theStech/trainer_dataset · Datasets at Fast360

source stringclasses 3 values	answer stringlengths 0 156k	extra dict
book	representations have submitted to these its sole conditions. The conditions themselves impose	null
book	no further requirements. In short, the notion that real contingency and ambiguity may be	null
book	features of the real world is a perfectly unimpeachable hypothesis. Only in such a world can moral judgments have a claim to be. For the bad is that which takes the place of something else which possibly might have been where it now is, and the better is that which absolutely might be where it absolutely is not. In the universe of Hegel—the absolute block whose parts have no loose play, the pure plethora of necessary being with the oxygen of possibility all suffocated out of its lungs—there can be neither good nor bad, but one dead level of mere fate.	null
book	But I have tired the reader out. The worst of criticising Hegel is that the very arguments we use against him give forth strange and hollow sounds that make them seem almost as fantastic as the errors to which they are addressed. The sense of a universal mirage, of a ghostly unreality, steals over us, which is the very moonlit atmosphere of Hegelism itself. What wonder then if, instead of converting, our words do but rejoice and delight, those already baptized in the faith of confusion? To their charmed senses we all seem children of Hegel together, only some of us have not the wit to know our own father. Just as Romanists are sure to inform us that our reasons against Papal Christianity unconsciously breathe the purest spirit of Catholicism, so Hegelism benignantly smiles at our exertions, and murmurs, “If the red slayer think he slays;” “When me they fly, I am the wings,” etc.	null
book	To forefend this unwelcome adoption, let me recapitulate in a few propositions the reasons why I am not an hegelian.	null
book	1. We cannot eat our cake and have it; that is, the only real contradiction there can be	null
book	between thoughts is where one is true, the other false. When this happens, one must go forever; nor is there any ‘higher synthesis’ in which both can wholly revive.	null
book	2. A chasm is not a bridge in any utilizable sense; that is, no mere negation can be the	null
book	instrument of a positive advance in thought.	null
book	3. The continua, time, space, and the ego, are bridges, because they are without chasm. 4. But they bridge over the chasms between represented qualities only partially. 5. This partial bridging, however, makes the qualities share in a common world. 6. The other characteristics of the qualities are separate facts.	null
book	7. But the same quality appears in many times and spaces. Generic sameness of the quality	null
book	wherever found becomes thus a further means by which the jolts are reduced.	null
book	8. What between different qualities jolts remain. Each, as far as the other is concerned, is an	null
book	absolutely separate and contingent being. 9. The moral judgment may lead us to postulate as irreducible the contingencies of the world. 10. Elements mutually contingent are not in conflict so long as they partake of the continua of	null
book	time, space, etc., —partaking being the exact opposite of strife. They conflict only when, as	null
book	mutually exclusive possibilities, they strive to possess themselves of the same parts of time,	null
book	space, and ego.	null
book	11. That there are such real conflicts, irreducible to any intelligence, and giving rise to an	null
book	excess of possibility over actuality, is an hypothesis, but a credible one. No philosophy should pretend to be anything more.	null
book	NOTE. —Since the preceding article was written, some observations on the effects of nitrous-	null
book	oxide- gas-intoxication which I was prompted to make by reading the pamphlet called The	null
book	126	null
book	Anaesthetic Revelation and the Gist of Philosophy, by Benjamin Paul Blood, Amsterdam, N.	null
book	Y., 1874, have made me understand better than ever before both the strength and the weakness of Hegel ’s philosophy. I strongly urge others to repeat the experiment, which with	null
book	pure gas is short and harmless enough. The effects will of course vary with the individual. Just as they vary in the same individual from time to time; but it is probable that in the former	null
book	case, as in the latter, a generic resemblance will obtain. With me, as with every other person of whom I have heard, the keynote of the experience is the tremendously exciting sense of an intense metaphysical illumination. Truth lies open to the view in depth beneath depth of almost blinding evidence. The mind sees all the logical relations of being with an apparent subtlety and instantaneity to which its normal consciousness offers no parallel; only as sobriety returns, the feeling of insight fades , and one is left staring vacantly at a few	null
