The Monist, Vol. 3, 1892-1893 : $b A quarterly magazineVarious
Philosophy
The Monist, Vol. 3, 1892-1893 : $b A quarterly magazine
Various
Philosophy -- Periodicals
B. C. 585, Eclipse of Thales. Beginning of Greek philosophy.
A. D. 30, The crucifixion.
A. D. 529, Closing of Athenian schools. End of Greek philosophy.
A. D. 1125, (Approximate) Rise of the Universities of Bologna and Paris.
A. D. 1543, Publication of the “De Revolutionibus” of Copernicus.
Beginning of Modern Science.
The intervals are 615, 499, 596, 418, years. In the history of
metaphysics, we may take the following:
B. C. 322, Death of Aristotle.
A. D. 1274, Death of Aquinas.
A. D. 1804, Death of Kant.
The intervals are 1595 and 530 years. The former is about thrice the
latter.
From these figures, no conclusion can fairly be drawn. At the same time,
they suggest that perhaps there may be a rough natural era of about 500
years. Should there be any independent evidence of this, the intervals
noticed may gain some significance.
The agapastic development of thought should, if it exists, be
distinguished by its purposive character, this purpose being the
development of an idea. We should have a direct agapic or sympathetic
comprehension and recognition of it, by virtue of the continuity of
thought. I here take it for granted that such continuity of thought
has been sufficiently proved by the arguments used in my paper on the
“Law of Mind” in _The Monist_ of last July. Even if those arguments are
not quite convincing in themselves, yet if they are reënforced by an
apparent agapasm in the history of thought, the two propositions will
lend one another mutual aid. The reader will, I trust, be too well
grounded in logic to mistake such mutual support for a vicious circle in
reasoning. If it could be shown directly that there is such an entity
as the “spirit of an age” or of a people, and that mere individual
intelligence will not account for all the phenomena, this would be proof
enough at once of agapasticism and of synechism. I must acknowledge
that I am unable to produce a cogent demonstration of this; but I am, I
believe, able to adduce such arguments as will serve to confirm those
which have been drawn from other facts. I believe that all the greatest
achievements of mind have been beyond the powers of unaided individuals;
and I find, apart from the support this opinion receives from synechistic
considerations, and from the purposive character of many great movements,
direct reason for so thinking in the sublimity of the ideas and in their
occurring simultaneously and independently to a number of individuals
of no extraordinary general powers. The pointed Gothic architecture in
several of its developments appears to me to be of such a character. All
attempts to imitate it by modern architects of the greatest learning and
genius appear flat and tame, and are felt by their authors to be so.
Yet at the time the style was living, there was quite an abundance of
men capable of producing works of this kind of gigantic sublimity and
power. In more than one case, extant documents show that the cathedral
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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