1
/
of
1
Leila's Books
MIND, METAPHYSICS AND LOGIC
MIND, METAPHYSICS AND LOGIC
Regular price
$2.99 USD
Regular price
Sale price
$2.99 USD
Shipping calculated at checkout.
Quantity
Couldn't load pickup availability
Scanned, proofed and corrected from the original edition for your reading pleasure. It is also searchable and contains hyper-links to chapters.
***
Contents:
Psychology, about Minds
Epistemology, about Knowledges
Metaphysics, about Existences
Logic, about Things as Related
A Universe of Hegel
Seven Processes of Language
Nine Uses of Language
Many Meanings of Money
Some Origins of the Number Two
***
An excerpt from the first chapter:
PSYCHOLOGY - ABOUT MINDS
A ton of coal is exchanged at one place for two barrels of flour; at another place for one. An ounce of gold, which to-day buys thirty ounces of silver, was once bartered for sixteen ounces. All the antecedents that determine the ratio of exchange in an actual instance are never ascertained. In many actual instances, however, there have been disclosed features common to them. But the aspects, common or individual, are operative mainly as they determine the states of mind of the two parties to a transaction. In other words, psychical elements are involved; and the business man succeeds or fails in part by reason of his greater or less knowledge of psychical facts and principles.
These facts and principles are not those ultimate facts and principles which are discerned by a few gifted and devoted students; for those profounder truths are as little likely as the doctrines of the Calculus of Variations to become the possession of many minds. There are psychical phenomena, it is plain, the knowledge of which is of universal and immediate applicability; and no one can go far in any walk of life without finding himself baffled by his ignorance of some point of psychology, though he may never have bestowed that name on the sort of knowledge he needs.
The teacher with his pupils; the orator before his audience; the actor facing his house; artists, statesmen, philosophers,—who is exempt from the necessity of knowing psychical facts, facts about the ideas, wishes, purposes, designs of his fellowmen?
Palmistry, physiognomy, phrenology, astrology are names for sets of signs that have been believed to be indicative of psychical facts. Sculpture, painting, architecture, music, and poetry are certain processes for modifying psychical movements in a determinate way.
A chemist weighs, measures, counts, calculates, and concludes that one gramme of that water contains one milligramme of chlorine. He is not always aware that he has learned considerable psychology on the way to this conclusion. No matter what the result, the beginnings are sights, smells, tastes, "feels"— in a word, sensations that have become modified by countless repetitions. His training has consisted in discriminating amid a cluster of psychical elements something which he calls real, while rejecting the other elements as unreal. The chemist would miss his own aim if he should try to be at the same time a psychologist. He would have to attend to these rejected elements, and live over again a life which he must forget to succeed as a chemist. It is not for all persons, not even for all teachers, to be psychologists. With most people a little psychology, as Matthew Arnold said of mathematics, goes a great way. And yet a little psychology is likely to be very useful; to the majority of people more useful than a good deal. This little, if it be of a peculiar kind, is a good thing to have when one is occupying his mind with dreams, apparitions, ghosts, materializations, mind-cures, thought-transferences,—matters, i. e., about which men still dispute, not where among reals they are to be placed, but whether they are to be placed among real things at all.
Besides Tellus and Ceres the Roman peasant invoked twelve other gods who were associated with as many processes of husbandry: Vervactor with the first plowing of the fallow field; Reparator with the second plowing; Imporcitor with the third and final plowing, by which the furrows were drawn and the hills heaped up; Insitor with the sowing; Obarator with the drawing of the plow over the ground after the sowing; Occator with the working of the field over with the harrow; Saritor with the uprooting of weeds with the hoe; Subruncinator with the pulling up of weeds with the hand; Messor with reaping; Convector with the bringing in of the grain; Conditor with stowing it away; Promitor with the distribution of corn from bin and barn.
This is but a fragment of the evidence that Usener and others have collected to the effect that the primitive Roman never plowed or sowed or reaped, never sheared his sheep or cut his own hair, never did any good or, for that matter, bad deed, without thinking on a god whose name was allied to a word that denoted the very act in which he was engaged; Plower, Sower, Harrower, Weeder, Shearer, and even Manurer.
