Civilization, Modern -- 19th century; Literature -- History and criticism
Professor Tyndall accepts religious faith as an important element of
human nature, but considers it as confined to the sentiments, and
as not based in knowledge. He doubtless comes to this conclusion
from following too implicitly the traditions of modern English
psychology. These assume that knowledge comes only from without,
through the senses, and never from within, through intuition. This
prepossession, singularly English and insular, is thus stated by John
Stuart Mill in his article on Coleridge. "Sensation, and the mind's
consciousness of its own acts, are not only the exclusive sources,
but the sole materials of our knowledge. There is no knowledge _a
priori_; no truths cognizable by the mind's inward light, and grounded
on intuitive evidence." These views have been developed in England by
the two Mills, Herbert Spencer, Bain, and others, who have made great
efforts to show how sensations may be transformed into thoughts; how
association of ideas may have developed instincts; how hereditary
impressions, repeated for a million years, may at last have taken on
the aspect of necessary truths. In short, they have laid out great
labor and ingenuity in proving that a sensation may, very gradually, be
transformed into a thought.
But all this labor is probably a waste of time and of intellectual
power. The attempt at turning sensation into thought only results in
turning thought into sensation. It is an error that we only know what
we perceive through the senses, or transform by the action of the
mind. It is not true that we only know that of which we can form a
sensible image. We know the existence of the soul as certainly as that
of the body. We know the infinite and the eternal as well as we know
the finite and temporal. We know substance, cause, immortal beauty,
absolute truth, as surely as the flitting phenomena which pass within
the sphere of sensational experience. These convictions belong, not to
the sphere of sentiment and emotion, but to that of knowledge. It is
because they show us realities and not imaginations, that they nerve
the soul to such vast efforts in the sphere of morals, literature, and
religion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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