book	disjointed words and phrases, as one stares at a cadaverous-looking snow-peak from which the sunset glow has just fled, or at the black cinder left by an extinguished brand.	null
book	The immense emotional sense of reconciliation which characterizes the ‘maudlin’ stage of	null
book	alcoholic drunkenness,—a stage which seems silly to lookers-on, but the subjective rapture of	null
book	which probably constitutes a chief part of the temptation to the vice,—is well known. The centre and periphery of things seem to come together. The ego and its objects, the meum and	null
book	the tuum , are one. Now this, only a thousandfold enhanced, was the effect upon me of the	null
book	gas: and its first result was to make peal through me with unutterable power the conviction that Hegelism was true after all, and that the deepest convictions of my intellect hitherto were wrong. Whatever idea or representation occurred to the mind was seized by the same logical forceps, and served to illustrate the same truth; and that truth was that every opposition, among whatsoever things, vanishes in a higher unity in whic h it is based; that all	null
book	contradictions, so- called, are but differences; that all differences are of degree; that all	null
book	degrees are of a common kind; that unbroken continuity is of the essence of being; and that we are literally in the midst of an infinite , to perceive the existence of which is the utmost we	null
book	can attain. Without the same as a basis, how could strife occur? Strife presupposes something	null
book	to be striven about; and in this common topic, the same for both parties, the differences merge. From the hardest contradiction to the tenderest diversity of verbiage differences evaporate; yes and no agree at least in being assertions; a denial of a statement is but another	null
book	mode of stating the same, contradiction can only occur of the same thing,—all opinions are thus synonyms, are synonymous, are the same. But the same phrase by difference of emphasis is two; and here again difference and no -difference merge in one.	null
book	It is impossible to convey an idea of the torrential character of the identification of opposites as it streams through the mind in this experience. I have sheet after sheet of phrases dictated or written during the intoxication, which to the sober reader seem meaningless drivel, but which at the moment of transcribing were fused in the fire of infinite rationality. God and devil, good and evil, life and death, I and thou, sober and drunk, matter and form, black and white, quantity and quality, shiver of ecstasy and shudder of horror, vomiting and swallowing, inspiration and expiration, fate and reason, great and small, extent and intent, joke and earnest, tragic and comic, and fifty other contrasts figure in these pages in the same	null
book	monotonous way. The mind saw how each term belonged to its contrast through a knife- edge	null
book	moment of transition which it effected, and which, perennial and eternal, was the nunc	null
book	stans of life. The thought of mutual implication of the parts in the bare form of a judgment of	null
book	opposition, as ‘nothing—but,’ ‘no more—than,’ ‘only—if, ’ etc., produced a perfect delirium	null
book	of theoretic rapture. And at last, when definite ideas to work on came slowly, the mind went through the mere form of recognizing sameness in identity by contrasting the same word with	null
book	itself, differently emphasized, or shorn of its initial letter. Let me transcribe a few sentences:	null
book	127	null
book	What ’s mistake but a kind of take?	null
book	What ’s nausea but a kind of - ausea?	null
book	Sober, drunk, - unk, astonishment.	null
book	Everything can become the subject of criticism—how	null
book	criticise without something to criticise?	null
book	Agreement —disagreement!!	null
book	Emotion —motion!!!	null
book	Die away from, from , die away (without the from ).	null
book	Reconciliation of opposites; sober, drunk, all the same! Good and evil reconciled in a laugh! It escapes, it escapes!	null
book	But—— What escapes, WHAT escapes?	null
book	Emphasis, EMphasis; there must be some emphasis in order for there to be a phasis.	null
book	No verbiage can give it, because the verbiage is other .	null
book	Incoherent, coherent—same.	null
book	And it fades! And it’ s infinite! AND it’ s infinite!	null
book	If it was n ’t going, why should you hold on to it?	null
book	Don’t you see the difference, don’t you see the identity?	null
book	Constantly opposites united! The same me telling you to write and not to write!	null
book	Extreme —extreme, extreme! Within the extensity that	null
book	‘extreme ’ contains is contained the ‘ extreme ’ of intensity.	null