What are these gods? Where do they come...
***
Contents:
Psychology, about Minds
Epistemology, about Knowledges
Metaphysics, about Existences
Logic, about Things as Related
A Universe of Hegel
Seven Processes of Language
Nine Uses of Language
Many Meanings of Money
Some Origins of the Number Two
***
An excerpt from the first chapter:
PSYCHOLOGY - ABOUT MINDS
A ton of coal is exchanged at one place for two barrels of flour; at another place for one. An ounce of gold, which to-day buys thirty ounces of silver, was once bartered for sixteen ounces. All the antecedents that determine the ratio of exchange in an actual instance are never ascertained. In many actual instances, however, there have been disclosed features common to them. But the aspects, common or individual, are operative mainly as they determine the states of mind of the two parties to a transaction. In other words, psychical elements are involved; and the business man succeeds or fails in part by reason of his greater or less knowledge of psychical facts and principles.
These facts and principles are not those ultimate facts and principles which are discerned by a few gifted and devoted students; for those profounder truths are as little likely as the doctrines of the Calculus of Variations to become the possession of many minds. There are psychical phenomena, it is plain, the knowledge of which is of universal and immediate applicability; and no one can go far in any walk of life without finding himself baffled by his ignorance of some point of psychology, though he may never have bestowed that name on the sort of knowledge he needs.
The teacher with his pupils; the orator before his audience; the actor facing his house; artists, statesmen, philosophers,—who is exempt from the necessity of knowing psychical facts, facts about the ideas, wishes, purposes, designs of his fellowmen?
Palmistry, physiognomy, phrenology, astrology are names for sets of signs that have been believed to be indicative of psychical facts. Sculpture, painting, architecture, music, and poetry are certain processes for modifying psychical movements in a determinate way.
A chemist weighs, measures, counts, calculates, and concludes that one gramme of that water contains one milligramme of chlorine. He is not always aware that he has learned considerable psychology on the way to this conclusion. No matter what the result, the beginnings are sights, smells, tastes, "feels"— in a word, sensations that have become modified by countless repetitions. His training has consisted in discriminating amid a cluster of psychical elements something which he calls real, while rejecting the other elements as unreal. The chemist would miss his own aim if he should try to be at the same time a psychologist. He would have to attend to these rejected elements, and live over again a life which he must forget to succeed as a chemist. It is not for all persons, not even for all teachers, to be psychologists. With most people a little psychology, as Matthew Arnold said of mathematics, goes a great way. And yet a little psychology is likely to be very useful; to the majority of people more useful than a good deal. This little, if it be of a peculiar kind, is a good thing to have when one is occupying his mind with dreams, apparitions, ghosts, materializations, mind-cures, thought-transferences,—matters, i. e., about which men still dispute, not where among reals they are to be placed, but whether they are to be placed among real things at all.
Besides Tellus and Ceres the Roman peasant invoked twelve other gods who were associated with as many processes of husbandry: Vervactor with the first plowing of the fallow field; Reparator with the second plowing; Imporcitor with the third and final plowing, by which the furrows were drawn and the hills heaped up; Insitor with the sowing; Obarator with the drawing of the plow over the ground after the sowing; Occator with the working of the field over with the harrow; Saritor with the uprooting of weeds with the hoe; Subruncinator with the pulling up of weeds with the hand; Messor with reaping; Convector with the bringing in of the grain; Conditor with stowing it away; Promitor with the distribution of corn from bin and barn.
This is but a fragment of the evidence that Usener and others have collected to the effect that the primitive Roman never plowed or sowed or reaped, never sheared his sheep or cut his own hair, never did any good or, for that matter, bad deed, without thinking on a god whose name was allied to a word that denoted the very act in which he was engaged; Plower, Sower, Harrower, Weeder, Shearer, and even Manurer.
What are these gods? Where do they come...
Share
