Author: William Whewell

Publisher: Theclassics.Us

Published: 2013-09

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 9781230206011

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1860 edition. Excerpt: ... and by the nature of our idea of space, coincide; and thus confirmed him in his error. Thus the inseparable nature of the Fundamental Antithesis of Ideas and Things gives reality to our hnottledge, and makes objective reality a corrective of our subjective imperfections in the pursuit of knowledge. But this objective exhibition of knowledge can by no means supersede a complete development of the subjective condition, namely, distinctness of ideas. And that there is a subjective condition, by no means makes knowledge altogether subjective, and thus deprives it of reality; because, as we have said, the subjective and the objective elements are inseparably bound together in the fundamental antithesis. 29. It would be easy to apply these remarks to other cases, for instance, to the case of the principle we have just mentioned, that the differences of elementary composition of different kinds of bodies mast be definite. We hare stated that this principle is necessarily true;--that the contrary proposition cannot be distinctly conceived. But by whom 1 Evidently, according to the preceding reasoning, by a person who distinctly conceives Kinds, as marked by intelligible names, and Composition, as determining the kinds of bodies. Persons new to chemical and clsssiricatory science may not possess these ideas distinctly; or rather, cannot possess them distinctly; and therefore cannot apprehend the impossibility of conceiving the opposite of the above principle; just as the schoolboy cannot apprehend the impossibility of the numbers in his multiplication table being other than they are. But this inaptitude to conceive, in either case, does not alter the necessary character of the truth: although, in one case, the truth is obvious to all except...