The World's Greatest Books — Volume 14 — Philosophy and Economics
Philosophy
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 14 — Philosophy and Economics
Economics; Philosophy
This truth is by no means new; it lay by implication in the reflections
of Descartes; but Berkeley first distinctly enunciated it; while Kant
erred by ignoring it. So ancient is it that it was the fundamental
principle of the Indian Vedanta, as Sir William Jones points out. In one
aspect the world is idea; in the other aspect, the world is will.
That which knows all things and is known by none is the subject; and for
this subject all exists. But the world as idea consists of two essential
and inseparable halves. One half is the object, whose form consists of
time and space, and through these of multiplicity; but the other half is
the subject, lying not in space and time, for it subsists whole and
undivided in every reflecting being. Thus any single individual endowed
with the faculty of perception of the object, constitutes the whole
world of idea as completely as the millions in existence; but let this
single individual vanish, and the whole world as idea would disappear.
Each of these halves possesses meaning and existence only in and through
the other, appearing with and vanishing with it. Where the object begins
the subject ends. One of Kant's great merits is that he discovered that
the essential and universal forms of all objects--space, time,
causality--lie _a priori_ in our consciousness, for they may be
discovered and fully known from a consideration of the subject, without
any knowledge of the object.
Ideas of perception are distinct from abstract ideas. The former
comprehend the whole world of experience; the latter are concepts, and
are possessed by man alone amongst all creatures on earth; and the
capacity for these, distinguishing him from the lower animals, is called
reason.
Time and space can each be mentally presented separately from matter,
but matter cannot be thought of apart from time and space. The
combination of time and space in connection with matter constitutes
action, that is, causation. The law of causation arises from change,
that is from the fact that at the same part of space there is now one
thing and then another, and this succession must be the result of some
law of causality, seeing that there must be a determined part of space
and a determined part of space for the change. Causality thus combines
space with time.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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