Mental Philosophy: Including the Intellect, Sensibilities, and WillHaven, Joseph
Philosophy
Mental Philosophy: Including the Intellect, Sensibilities, and Will
Haven, Joseph
Psychology
_Illustration by Dr. Brown._--Dr. Brown has well illustrated the nature
of the reasoning process in its relation to the general proposition
with which we set out, by reference to the germ enclosed in the bulb
of the plant. "The truths at which we arrive, by repeated intellectual
analysis, may be said to resemble the premature plant which is to
be found enclosed in that which is itself enclosed in the bulb, or
seed which we dissect. We must carry on our dissection more and more
minutely to arrive at each new germ; but we do arrive at one after
the other, and when our dissection is obliged to stop, we have reason
to suppose that still finer instruments, and still finer eyes, might
prosecute the discovery almost to infinity. It is the same in the
discovery of the truths of reasoning. The stage at which one inquirer
stops is not the limit of analysis in reference to the object, but the
limit of the analytic power of the individual. Inquirer after inquirer
discovers truths which were involved in truths formerly admitted by
us, without our being able to perceive what was comprehended in our
admission.... There may be races of beings, at least we can conceive
of races of beings, whose senses would enable them to perceive the
ultimate embryo plant enclosed in its innumerable series of preceding
germs; and there may, perhaps, be created powers of some higher order,
as we know that there is one Eternal Power, able to feel, in a single
comprehensive thought, all those truths, of which the generations of
mankind are able, by successive analyses, to discover only a few, that
are, perhaps, to the great truths which they contain, only as the
flower, which is blossoming before us, is to that infinity of future
blossoms enveloped in it, with which, in ever renovated beauty, it is
to adorn the summers of other ages."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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