George Eliot; a Critical Study of Her Life, Writings and PhilosophyCooke, George Willis
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George Eliot; a Critical Study of Her Life, Writings and Philosophy
Cooke, George Willis
Eliot, George, 1819-1880; Novelists, English -- 19th century -- Biography
In the evolution philosophy she found the reconciliation between Locke and
Kant which she so earnestly desired to discover in girlhood. The old school
of experimentalists did not satisfy her with their philosophy; she saw
that the dictum that all knowledge is the result of sensation was not
satisfactory, that it was shallow and untrue. On the other hand, the
intellectual intuition of Schelling was not acceptable, nor even Kant's
categories of the mind. She wished to know why the mind instinctively
throws all experiences and thoughts under certain forms, and why it must
think under certain general methods. She found what to her was a perfectly
satisfactory answer to these questions in the theory of evolution as
developed by Darwin and Spencer. Through the aid of these men she found the
reconciliation between Locke and Kant, and discovered that both were wrong
and both right. So familiar has this reconciliation become, and so wide is
its acceptance, that no more than a mere hint of its meaning will be needed
here. This philosophy asserts, with Locke, that all knowledge begins in
sensation and experience; but with Kant, it affirms that knowledge passes
beyond experience and becomes intuitional. It differs from Kant as to the
source of the intuitions, pronouncing them the results of experience built
up into legitimate factors of the mind by heredity. Experience is inherited
and becomes intuitions. The intuitions are affirmed to be reliable, and, to
a certain extent, sure indications of truth. They are the results, to use
the phrase adopted by Lewes, of "organized experience;" experience verified
in the most effective manner in the organism which it creates and modifies.
According to this philosophy, man must trust the results of experience, but
he can by no means be certain that those results correspond with actuality.
They are actual for him, because it is impossible for him to go beyond
their range. Within the little round created by "organized experience,"
which is also Lewes's definition of science, man may trust his knowledge,
because it is consistent with itself; but beyond that strict limit he can
obtain no knowledge, and even knows that what is without it does not
correspond with what is within it. In truth, man knows only the relative,
not the absolute; he must rely on experience, not on creative reason.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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