Elements of Intellectual Philosophy |
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abstraction action æsthetic affirm analogy asked assertion attention axioms believe body cognize the fact cognize truth color conception conclusion condition conscience 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 nature necessary truths nition nize optic nerve perceive perform philosophy power of cognizing principle proposition prove qualities question reality reasoning recollection regard relations remarks remember resemblance result retina seen self-evident truths sensation simple Sir William Hamilton Socrates space Suppose syllogism take place term thing Thomas Brown thought tion tree true unconscious mental volition voluntary writers
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 235 - ... 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 205 - There exist no points without magnitude; no lines without breadth, nor perfectly straight; no circles with all their radii exactly equal, nor squares with all their angles perfectly right.
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 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 205 - I answer that, according to any test we have of possibility, they are not even possible. Their existence, so far as we can form any judgment, would seem to be inconsistent with the physical constitution of our planet at least, if not of the universe.
Page 216 - ... whatever is predicated (ie affirmed or denied) universally, of any class of things, may be predicated, in like manner, (viz. affirmed or denied) of any thing comprehended in that class.
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.
Page 140 - We are utterly unable to realize in thought the possibility of the complement of existence being either increased or diminished. We are unable, on the one hand, to conceive nothing becoming something. — or, on the other, something becoming nothing. When God is said to create out of nothing, we construe this to thought by supposing that He evolves existence out of himself; we view the Creator as the cause of the universe. " Ex nihilo nihil, in nihilum nil posse reverti " expresses, in its purest...
Page 140 - If we analyse our thought, we shall find that it simply means that as we cannot conceive any new existence to commence, therefore all that now is seen to arise under a new appearance, had previously an existence under a prior form.