creates all identities; and they are forms of thought, the ideas of Spirit, present to Mind only. ”

“ In short, this postulate is among the inspired revelations of the Common Sense that are contained in our share of Divine Reason. We may speak of understanding as 'human,' with its often discordant generalisations; but there can be no merely 'human' Reason. ”

“ Reason (or, as some prefer to call it in this limited sense, Understanding) is the power by which we compare, and, from our comparisons, draw inferences or conclusions. By means of it we compare the suggestions of the Imagination with the suggestions of Experience, and accept or reject the former in accordance with the result of our comparison.
xii. Hope
Hope is desire, of which we imagine the fulfilment, while recognizing the presence of doubt. ”

“ The author of human nature impressed it with certain sensitive aptitudes and mental powers, so that apprehension, reflection or understanding could no otherwise be exerted or produced in the compound nature of man, but in the order prescribed by the creator. ”

“ And such are perception, thinking, doubting, believing, reasoning, knowing, willing, and all the different actings of our own minds;—which we being conscious of, and observing in ourselves, do from these receive into our understandings as distinct ideas as we do from bodies affecting our senses. ”

“ The reason proper, on the other hand, they call understanding, and the understand ing proper, as something quite strange to them, they over look altogether, and ascribe its intuitive functions to sensibility. ”

“ when ideas float in our mind without any reflection or regard of the understanding, it is that which the French call REVERIE; ”

“ Let the ideas of being and matter be strongly joined, either by education or much thought; whilst these are still combined in the mind, what notions, what reasonings, will there be about separate spirits? ”

“ When we find out an idea by whose intervention we discover the connexion of two others, this is a revelation from God to us by the voice of reason: for we then come to know a truth that we did not know before. ”

“ As every affection has its enjoyment and the thought thence its pleasure, it may be plain whence good and truth are and what they are essentially. Whatever is the enjoyment of one's affection is one's good, and one's truth is what is pleasant to the thought from that affection. For everyone calls that good which he feels in the love of his will to be enjoyable, and calls that truth which he then perceives in the wisdom of his understanding to be pleasant. The enjoyable and the pleasant both flow out from the life's love as water does from a spring or blood from the heart ”

“ The general observations treasured up by a course of experience, give us the clue of human nature, and teach us to unravel all its intricacies. Pretexts and appearances no longer deceive us. ”

“ but moral principles require reasoning and discourse, and some exercise of the mind, to discover the certainty of their truth. They lie not open as natural characters engraved on the mind; ”

“ So shall we come to look at the world with new eyes. It shall answer the endless inquiry of the intellect,—What is truth? and of the affections,—What is good? by yielding itself passive to the educated Will. ”

“ The chief obstacle, therefore, to our improvement in the moral or metaphysical sciences is the obscurity of the ideas, and ambiguity of the terms. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As a result we shall soon find that, just as our first statement of the insight of reason, if indeed it is a true statement, transforms our view of the sense in which the world is real, so a deeper study of the relations of insight to action transforms our first cruder notion of the reason itself, of its office in life, and of the truth that it reveals. ”

“ 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 the intent of this chapter to shew, that altho’ common language ascribes a variety of faculties and principles to the soul, imputing this action to the blindness of our passions, that to the inconstancy of our tempers; one thing to the heat of our imagination, another to the coolness of our reason; yet, in strictness of truth, every thing that is done by us, is the action and operation of our reason, and is to be ascribed to it, as the sole principle from whence it proceeded, and by which it is governed and effected. ”

“ It will tell you exactly how the mind works; how you can control and apply, as you may desire, the laws of the mind; how you can think what you want to think, and thus apply, according to plan and purpose, the full power of thought. ”

“ And sometimes we may know some one or more of those powers or properties,—as, for example, the desires and affections of the soul,—and be ignorant of the essence, and make it the object of investigation. ”

“ What I say is that our present recognition of the concrete things in which we all believe is not a mere acceptance of any content of sense, but does include an intention to act, and does fulfil, as far as it goes, a purpose, and our own conscious purpose. ”

“ 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. ”