Elements of the philosophy of the human mind / by Dugald Stewart.

  • Dugald Stewart
Date:
1854
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Elements of the philosophy of the human mind / by Dugald Stewart. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    Plato has profoundly defined man 'the hunter of truth;' for in this chase, as in others, the pursuit is all in all, the success comparatively noth- ing. We exist only as we energize; pleasure is the reflex of unimpaired energy; energy is the mean by which our faculties are developed; and a higher energy, the end which their development proposes. In action is thus contained the existence, happiness, improvement, and perfection of our being; and knowledge is only precious, as it may afford a stimulus to the exercise of our powers, and the condition of their more complete ac- tivity. Speculative truth is, therefore, subordinate to speculation itself; and its value is directly measured by the quantity of energy which it occasions,— immediately in its discovery, mediately through its consequences. Life to Endymion was not preferable to death ; aloof from practice, a waking error is better than a sleeping truth. — Neither, in point of fact, is there found any proportion between the possession of truths, and the development of the mind in which they are deposited. Every learner in science is now familiar with more truths than Aristotle or Plato ever dreamt of know- ing ; yet, compared with the Stagirite or the Athenian, how few, even of our masters of modern science, rank higher than intellectual barbarians. — lb. p. 40. All profitable study is a silent disputation — an intellectual gymnas- tic; and the most improving books are precisely those which most excite the reader — to understand the author, to supply what he has omitted, and to canvass his facts and reasonings. To read passively, to learn — is, in reality, not to learn at all. In study, implicit faith, belief upon au- thority, is worse even than, for a time, erroneous speculation. To read profitably, we should read the authors, not most in unison with, but most adverse to, our opinions; for whatever may be the case in the cure of bodies, enantiopathy, and not homoeopathy, is the true medicine of minds. Accordingly, such sciences and such authors, as present only unques- tionable truths, [pure mathematics, for instance, when made a chief object of pursuit,] determining a minimum of self-activity in the student, are, in a rational education, subjectively, naught. Those [such] sciences and authors, on the contrary, as constrain the student to independent thought, [metaphysics, for example,] are, whatever be their objective certainty, sub- jectively, educationally, best.]—lb. p. 773. 3*
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