MS 427a (1902) - Minute Logic - Chapter II - Section I

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Classification of the Sciences

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The Power of Ideas

I fear I may be producting the impression of talking at random. It is that I wish the reader to "catch on" to my idea conception, my point of view; and just as one cannot make a man see that a thing is red, or is beautiful, or is touching, by describing redness, beauty, or pathos, but can only point to something else that is red, beautiful, or pathetic, and say "Look here too for something like that there", so if the reader has not been in the habit of conceiving ideas as I conceive them, I can only cast a sort of dragnet into his experience and hope that it will may fish up some instance in which he shall have had a similar conception. Do you think, reader, that is is a positive fact that

Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again;

or do you think that this, being poetry, is only a pretty fiction? Do you think that, notwithstanding the

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horrible wickedness of every mortal weight, the idea of right and wrong is nevertheless the greatest power on this earth, to which every knee must sooner or later bow or be broken down; or do you think that this is another notion at which common sense should smile? Even if you are of the negative opinion, still you must acknowledge that the affirmative is intelligible. Here, then, is an are the instances of ideas which either have, or are believed to have, life, the power of bringing things to pass, here below. Perhaps you may object that right and wrong are only a power because there are or would be powerful men who are disposed to make them so; just as they might take it into their heads to make tulip-fancying, or free-masonry, or Volapük a power. But you must acknowledge that this is not the opinion of affirmative position of those on the affirmative side. On the contrary, they hold that it is the idea which will create its defenders, and render

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them powerful. They will say that if [?????] free-masonry or its foe, the Papacy, ever [did?] pass away, -- as perhaps either may, -- it will be precisely because they are ideas devoid of eternal inherent, incorruptible vitality, and not at all [for?] because they have it been unsupplied with stalwart defenders. Thus, whether you accept the opinion or not, you must see that it is a perfectly intelligible opinion that ideas are not all mere creations of this or that mind, but on the contrary have a power of finding or creating their vehicles, and having found them, or conferring upon them the ability to transform the face of the earth. If you ask what mode of being is supposed to belong to an idea that is in no mind, the reply will come be that undoubtedly the idea must be embodied (or ensouled; it is all one) in order to attain complete being, and that if, at any moment, it should happen that an idea, -- say that of physical decency, -- was quite uncon-

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ceived by any living being, then its mode of being (supposing that it was not altogether dead) would consist precisely in this, the namely, that it was about to receive embodiment (or ensoulment) and to work in the world. This would be a mere potential being, a being in futuro; but it would not be the utter nothingness which would befall matter (or spirit) if it were to be deprived of the governance of ideas, and this were to have no regularity in its action, so that for throughout no fraction of a second could it steadily act in any general way. For matter would thus not only not actually exist; but it would not have even a potential existence; since potentiality is an affair of ideas. It would be just downright Nothing.

It so happens that I myself believe in the eternal life of the ideas Truth and Right. I need not, however, insist upon that for my present purpose, and have only spoken of them in order to make my meaning clear. What I do insist upon

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is not now the infinite vitality of those particular ideas, but that every idea has in some measure in the same sense that those are supposed to have it in unlimited measure, more or less the power to work out physical and psychical results. They have life, and generative life.

That is is so is a matter of experiential fact. But whether it is so or not is not a question to be settled by producing a microscope or telescope of any recondite evidence observations of any kind. Its evidence stares us all in the face every hour of our lives. Not is any ingenious reasoning needed to make it plain. If one does not see it, it is for the same reason that some men have not a sense of sin; and there is nothing for it but to be born again and become a little child. If you do not see it, you have to look upon the world with new eyes.

How existence may be derived from ideas.

I may be asked what I mean by the objects of class deriving their existence from an idea. Do I mean

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