Problems of Life and Mind: The principles of certitude. From the known to the unknown. Matter and force. Force and cause. The absolute in the correlations of feeling and motion. Appendix: Imaginary geometry and the truth of axioms. Lagrange and Hegel: the speculative method. Action at a distance

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Page 366 - Nothing so like as eggs; yet no one, on account of this appearing similarity, expects the same taste and relish in all of them. It is only after a long course of uniform experiments in any kind, that we attain a firm reliance and security with regard to a particular event. Now...
Page 349 - The cause, then, philosophically speaking, is the sum total of the conditions, positive and negative, taken together; the whole of the contingencies of every description, which being realized, the consequent invariably follows.
Page 37 - Das hör ich sechzig Jahre wiederholen. Ich fluche drauf, aber verstohlen ; Sage mir tausend tausend Male: Alles gibt sie reichlich und gern ; Natur hat weder Kern Noch Schale, Alles ist sie mit einem Male.
Page 365 - ... us at a great distance from all her secrets, and has afforded us only the knowledge of a few superficial qualities of objects; while she conceals from us those powers and principles on which the influence of those objects entirely depends.
Page 250 - There never will come a time when transcendentalism will meet with successful opposition to its assertion that a thing cannot be and not be at the same time and in the same sense.
Page 96 - ... obstacle. The waves, pulses or vibrations of the air wherein sounds consist bend manifestly; though not so much as the waves of water. For a bell or a cannon may be heard beyond a hill which intercepts the sight of the sounding body, and sounds are propagated as readily through crooked pipes as through straight ones. But light is never known to follow crooked passages nor to bend into the shadow.
Page 410 - ... for every fact of consciousness, whether in the domain of sense, of thought, or of emotion, a certain definite molecular condition is set up in the brain; that this relation of physics to consciousness is invariable, so that, given the state of the brain, the corresponding thought or feeling might be inferred; or, given the thought or feeling, the corresponding state of the brain might be inferred. But how inferred ? It is at bottom not a case of logical inference at all, but of empirical association.
Page 410 - But the passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of consciousness is unthinkable. G ranted that a definite thought and a definite molecular action in the brain occur simultaneously ; we do not possess the intellectual organ, nor apparently any rudiment of the organ, which would enable us to pass, by a process of reasoning, from the one to the other.
Page 410 - ... the passage from the current to the needle, if not demonstrable, is thinkable, and that we entertain no doubt as to the final mechanical solution of the problem ; but the passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of consciousness is unthinkable. Granted that a definite thought and a definite molecular action in the brain occur simultaneously, we do not possess the intellectual organ, nor, apparently, any rudiment of the organ, which would enable us to pass by a process...
Page 294 - ... for gravitation is a property of matter dependent on a certain force, and it is this force which constitutes the matter. In that view matter is not merely mutually penetrable, but each atom extends, so to say, throughout the whole of the solar system, yet always retaining its own centre of force.

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