A protest against agnosticism; the rationale or philosophy of belief
From Introduction:
my one object in addressing the public in each one of my works has been to show that our reflective self-consciousness of the faculties, or attributes of Being, is not only as legitimately the subject-matter of science as are the physical forces, but that, as the condition of all science, it claims the title of the science of sciences.
For even in our trusting, or believing in the evidence of our senses, the exercise of the fundamental rational concepts of the understanding is involved, they in fact constitute our understanding. Therefore we need not hesitate to follow the sense- transcending lead of our emotional, intellectual, and moral faculties, pointing as they do to the haven or heaven of our desire. " Psychical laws are more radical than physical laws." It is psychical laws, and not mere physical laws of movement, that must furnish the ground of a philosophical theory of evolution.
In my former works on Metaphysics, entitled respectively " An Essay on the Philosophy of Self-Consciousness" and "A Treatise on the Principle of Sufficient Reason," I have endeavoured to show the rationality of Faith, Love, and Hope.
The last work on which I have been engaged has for its object the exhibition of the genesis of the fundamental concepts of the human understanding; but illness having impeded its publication, I am now offering to the public the introduction to it, as affording a resume, or concise statement of my theory of thought, or spontaneous mental representation, together with my notion of reflective abstract cognition, and sense - transcending speculative inference therefrom.
Stated in a tabular form, my theory of the principles of mental representation stands thus: The idea or notion is of Being, which is apperceived in reflection on the three faculties, whose mental representations constitute the Principles of Thought,
contents:
Principles of Mental Representation i
Sufficient Cause ....... 7
Sanity, Rationality ........ 8
Self-Conscious Personality ...... 9
Efficient Cause . . . . . . . .10
Final Cause . . . . . . . .10
Sufficient Reason . . . . . . .12
The Ideal or Eidolon of Worthship . . . . . 13
Determinism according to Ideal Choice . . . .15
Substitution of Similars . . . . . . .16
Mutual or Reciprocal Selection . . . . .17
Being Pivotal Fact of the Universe . . . . .19
Sufficient Reason for Faith, Love, and Hope . . .26
Judgment and Reasoning . . . . . .29
Judgment and Reasoning . . . . . .29
Logic 29, 30
The Word the Expression of Reason . . . -33
The Neurotic Diagram . . . . . . -41
The Neurotic Diagram . . . . . . -41
Unity of the Ego 45
Will 46
Truth is to Type or its Ideal 48
Infinite and Finite Personality . . . . .50
The Judgments of Pure Reason apply to all Beings, even
to the Supreme as such . . . . . 52
to the Supreme as such . . . . . 52
Love is the Fulfilling of Law 53
Marriages that are made in Heaven .... 54
Relation of Thought to Being 55
The Subject of Consciousness . . . . . .56
Extra- Consciousness, Subjectivity of Pleasure and Pain. 57
The Three Irreducible Facts of Being . . . -59
The Three Irreducible Facts of Being . . . -59
Sensorial Impressions ' . . . . . .61
Knowledge only consists of what we consciously realise. 63
Apperception Conscience . . . . . .64
Energy and Evolution are Individual . . . .66
The Principle of Polarity . . . . . . .66
The Restful Sense of Soul Completion . . . .89
Justice and Virtue Individuality . . . . 9 1
Love alone confers Happiness upon Man . . . 93
Thought ......... 95
Thought ......... 95
Duty and Happiness . . . . . . .96
Categories of Thought . . . . . . .97
Tests of Truth 99
Laws . . . . . . . . .101
Correlations . . . . . . . . .102
Essential Qualities . . . . . . .104
Final Cause, Conscious Content of Being . . . .107
Spiritual Impressions . . . . . . .no
Polarity or Duality . . . . . . . .112
Man's Oracle is within him. He reads his destiny in the
Abstract Ultimate Principles of Reason . . 1 1 5
Imagination . . . . . . . . .116
Union of True Complementaries . . . . 1 1 7
The reason is Personal as well as Love . . . . .119
Love human and Divine Spirituality of True Love . . 121
Complementary Beings . . . . . . .123
Idiosyncrasies require to be balanced . . . .126
Stability of Union on what it depends . . . .127
Abstract Generalisations . . . . . .128
Right and Wrong. Evil the Shadow of Liberty . . 129
Identification of Philosophy with Religion . . .130
Happiness; Love the fulfilling of the Law . . . 133
Cause and Effect . . . . . . .142
Invisible Realities . . . . . . .144
The Instinct of the Duality of Being . . . .145
Order of Nature and Reason . . . . . .146
Conditions of Finite Being and Finite Knowledge. 149
True Freedom . . . . . . . 151
The Inviolable Sense of Personality . . . . .152
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