The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human ProgressSantayana, George
Philosophy
The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress
Santayana, George
Philosophy
Consciousness, then, is the expression of bodily life and the seat of
all its values. Its place in the natural world is like that of its own
ideal products, art, religion, or science; it translates natural
relations into synthetic and ideal symbols by which things are
interpreted with reference to the interests of consciousness itself.
This representation is also an existence and has its place along with
all other existences in the bosom of nature. In this sense its
connection with its organs, and with all that affects the body or that
the body affects, is a natural connection. If the word cause did not
suggest dialectical bonds we might innocently say that thought was a
link in the chain of natural causes. It is at least a link in the chain
of natural events; for it has determinate antecedents in the brain and
senses and determinate consequents in actions and words. But this
dependence and this efficacy have nothing logical about them; they are
habitual collocations in the world, like lightning and thunder. A more
minute inspection of psycho-physical processes, were it practicable,
would doubtless disclose undreamed of complexities and harmonies in
them; the mathematical and dynamic relations of stimulus and sensation
might perhaps be formulated with precision. But the terms used in the
equation, their quality and inward habit, would always remain data which
the naturalist would have to assume after having learned them by
inspection. Movement could never be deduced dialectically or graphically
from thought nor thought from movement. Indeed no natural relation is in
a different case. Neither gravity, nor chemical reaction, nor life and
reproduction, nor time, space, and motion themselves are logically
deducible, nor intelligible in terms of their limits. The phenomena have
to be accepted at their face value and allowed to retain a certain
empirical complexity; otherwise the seed of all science is sterilised
and calculation cannot proceed for want of discernible and pregnant
elements.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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