World of ideas

“ This negative character of the universal judgments holds true of them, as we have said, just in so far as you sunder the external and the internal meanings, and just in so far as you view the Real as the Beyond, and as merely the Beyond. If you turn your attention once more to the realm of the ideas viewed as internal meanings, you see, indeed, that they are constantly becoming enriched, in their inner life, by all this process. ”

“ “The whole world is inconceivable to the strict logic of ideas. And yet the world exists to our senses, and we exist in it. There must be a necessity superior to our conceptions. ”

“ And in just the degree in which mental activity is separated from active concern with the world, from doing something and connecting the doing with what is undergone, words, symbols, come to take the place of ideas. ”

“ And now, finally, after surveying all these so various types of beings, we have to recall the comment often already made in these lectures, and to assert that not only these different kinds of realities, but also the concrete experiences whereby we come to observe, and the ideas whereby we ourselves define, describe, and in general undertake to know these very objects, are themselves also in their own measure real, and are as truly real as are the various finite objects of common sense that we know. ”

“ In this super-sensual world we regain, by the practical movement of Reason, our convictions of infinite and absolute existence, from the knowledge of which, as objective realities, we are shut out by the subjective limitations of the Understanding. Between the world of sense and the world of morality, and indissolubly connected with both, stands the aesthetic world, or the system of relations we hold with external things through our ideas of the Beautiful, the Sublime, &c. ”

“ It is a rather popular exposition of the chief ideas of the Critique, namely, of the critical realism, which consists in the critical and conscious acceptation of the facts first given to a naïve mind, namely, that the world consists of ‘things’ and ‘ideas,’ in opposition to those idealistic theories, which consider the world as ‘representation’ or ‘will,’ or ‘will and representation,’ etc. ”

“ These ideas we inherit—they form the tradition 262of our civilisation. Such traditional ideas are never static. They are either fading into meaningless formulae, or are gaining power by the new lights thrown by a more delicate apprehension. ”

“ One should conquer the world not to enthrone a man, but an idea, for ideas exist for ever. ”

“ Every nation and every man instantly surround themselves with a material apparatus which exactly corresponds to their moral state, or their state of thought. Observe how every truth and every error, each a thought of some man’s mind, clothes itself with societies, houses, cities, language, ceremonies, newspapers. Observe the ideas of the present day,—orthodoxy, skepticism, missions, popular education, temperance, anti-masonry, anti-slavery; see how each of these abstractions has embodied itself in an imposing apparatus in the community ”

“ Ideas, then, bear three types of relations to organic life, relations socially incarnated in traditional art, religion, and philosophy. First of all they may be an expression of innate capacities, the very essence of the freedom of life. ”

“ Is it in parlors that the sea of human thought ebbs and flows most freely? That mind meets mind, ideas are interchanged, and the soul grows by contact with its kind? Is it in parlors that art is talked? politics? business? affairs of state? new lights in science? ”

“ This, then, it seems, is Culture—knowing the best that has been thought and known in the world—not only knowledge, but right tact and justness of judgment, forming themselves by and with judgment—reading, but reading with a purpose to guide it, and with system. ”

“ This view conceives the mind to be directed toward individual things, rather than toward general ideas, toward distinct situations of fact rather than toward some significance in human affairs that these situations may share. ”

“ Lastly, this belittling effect of ideas on everyday realities is seen when philosophy constructs for us the ideal type of human society, and of that confederacy of civilised states of which, now and again, it has had its dream. ”

“ It has been a favorite study of modern philosophy, to indicate the steps of human progress, to watch the rising of a thought in one man's mind, the communication of it to a few, to a small minority, its expansion and general reception until it publishes itself to the world by destroying the existing laws and institutions, and the generation of new. ”

“ If you view philosophy in this fashion, you subordinate the study of the World as Fact to a reflection upon the World as Idea. Begin by accepting, upon faith and tradition, the mere brute Reality of the World as Fact, and there you are, sunk deep in an ocean of mysteries. ”

“ Provided the ideas remain no empty abstraction, but take their being from strong human life, from knowledge, art, and the contemplation of the social existence of men, what, I ask, can you place higher than so to lose the finite and self-seeking I in the universal good? ”

“ Little by little an idea crept into men’s minds, an idea which was the negation of all the limits within which the world had lived until then; an idea which was bound to upset the conception of social and moral life; the idea of liberty, applied to religion, culture, and politics. ”

“ Its chief interest lies in the spectacle of penetrating sagacity, independent and sincere, steadily devoted to the invisible world of thought and belief, in quest of the ultimate foundations and guarantees of human knowledge. ”

“ And we live in a society in which the new ideas are already putting forth shoots, the real, new ideas, the true, the beautiful ideas, the three or four beautiful ideas that already exist. But I, for my part, have my blood so full of old ideas that I can't advance with the rest.... ”

“ Acceptance of these ideas—the ideas upon which rest art, science, the polity of nations and religion—and self-renunciation for them, are the only sources of truly noble action. “Everything great and good upon which our present existence rests, from which it has proceeded, exists only because noble and powerful men have resigned all the enjoyments of life for the sake of ideas.” ”

“ Thus the formula which we laid down,—‘That the life of Man be dedicated to that of his Race,’—may also be expressed thus,—‘That the life of Man be dedicated to Ideas;’—for Ideas embrace the Race as such, and its Life; and thus the Life according to Reason, or the only good and true Life, consists in this,—that Man forget himself in Ideas, and neither seek nor know any enjoyment save in Ideas, and in sacrificing all other enjoyments for them.—Thus far for our explanation. ”

“ What is all history but the work of ideas, a record of the incomputable energy which his infinite aspirations infuse into man? Has any thing grand and lasting been done? Who did it? Plainly not any man, but all men: it was the prevalence and inundation of an idea. ”

