Civilisation: Its Cause and Cure; and Other EssaysCarpenter, Edward
Philosophy
Civilisation: Its Cause and Cure; and Other Essays
Carpenter, Edward
Civilization; Crime; Evolution; Science
of sense on the one hand and the great sympathetic on the other.
Change the feeling in an individual, and his whole method of thinking
will be revolutionised; change the axiom or primary sensation in a
science, and the whole structure will have to be re-created. The current
Political Economy is founded on the axiom of individual greed; but let a
new axiomatic emotion spring up (as of justice or fair play instead of
unlimited grab), and the base of the science will be altered, and will
necessitate a new construction.
So when people argue (on politics, morality, art, etc.) it will
generally be found that they differ at the _base_; they go out, perhaps
quite unconsciously, from different axioms and hence they _cannot_
agree. Occasionally of course a strict examination will show that, while
agreeing at the base, one of them has made a false step in deduction; in
that case his thought does _not_ represent his primary feeling, and when
this is pointed out he is forced to alter it. But more often it is found
that the difference lies deep down at a point beyond the reach of
reason; and they disagree to the end. In this case neither is right and
neither is wrong. They simply feel differently; they are different
persons.
The Thought then is the expression, the outgrowth, the covering of
underlying Feeling. And in the great life of Man as a whole, as in the
lesser life of the individual, his continual new birth and inward growth
causes his thought-systems also continually to change and be replaced by
new ones. Like the bud-sheaths and husks in a growing plant or tree they
give form for a time to the life within; then they fall off and are
replaced. The husk prepares the bud underneath, which is to throw it
off. The thought prepares and protects the feeling underneath, which
growing will inevitably reject it; and when a thought has been formed it
is already _false_, _i.e._, ready to fall.
We are now, then, in a position to come back to the question of a
genuine Science, truly so-called.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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