A Logic of Facts; Or, Every-day ReasoningHolyoake, George Jacob
Philosophy
A Logic of Facts; Or, Every-day Reasoning
Holyoake, George Jacob
Logic
varieties in nature enables us, within certain limits, to conceive other
varieties analogous to them. We can conceive the sun or moon falling;
for although we never saw them fall, nor ever perhaps, imagined
them falling, we have seen so many other things fall, that we have
innumerable familiar analogies to assist the conception; which after
all, we should probably have some difficulty in framing, were we not
well accustomed to see the sun and moon move, (or appear to move,)
so that we are only called upon to conceive a slight change in the
direction of motion, a circumstance familiar to our experience. But when
experience affords no model on which to shape the new conception, how is
it possible for us to form it? How, for example, can we imagine an end
to space or time? We never saw any object without something beyond
it, nor experienced any feeling without something following it. When,
therefore, we attempt to conceive the last point of space, we have
the idea irresistibly raised of other points beyond it. When we try
to imagine the last instant of time, we cannot help conceiving another
instant after it Nor is there any necessity to assume, as is done by a
modern school of metaphysicians, a peculiar fundamental law of the mind
to account for the feeling of infinity inherent in our conceptions of
space and time; that apparent infinity is sufficiently accounted for by
simpler and universally acknowledged laws.'*
* Mill's Logic, vol. 1, pp. 313-17.
Thus we stand on the verge of boundless possibility. What truths may yet
be discovered in that great and untrodden field, which lies without our
experience, no man can tell. All we have yet brought between assertion
and proof, is all we have yet conquered, is all that we as yet know,
is all that we can yet rely upon. The search after the untried is the
highest and apparently the inherent aspiration of roan. The revelation
of new worlds continually rewards his noble ambition. At once arrested
and allured by the magnificence of nature--we wonder, we work, we wait.
CHAPTER V. FACTS
We must never forget that accurate and multiplied
quantitative facts form the only substantial basis of
science.--Parker.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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