Four Phases of Morals: Socrates, Aristotle, Christianity, Utilitarianism
Socrates · en
The two certainties differ not in
degree only but in kind; and mathematical demonstration having to do
only with thoughts, the creation of pure mind, cannot in the slightest
degree be affected by any complete or incomplete realization of these
thoughts in any time, past, present, or to come. When I say that all
the angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, or that the
angle at the centre of a circle is double the angle at the
circumference, I prove this from certain necessary relations of lines
to lines drawn under conditions of which my thought is the absolute
master. The proof is only the evolution of what lies in the thing,--of
what cannot be otherwise, so long as the figure remains subject to the
dictatorial power of my conception.
It will be now quite evident from these specimens, that Hartley’s
philosophy is just the sensuous side of Locke worked curiously into
detail, with a practical rejection of the intellectual side. Indeed,
he says expressly (i. 360) that “all our most complex ideas arise
from sensation, and REFLECTION IS NOT A DISTINCT SOURCE, as Mr.
Locke makes it.” This throwing of reflection overboard is the
necessary postulate of all the absurdity that afterwards grew out from
the Lockian philosophy; and James Mill accordingly[289.1] disowns the
“ideas of reflection” with {290} the same fatal one-sideness, and,
it may be added, with the same transparent superficiality of logic;
for when a man talks of “generalizing states of consciousness,”
what is this but another term for reflection? Generalizing is a
species, and one of the most universally practised species, of
reflection.