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
And the person as the real individual, as the part that is still
undivided, and that is therefore in itself quick with the differential
operation, is thus the living, integral exponent of the unity of
experience. He is, above all, its unformed or untethered vitality. In
him every phase or part of what is possible in human nature moves with
some power. He is religious, political, industrial; or spiritual,
intellectual, and physical; or good and bad, conservative and radical,
all in one; and characteristically he is each and all of these without
the restraints of such visible forms or rites as now and again may
become instrumental to their expression. Hence the familiar idea of the
universality, which is identical with the indeterminate character, of
any side of human nature; of the political side, for example, or the
religious or the physiological, of the lawful or of the lawless. Not any
particular political status, nor any particular religion, nor any
particular body is universal, but the political or the religious or the
physiological is universal--as universal, to repeat, as it is
indeterminate. Not any particular lawfulness or lawlessness, but the
lawful or the lawless is universal. Personally, just to sum up what has
been said, all individuals are all things in one, and this idea, as it
is understood, should correct that erroneous treatment of individualism,
whether as a movement in the life of society or even as an incident of
the scientific method of induction, to which reference was made in the
discussion of the rise of science.[2]
[p.162] But the story of personality cannot be told by itself. Whatever
the person may be characteristically, he is never that alone, and before
any estimate of all that he is or of all that enters into his life can
be attained, attention must be turned to society, the other horn of our
present interest, and particularly to the social class or faction. If
the person in his peculiar character is general or all-inclusive with
reference to the unity of experience, the factional life is special,
particular, or partial; it is one-sided and outwardly exclusive.
Sociologically as well as logically factional differences are, as has
been suggested, wider and sharper than individual or personal
differences. Personally all men are free, socially approachable, liberal
in thought and act; not so factionally. Judged from its classes society
is even a hot-bed of specialism, its classes always tending to become
castes, and of hostility, its differences inducing open conflict. An
illustration of this we have already seen in the rise of the profession
of science.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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