The will to doubt : $b An essay in philosophy for the general thinkerLloyd, Alfred H. (Alfred Henry)
Philosophy
The will to doubt : $b An essay in philosophy for the general thinker
Lloyd, Alfred H. (Alfred Henry)
Belief and doubt; Philosophy -- Introductions
many or many in one, can they be real or alive or conscious, can they be
material, can they be personal, can they be anything whatsoever in
qualitatively the same way? Men have often seemed to think so, but
without any good reason. The faction, then, the individual and the
whole, are qualitatively different expressions of the elements of the
operation that has made them; and their relations, always dependent on
analogy, must be various accordingly.
But now, to leave these questions of logic and to turn directly to the
case for both personality and [p.160] society, no idea can be more
immediately useful to us than that of what is often styled the unity of
experience. Of course this unity, as it is real, must meet just those
tests of reality, or of a real unity, that we have already remarked, but
within the limits of a definition the unity of experience is neither
more nor less than the totality of human relations. It is the
experience-whole comprising all the phases of human nature; in other
words, all the actual or possible relations of man to nature in general,
or all the manifold states and activities, stages and events, however
different, however seemingly contradictory, in human life. A real unity,
as we know, being denied local habitation and a name, is necessarily a
thoroughly differential unity; and human nature is analyzable in an
indefinite number of ways. It is, to illustrate, physical, mental, and
spiritual, or more elaborately, it is athletic, industrial, political,
intellectual, moral, æsthetic, and religious, and in its social life has
developed institutions answering to these different phases of itself. It
is, again, lawful and lawless, old and young, conservative and radical,
sympathetic and selfish. But whatever the mode of analysis or division
or dichotomy, the unity of experience embraces all the elements,
aspects, or relations that are discovered. In a word, even in the
language of the simple logic indicated above, the unity of experience is
only the all-inclusive whole, but here without regard to any distinction
between what is actual or explicit and what is potential or implicit,
out of which has sprung the differential operation that has made human
society and human history, that has given rise to a manifest [p.161]
social life, to the social class or faction and to the individual
person.
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