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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Untitled Article
in alL tha , t red ^ tes to . practical ac | ion , the miiyops are quite riisht in following natural impressions , andUtaking theoDJc ^ Uqf the , five senses for granted , u , e ., "believing * that positive . appearances are positive realities . Philosophers are of coursecompelledf to do the same , but this does not in the least affect the abstract principle . In all profound metaphysical speculations we can scarcely avoid
arriving finally at conclusions very similar , with reference to the ideality of all impressions , to those of Leibnitz and Berkeley , tracing them back with various modifications , which occasionally take a step ' beyond the sublime' to the days of Carneades and Protagoras ; (discovering the same opinion in the ideas' or images of Plato , and in the numbers' and mathematical mysticisms and symbols of Pythagoras . Mind is the only criterion of all things ; the only type and proof of reality ; the only measure of creation . The
arguments of the realists and materialists always proceed , directly pr indirectly , on a petitio principiu The only fixed datum for metaphysical speculations , is consciousness . Even this principle has been ' put to the question' by some philosophers , but in vain . The best analysis of identity , however , we ' believe will be found in
' The Principles of Human Action . * Some persons , ' says the author , in his letter to Gifford , ' who formerly took the pains to read this work , imagined that I wanted to argue them out of their existence , meyely because I endeavoured to define the nature and meaning of this ward , self ; to take in pieces , by metaphysical aid , this fine illusion of the brain and forgery of language , and to show what there is real and what false in it /
But although the millions are quite right as to the beneficial result in believing the reality of physical appearances , as in the iiistaace of bodies being coloured , a very different result must ensu 4 from acting on erroneous impressions as to the fundamental principles of mind and moral being . All the force of habit from the cradle upwards , is brought to bear in favour of various debasing and superficial notions , which are not less opposed to practical Virtue than to abstract truth . It is the business of the above
Essay to demonstrate that the human mind cannot be exclusively self-interested in its elementary principles . Oiir consciousness , whereon our identity depends , does not extend to the future ( which is the only field for the contemplation of practical action ) with any degree of reality . And in truth , it requires a considerable effort of abstraction clearly to distinguish and separate the objects we frame for the future , from those we have been conscious oi
in the past ; so much arc our imaginations mixed up with memory . In some cases this almost amounts , speaking abstractedly , to a solecism . , I contemplate a statue or figure , in imagination , having heard of it only i a few days after , I contemplate as near as possiole the stfine idea , i . e ,, the memory of a former or past imagination . Is it not tbtn a reasonable paradox , that the future is often unconsciously idmtMUd in the mind with the peat ? Perhaps I contemplate the
Untitled Article
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 1, 1835, page 484, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2647/page/48/
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