book	Something, and other than that thing!	null
book	Intoxication, and otherness than intoxication.	null
book	Every attempt at betterment, —every attempt at otherment, —is a ——.	null
book	It fades forever and forever as we move.	null
book	There is a reconciliation!	null
book	Reconciliation —econciliation!	null
book	By God, how that hurts! By God, how it does n’t hurt!	null
book	Reconciliation of two extremes.	null
book	By George, nothing but othing! That sounds like nonsense, but it is pure onsense!	null
book	Thought deeper than speech——! Medical school; divinity school, school ! SCHOOL! Oh my	null
book	God, oh God, oh God!	null
book	The most coherent and articulate sentence which came was this: —	null
book	There are no differences but differences of degree between different degrees of difference	null
book	and no difference.	null
book	This phrase has the true Hegelian ring, being in fact a regular sich als sich auf sich selbst	null
book	beziehende Negativität . And true Hegelians will überhaupt be able to read between the lines	null
book	and feel, at any rate, what possible ecstasies of cognitive emotion might have bathed these	null
book	tattered fragments of thought when they were alive. But for the assurance of a certain amount of respect from them, I should hardly have ventured to print what must be such caviare to the general.	null
book	But now comes the reverse of the medal. What is the principle of unity in all this monotonous rain of instances? Although I did not see it at first, I soon found that it was in each case	null
book	128	null
book	nothing but the abstract genus of which the conflicting terms were opposite species. In other	null
book	words, although the flood of ontologic emotion was Hegelian through and through,	null
book	the ground for it was nothing but the world-old principle that things are the same only so far and no farther than they are the same, or partake of a common nature, —the principle that	null
book	Hegel most tramples under foot. At the same time the rapture of beholding a process that was infinite, changed (as the nature of the infinitude was realized by the mind) into the sense of a dread ful and ineluctable fate, with whose magnitude every finite effort is incommensurable	null
book	and in the light of which whatever happens is indifferent. This instantaneous revulsion of mood from rapture to horror is, perhaps, the strongest emotion I have ever experienced. I got it repeatedly when the inhalation was continued long enough to produce incipient nausea; and I cannot but regard it as the normal and inevitable outcome of the intoxication, if sufficiently prolonged. A pessimistic fatalism, depth within depth of impotence and indifference, reason and silliness united, not in a higher synthesis, but in the fact that whichever you choose it is all one, —this is the upshot of a revelation that began so rosy bright.	null
book	Even when the process stops short of this ultimatum, the reader will have noticed from the phrases quoted how often it ends by losing the clue. Something ‘ fades, ’ ‘escapes; ’ and the	null
book	feeling of insight is changed into an intense one of bewilderment, puzzle, confusion, astonishment. I know no more singular sensation than this intense bewilderment, with nothing particular left to be bewildered at save the bewilderment itself. It seems, indeed, a causa sui , or ‘ spirit become its own object. ’	null
book	My conclusion is that the togetherness of things in a common world, the law of sharing, of which I have said so much, may, when perceived, engender a very powerful emotion, that Hegel was so unusually susceptible to this emotion throughout his life that it s gratification	null
book	became his supreme end, and made him tolerably unscrupulous as to the means he employed; that indifferentism is the true outcome of every view of the world which makes infinity and	null
book	continuity to be its essence, and that pessimistic or optimistic attitudes pertain to the mere accidental subjectivity of the moment; finally, that the identification of contradictories, so far from being the self-developing process which Hegel supposes, is really a self-consuming process, passing from the less to the more abstract, and terminating either in a laugh at the ultimate nothingness, or in a mood of vertiginous amazement at a meaningless infinity.	null
book	129	null
book	What Psychical Research Has Accomplished	null
book		null
book	This Essay is formed of portions of an article in Scribner's Magazine for March, 1890, of an	null
book	article in the Forum for July, 1892, and of the President's Address before the Society for Psychical Research, published in the Proceedings for June, 1896, and in Science.	null
book	“The great field for new discoveries, ” said a scientific friend to me the other day, “ is always	null