“ These, by whatever name we like to call them, are facts and not fancies, and facts which enter largely into all questions, whether of science, philosophy, religion, or practical policy. Every one who wishes to keep at all abreast with modern culture, ought to have some general knowledge of the ideas and principles which underlie them and which are embraced in the comprehensive word “polarity.” ”

“ And yet it does matter; for unless our communing with the eternal Ideas endows us with some creative virtue, some power which makes itself felt upon our immediate environment, it cannot be that we have made those Ideas in any sense our own. ”

“ In other words, the poem represents the action and re-action of Ideas upon society, and of society upon Ideas.
Argument of the stanzas: 2. The Idea, conceived with pain, is born amid enthusiasm. 3. If of masculine, enduring nature, it falls under the control and ban of the already existing state of society (the woman old) . 5. As the Idea develops, the old society becomes moulded into a new society (the old woman grows young) . 6. The Idea, now free and dominant, is united to society, as it were in wedlock. ”

“ Such, then, as best I can state it in brief and rapid strokes, is the world of art, its methods, its appeals, its significance to mankind. Idealism, so presented, is in a sense a glorification of the commonplace. Its realm lies in the common lot of men; its distinction is to embrace truth for all, and truth in its universal forms of experience and personality, the primary, elementary, equally shared fates, passions, beliefs of the race. ”

“ The task before us is to follow by means of them the succession of ideas by which the mind of man has developed, from the simple to the complex, and from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous; to work out step by step, by the use of such symbols as the arts afford, that law of contiguity by which the mind has passed from simple cohesion of states of consciousness to the association of ideas, and so on to broader generalizations. ”

“ Elements and principles mingle, combine, wed, multiply with each other, to such a point that the material and the moral world are brought eventually to the same clearness. The phenomenon is perpetually returning upon itself. ”

“ I might say:—Every Individual can and must, under the given condition, construct the True World of Sense;—for this indeed has, beyond the universal and formal laws above deduced, no other Truth and Reality than this universal harmony. ”

“ If we examine the history of ideas we shall find that they at first exist “in the air.” They float about, beautiful alluring visions, ready to be caught and made to serve mortal needs by the right man at p. ”

“ The mind makes them from ideas which it has got by sensation and reflection.” The work of the mind now consists in bringing forth from several simple so-called ideas a number of new ones, by means of its working upon this material through comparing, distinguishing and contrasting it, and finally through separation or abstraction, whereby the universal conceptions, such as space, time, existence, unity and diversity, capacity, cause and effect, freedom, necessity, take their rise. ”

“ He says ideas are the life of the soul, and that creative imagination is its highest function. And he has formed a sort of debating society, which meets every afternoon to discuss the problems of the present and the future. ”

“ Build, therefore, your own world. As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great proportions. A correspondent revolution in things will attend the influx of the spirit. ”

“ For history is made with tools, not with ideas; and everything is changed by economic conditions—art, philosophy, love, virtue—truth itself! ”

“ Then you are the world, the measure of right, of truth, of beauty. If we will not be mar-plots with our miserable interferences, the work, the society, letters, arts, science, religion of men would go on far better than now, and the heaven predicted from the beginning of the world, and still predicted from the bottom of the heart, would organize itself, as do now the rose and the air and the sun. ”

“ To witness attentively the first dawning and gradual expansion of the mind, is, in my opinion, more deserving of the attention of philosophers who study the true interests of humanity, as more important and conducive to the welfare of society, than all the wordy lucubrations with which metaphysical writers have for ages amused themselves and the world. ”

“ Make a whirlwind of the idea. This crowd may be rendered sublime. Let us learn how to make use of that vast conflagration of principles and virtues, which sparkles, bursts forth and quivers at certain hours. These bare feet, these bare arms, these rags, these ignorances, these abjectnesses, these darknesses, may be employed in the conquest of the ideal. Gaze past the people, and you will perceive truth. ”

“ Now if, with this fact in mind, I look back on the world which I attempted thus to describe, I find that the limitation which experience often seems to set to my postulates about the discrimination of facts, may well be founded in the deepest nature of things. The true world, the World of Values or of Appreciation, as rightly viewed by an absolute insight, would be a world of Selves, forming in the unity of their systems One Self. ”

“ When once an idea enters the human mind it acts according to the necessary laws of thought. It changes to its own complexion all its mental surroundings, and through every mental and moral channel influences the world of practice outside. ”

“ Must I again declare to you the supreme vacuity of culture, of science, of art, of good, of truth, of beauty, of justice ... of all these beautiful conceptions, if at the last, in four days or in four millions of centuries—it matters not which—no human consciousness shall exist to appropriate this civilization, this science, art, good, truth, beauty, justice, and all the rest? ”

“ To understand why certain ideas become current, we have to consider not merely the ostensible logic but all the motives which led men to investigate the most pressing difficulties suggested by the social development. Obvious principles are always ready, like germs, to come to life when the congenial soil is provided. And what is true of the philosophy is equally, and perhaps more conspicuously, true of the artistic and literary embodiment of the dominant ideas which are correlated with the social movement. ”

“ But let us look at the inventive class of minds which stand out amongst their fellows—the men who, with little prompting or none, conceive new ideas in science, arts, morals—and we can be at no loss to understand how and whence have arisen the elements of that civilization which history traces from country to country throughout the course of centuries. ”

“ You would acknowledge the existence of abstract ideas, 476such as justice, beauty, good, evil, which are severally one, yet in their various combinations appear to be many. Those who recognize these realities are philosophers; whereas the other class hear sounds and see colours, and understand their use in the arts, but cannot attain to the true or waking vision of absolute justice or beauty or truth; they have not the light of knowledge, but of opinion, and what they see is a dream only. ”