Life in Mind & Conduct; Studies of Organic in Human Nature

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1902. Excerpt: ... it is fundamentally a matter of subtile vibrations, rather than of any quasi-mechanical association of ideas--corresponding disintegrations of the normal forms of thought. Whatever their intrinsic value then, whether wonderfully rational or utterly irrational, dreams are experiments of imagination presented for observation and induction, which may be expected some day to yield instruction to a systematic scientific study. THE IDEAL The partial truth of proverbs, maxims, adages--The ideal in theory and the real in practice--Moral principles idealizations of the real--Constant war between the ideal and the real--Proverbial half truths--Indispensable coexistence of the ideal and the real--Universality of ideals--Optimistic and pessimistic ideals and temperaments--The mean between ideal and real--The ideal of the race--A moral equilibrium incompatible with increase of knowledge--Over-valuation of knowledge--Knowledge essentially selfish--Its glorification in the interest of the species--The cement of society not knowledge but charity--Scientific inventions baneful as well as beneficial--Can knowledge grow to an ideal perfection?--Or moral perfection be attainable i--Confusion of moral ideals--Fanatical enthusiasm of humanity--The eternal paradox--Symbols--Degrees of belief--Worship of symbols--Idols of wood and stone--Idols of the heart and imagination--The doctrine of the Trinity--Religious worship of pictures and statues--Decay of symbols--Transformation, not cataclysm, in organic development. The various proverbs, aphorisms, adages, maxims and sage precepts current among peoples through the ages, prove often when closely examined to be only half-truths, and therefore essentially untrue seeing that no truth can ever be only half true. Some of them are true ...