Elements of metaphysicsTaylor, A. E. (Alfred Edward)
Philosophy
Elements of metaphysics
Taylor, A. E. (Alfred Edward)
Metaphysics
§ 2. If our conviction that Reality is a single systematic unity
pervading and manifesting itself in lesser systematic unities is
correct, we shall expect to find that some of the lesser systematic
unities with which we have to deal in practical life and in the various
sciences exhibit more of the full character of the whole to which they
belong than others. The “points of view” from which each minor system
reflects the whole, though all true, need not be all equally true.
Though the whole, in a genuine system, must be present as a whole in
every part, it need not be equally present in all; it may well _not_ be
“_as_ full, _as_ perfect in a hair as heart.” To take a concrete
example, a cluster of mass-particles, a machine, a living organism, and
a human mind engaged in the conscious systematic pursuit of truth, are
all to some degree or other systematic unities, and all to some degree,
therefore, repeat the structure of the universal whole to which they all
belong. But it does not follow that all manifest the structure of that
whole with equal adequacy and fulness. Indeed, any philosophy which
admits development as a genuine feature of the world-process must
maintain that they do not, that the nature of the whole system of
Reality is exhibited with infinitely greater adequacy and clearness in
the working of the conscious mind than in the changes of configuration
of the system of mass-particles or even the vital processes of the
physical organism.
In practical life, too, one of our most ineradicable convictions is that
there are degrees of worth which coincide with degrees of the adequacy
with which partial systems exhibit the nature of the larger wholes to
which they belong. For instance, among the different mental systems
which may be called my partial “selves,” there are some which I call
“truer” than others, on the ground that they more fully reveal my whole
character as an individual human being. My whole character undoubtedly
appears in and determines all the subordinate systems which make up my
mental life. Each of them _is_ the whole character in a special aspect,
or as reacting upon a special system of suggestions, but some of them
contain the whole in a more developed and explicit form than others. I
am in one sense myself wherever I may be and whatever I may be doing,
and yet I am “more myself” in health than in sickness, in the free
pursuit of self-chosen studies than in the forced discharge of
uncongenial tasks imposed on me by the necessity of earning an income.
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