Elements of Intellectual Philosophy |
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abstraction action æsthetic affirm analogy asked assertion attention axioms believe cognize the fact cognize truth color conclusion condition conscious consequence consists constitute contingent truths definitions desire direct cognition distinction doctrine Dugald Stewart duty ence error event exercise existence experience expression external objects faculty geometry God's habit Hamilton Hence idea imagination inference infinite intuitive cognitions JOSEPH ALDEN judgment knowledge known language material objects matter means memory mental act mental operations mind cognizes mind's modifications moral character motives NATURAL PHILOSOPHY nature necessary truths ness nition nize optic nerve perceive perform philosophy power of cognizing principle proposition qualities question reality reasoning recollection regard relations remarks remember resemblance result retina School seen self-evident truths sensation simple SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON Socrates space Suppose syllogism take place term text-book thing Thomas Brown thought tion tree true volition writers wrong
Popular passages
Page 51 - It is evident the mind knows not things immediately, but only by the intervention of the ideas it has of them. Our knowledge therefore is real only so far as there is a conformity between our ideas and the reality of things.
Page 237 - ... trepan. He was at the time in a state of perfect stupor ; and, after his recovery, retained no recollection either of the accident or of the operation. At the age of fifteen, during the delirium of a fever, he gave his mother a correct description of the operation, and the persons who were present at it, with their dress and other minute particulars. He had never been observed to allude to it before, and no means were known by which he could have acquired a knowledge of the circumstances which...
Page 136 - I am convinced that any one accustomed to abstraction and analysis, who will fairly exert his faculties for the purpose, will, when his imagination has once learnt to entertain the notion, find no difficulty in conceiving that in some one for instance of the many firmaments into which sidereal astronomy now divides the universe, events may succeed one another at random, without any fixed law ; nor can anything in our experience, or in our mental nature, constitute a sufficient, or indeed any, reason...
Page 52 - It is indeed an opinion strangely prevailing amongst men, that houses, mountains, rivers, and in a word all sensible objects, have an existence, natural or real, distinct from their being perceived by the understanding. But, with how great an assurance and acquiescence soever this principle may be entertained in the world, yet whoever shall find in his heart to call it in question may, if I mistake not, perceive it to involve a manifest contradiction.
Page 93 - I cannot help thinking it more philosophical to suppose, that those actions which are originally voluntary, always continue so ; although, in the case of operations which are become habitual in consequence of long practice, we may not be able to recollect every different volition. Thus, in the case of a performer on the harpsichord, I apprehend, that there is an act of the will preceding every motion of every finger, although he may not be able to recollect these volitions...
Page 50 - And since the extension, figure, number, and motion of bodies of an observable bigness, may be perceived at a distance by the sight, it is evident some singly imperceptible bodies must come from them to the eyes, and thereby convey to the brain some motion which produces these ideas which we have of them in us.
Page 208 - ... power, which is the foundation of all the control we can exercise over the operations of our minds; the power, when a perception is present to our senses, or a conception to our intellects, of attending to a part only of that perception or conception, instead of the whole. But we cannot conceive a line without breadth ; we can form no mental picture of such a line : all the lines which we have in our minds are lines possessing breadth.
Page 53 - For, what are the forementioned objects but the things we perceive by sense ? and what do we perceive besides our own ideas or sensations? and is it not plainly repugnant that any one of these, or any combination of them, should exist unperceived ? 5.