book

representations have submitted to these its sole conditions. The conditions themselves impose

null

book

no further requirements. In short, the notion that real contingency and ambiguity may be

null

book

features of the real world is a perfectly unimpeachable hypothesis. Only in such a world can moral judgments have a claim to be. For the bad is that which takes the place of something else which possibly might have been where it now is, and the better is that which absolutely might be where it absolutely is not. In the universe of Hegel—the absolute block whose parts have no loose play, the pure plethora of necessary being with the oxygen of possibility all suffocated out of its lungs—there can be neither good nor bad, but one dead level of mere fate.

null

book

But I have tired the reader out. The worst of criticising Hegel is that the very arguments we use against him give forth strange and hollow sounds that make them seem almost as fantastic as the errors to which they are addressed. The sense of a universal mirage, of a ghostly unreality, steals over us, which is the very moonlit atmosphere of Hegelism itself. What wonder then if, instead of converting, our words do but rejoice and delight, those already baptized in the faith of confusion? To their charmed senses we all seem children of Hegel together, only some of us have not the wit to know our own father. Just as Romanists are sure to inform us that our reasons against Papal Christianity unconsciously breathe the purest spirit of Catholicism, so Hegelism benignantly smiles at our exertions, and murmurs, “If the red slayer think he slays;” “When me they fly, I am the wings,” etc.

null

book

To forefend this unwelcome adoption, let me recapitulate in a few propositions the reasons why I am not an hegelian.

null

book

1. We cannot eat our cake and have it; that is, the only real contradiction there can be

null

book

between thoughts is where one is true, the other false. When this happens, one must go forever; nor is there any ‘higher synthesis’ in which both can wholly revive.

null

book

2. A chasm is not a bridge in any utilizable sense; that is, no mere negation can be the

null

book

instrument of a positive advance in thought.

null

book

3. The continua, time, space, and the ego, are bridges, because they are without chasm. 4. But they bridge over the chasms between represented qualities only partially. 5. This partial bridging, however, makes the qualities share in a common world. 6. The other characteristics of the qualities are separate facts.

null

book

7. But the same quality appears in many times and spaces. Generic sameness of the quality

null

book

wherever found becomes thus a further means by which the jolts are reduced.

null

book

8. What between different qualities jolts remain. Each, as far as the other is concerned, is an

null

book

absolutely separate and contingent being. 9. The moral judgment may lead us to postulate as irreducible the contingencies of the world. 10. Elements mutually contingent are not in conflict so long as they partake of the continua of

null

book

time, space, etc., —partaking being the exact opposite of strife. They conflict only when, as

null

book

mutually exclusive possibilities, they strive to possess themselves of the same parts of time,

null

book

space, and ego.

null

book

11. That there are such real conflicts, irreducible to any intelligence, and giving rise to an

null

book

excess of possibility over actuality, is an hypothesis, but a credible one. No philosophy should pretend to be anything more.

null

book

NOTE. —Since the preceding article was written, some observations on the effects of nitrous-

null

book

oxide- gas-intoxication which I was prompted to make by reading the pamphlet called The

null

book

126

null

book

Anaesthetic Revelation and the Gist of Philosophy, by Benjamin Paul Blood, Amsterdam, N.

null

book

Y., 1874, have made me understand better than ever before both the strength and the weakness of Hegel ’s philosophy. I strongly urge others to repeat the experiment, which with

null

book

pure gas is short and harmless enough. The effects will of course vary with the individual. Just as they vary in the same individual from time to time; but it is probable that in the former

null

book

case, as in the latter, a generic resemblance will obtain. With me, as with every other person of whom I have heard, the keynote of the experience is the tremendously exciting sense of an intense metaphysical illumination. Truth lies open to the view in depth beneath depth of almost blinding evidence. The mind sees all the logical relations of being with an apparent subtlety and instantaneity to which its normal consciousness offers no parallel; only as sobriety returns, the feeling of insight fades , and one is left staring vacantly at a few

null

book

disjointed words and phrases, as one stares at a cadaverous-looking snow-peak from which the sunset glow has just fled, or at the black cinder left by an extinguished brand.

