Mysticism and Logic: And Other EssaysLongmans, Green and Company, 1918 - 234 pages |
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Common terms and phrases
acquainted actual appearances applied argument Aristotle author of Waverley axioms belief belong Bergson called causal dependence concerned connexion constituents construction correlation defined definition denotation desire determined difficult empirical entities ethical event evil evolutionism example exist fact false finite future geometry given Hegel Heraclitus hitherto human inferred infinite numbers instinct intellect intuition Joseph Larmor judgement Julius Caesar kind knowledge Knowledge by Description law of causality Leibniz logic mathe matics matter means ment mental merely metaphysical method mind mysticism namely nature notion object observed Parmenides particular past perceived perspective philo philosophy philosophy of mathematics phrase physical world Plato possible present principle priori problem propositional function question reality reason regard relation round square scientific scientific method Scott seems sense sense-data sensibilia sensible so-and-so space supposed teleological theory thing thought tion true truth universe volitions whole wholly wish word
Popular passages
Page 62 - Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty - a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show.
Page 20 - By intuition is meant the kind of intellectual sympathy by which one places oneself within an object in order to coincide with what is unique in it and consequently inexpressible.
Page 51 - That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms...
Page 20 - There is one reality, at least, which we all seize from within, by intuition and not by simple analysis. It is our own personality in its flowing through time — our self which endures.
Page 173 - The Law of Causation, the recognition of which is the main pillar of inductive science, is but the familiar truth that invariability of succession is found by observation to obtain between every fact in nature and some other fact which has preceded It...
Page 62 - Real life is, to most men, a long second-best, a perpetual compromise between the ideal and the possible; but the world of pure reason knows no compromise, no practical limitations, no barrier to the creative activity embodying in splendid edifices the passionate aspiration after the perfect from which all great work springs. Remote from human passions, remote even from the pitiful facts of nature, the generations have gradually created an ordered cosmos, where pure thought can dwell as in its natural...
Page 11 - To God all things are fair and good and right, but men hold some things wrong and some right.
Page 57 - To take into the inmost shrine of the soul the irresistible forces whose puppets we seem to be — Death and change, the irrevocableness of the past, and the powerlessness of man before the blind hurry of the universe from vanity to vanity— to feel these things and know them is to conquer them.
Page 75 - Thus mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.
Page 59 - ... wherever a spark of the divine fire kindled in their hearts, we were ready with encouragement, with sympathy, with brave words in which high courage glowed. Brief and powerless is Man's life; on him and all his race the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark.