Epitome of the synthetic philosophy / by F. Howard Collins.

  • Frederick Howard Collins
Date:
1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Epitome of the synthetic philosophy / by F. Howard Collins. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    43/668 (page 19)
    41. ^Vhat is this datum, or rather, what are these data, which Philosophy cannot do without? It is that congruities and incongruities exist, and are cognizable by us. The permanence of a consciousness of likeness or difference, is our ultimate warrant for asserting the existence of likeness or difference. To say that a given congruity or incongruity exists, is simply our way of saying that we invariably have a consciousness of it along with a consciousness of the compared things. We know nothing more of existence than a continued manifestation. 42. We must recognize not only a fundamental lorocess, but also a fundamental 'product of thought. If knowledge is grouping the like and separating the unlike, its unification must specify the antithesis between two ultimate classes of experiences in which all others merge. What are these ? 43. Setting out from the conclusion lately reached, that all things known to us are manifestations of the Unknow- able; we find these manifestations, considered simply as such, are divisible into two great classes, the Vivid and the Faint. The former, occurring under the conditions of perception, are originals. The latter, occurring under those of reflection, memory, imagination, or ideation, are copies. The first form with one another a series, or heterogeneous current, that is never broken; and the second also form with one another a parallel series or current that is never broken: or rather, no breakage of either is ever directly known. Between manifestations of the vivid order, the cohesions both longitudinal and transverse, are indis- soluble ; but those of the faint order are mostly dissoluble with ease. While the members of each series are so coherent with one another that the current cannot be broken, the two currents, running side by side as they do, have but little coherence—the great body of the vivid current is absolutely unmodifiable by the faint, and the faint may become almost separate from the vivid. The conditions under which manifestations of either order occur, themselves belong to that order; but whereas in the faint