null

book

The immense emotional sense of reconciliation which characterizes the ‘maudlin’ stage of

null

book

alcoholic drunkenness,—a stage which seems silly to lookers-on, but the subjective rapture of

null

book

which probably constitutes a chief part of the temptation to the vice,—is well known. The centre and periphery of things seem to come together. The ego and its objects, the meum and

null

book

the tuum , are one. Now this, only a thousandfold enhanced, was the effect upon me of the

null

book

gas: and its first result was to make peal through me with unutterable power the conviction that Hegelism was true after all, and that the deepest convictions of my intellect hitherto were wrong. Whatever idea or representation occurred to the mind was seized by the same logical forceps, and served to illustrate the same truth; and that truth was that every opposition, among whatsoever things, vanishes in a higher unity in whic h it is based; that all

null

book

contradictions, so- called, are but differences; that all differences are of degree; that all

null

book

degrees are of a common kind; that unbroken continuity is of the essence of being; and that we are literally in the midst of an infinite , to perceive the existence of which is the utmost we

null

book

can attain. Without the same as a basis, how could strife occur? Strife presupposes something

null

book

to be striven about; and in this common topic, the same for both parties, the differences merge. From the hardest contradiction to the tenderest diversity of verbiage differences evaporate; yes and no agree at least in being assertions; a denial of a statement is but another

null

book

mode of stating the same, contradiction can only occur of the same thing,—all opinions are thus synonyms, are synonymous, are the same. But the same phrase by difference of emphasis is two; and here again difference and no -difference merge in one.

null

book

It is impossible to convey an idea of the torrential character of the identification of opposites as it streams through the mind in this experience. I have sheet after sheet of phrases dictated or written during the intoxication, which to the sober reader seem meaningless drivel, but which at the moment of transcribing were fused in the fire of infinite rationality. God and devil, good and evil, life and death, I and thou, sober and drunk, matter and form, black and white, quantity and quality, shiver of ecstasy and shudder of horror, vomiting and swallowing, inspiration and expiration, fate and reason, great and small, extent and intent, joke and earnest, tragic and comic, and fifty other contrasts figure in these pages in the same

null

book

monotonous way. The mind saw how each term belonged to its contrast through a knife- edge

null

book

moment of transition which it effected, and which, perennial and eternal, was the nunc

null

book

stans of life. The thought of mutual implication of the parts in the bare form of a judgment of

null

book

opposition, as ‘nothing—but,’ ‘no more—than,’ ‘only—if, ’ etc., produced a perfect delirium

null

book

of theoretic rapture. And at last, when definite ideas to work on came slowly, the mind went through the mere form of recognizing sameness in identity by contrasting the same word with

null

book

itself, differently emphasized, or shorn of its initial letter. Let me transcribe a few sentences:

null

book

127

null

book

What ’s mistake but a kind of take?

null

book

What ’s nausea but a kind of - ausea?

null

book

Sober, drunk, - unk, astonishment.

null

book

Everything can become the subject of criticism—how

null

book

criticise without something to criticise?

null

book

Agreement —disagreement!!

null

book

Emotion —motion!!!

null

book

Die away from, from , die away (without the from ).

null

book

Reconciliation of opposites; sober, drunk, all the same! Good and evil reconciled in a laugh! It escapes, it escapes!

null

book

But—— What escapes, WHAT escapes?

null

book

Emphasis, EMphasis; there must be some emphasis in order for there to be a phasis.

null

book

No verbiage can give it, because the verbiage is other .

null

book

Incoherent, coherent—same.

null

book

And it fades! And it’ s infinite! AND it’ s infinite!

null

book

If it was n ’t going, why should you hold on to it?

null

book

Don’t you see the difference, don’t you see the identity?

null

book

Constantly opposites united! The same me telling you to write and not to write!

null

book

Extreme —extreme, extreme! Within the extensity that

null

book

‘extreme ’ contains is contained the ‘ extreme ’ of intensity.

null

book

Something, and other than that thing!

null

book

Intoxication, and otherness than intoxication.

null

book

Every attempt at betterment, —every attempt at otherment, —is a ——.

null

book

It fades forever and forever as we move.

null

book

There is a reconciliation!

null

book

Reconciliation —econciliation!

null

book

By God, how that hurts! By God, how it does n’t hurt!

null

book

Reconciliation of two extremes.

null

book

By George, nothing but othing! That sounds like nonsense, but it is pure onsense!

null

book

Thought deeper than speech——! Medical school; divinity school, school ! SCHOOL! Oh my

null

book

God, oh God, oh God!

null

book

The most coherent and articulate sentence which came was this: —

null

book

There are no differences but differences of degree between different degrees of difference

null

book

and no difference.

null

book

This phrase has the true Hegelian ring, being in fact a regular sich als sich auf sich selbst

null

book

beziehende Negativität . And true Hegelians will überhaupt be able to read between the lines

null

book

and feel, at any rate, what possible ecstasies of cognitive emotion might have bathed these

null

book

tattered fragments of thought when they were alive. But for the assurance of a certain amount of respect from them, I should hardly have ventured to print what must be such caviare to the general.

null

book

But now comes the reverse of the medal. What is the principle of unity in all this monotonous rain of instances? Although I did not see it at first, I soon found that it was in each case

null

book

128

null

book

nothing but the abstract genus of which the conflicting terms were opposite species. In other

null

book

words, although the flood of ontologic emotion was Hegelian through and through,

null

book

the ground for it was nothing but the world-old principle that things are the same only so far and no farther than they are the same, or partake of a common nature, —the principle that

null

book

Hegel most tramples under foot. At the same time the rapture of beholding a process that was infinite, changed (as the nature of the infinitude was realized by the mind) into the sense of a dread ful and ineluctable fate, with whose magnitude every finite effort is incommensurable

null

book

and in the light of which whatever happens is indifferent. This instantaneous revulsion of mood from rapture to horror is, perhaps, the strongest emotion I have ever experienced. I got it repeatedly when the inhalation was continued long enough to produce incipient nausea; and I cannot but regard it as the normal and inevitable outcome of the intoxication, if sufficiently prolonged. A pessimistic fatalism, depth within depth of impotence and indifference, reason and silliness united, not in a higher synthesis, but in the fact that whichever you choose it is all one, —this is the upshot of a revelation that began so rosy bright.

null

book

Even when the process stops short of this ultimatum, the reader will have noticed from the phrases quoted how often it ends by losing the clue. Something ‘ fades, ’ ‘escapes; ’ and the

null

book

feeling of insight is changed into an intense one of bewilderment, puzzle, confusion, astonishment. I know no more singular sensation than this intense bewilderment, with nothing particular left to be bewildered at save the bewilderment itself. It seems, indeed, a causa sui , or ‘ spirit become its own object. ’

null

book

My conclusion is that the togetherness of things in a common world, the law of sharing, of which I have said so much, may, when perceived, engender a very powerful emotion, that Hegel was so unusually susceptible to this emotion throughout his life that it s gratification

null

book

became his supreme end, and made him tolerably unscrupulous as to the means he employed; that indifferentism is the true outcome of every view of the world which makes infinity and

null

book

continuity to be its essence, and that pessimistic or optimistic attitudes pertain to the mere accidental subjectivity of the moment; finally, that the identification of contradictories, so far from being the self-developing process which Hegel supposes, is really a self-consuming process, passing from the less to the more abstract, and terminating either in a laugh at the ultimate nothingness, or in a mood of vertiginous amazement at a meaningless infinity.

null

book

129

null

book

What Psychical Research Has Accomplished

null

book

null

book

This Essay is formed of portions of an article in Scribner's Magazine for March, 1890, of an

null

book

article in the Forum for July, 1892, and of the President's Address before the Society for Psychical Research, published in the Proceedings for June, 1896, and in Science.

null

book

“The great field for new discoveries, ” said a scientific friend to me the other day, “ is always

null