“If relations are mere product of mind, all knowledge being a knowledge of relations, knowledge becomes impossible.”
We might address in the same way anything else, an atom of hydrogen, a grain of sand as well as the Sun, the action of a tiny speck of irritable protoplasm as well as the soul of man.
A (Subject)
B (Object)
A thing-in-itself, being like A or B, a mere point, would be tantamount to non-existence.
AB = -B A will admit of two stand-points – B A representing subjectivity, and A B representing objectivity.
One and the same reality appearing on the one hand as subject and on the other as object.
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There is no existence which by the same actions would not develop always the same result.
It is this sameness alone that constitutes the intrinsic necessity and universality of all formal laws of thought, called Reason.
This formal feature of existence, which is at the bottom of all natural law by making the same conditions produce the same results, is the source of the cosmic order. It is Lao Tze’s Tao, the Amitabha of the Buddhists, the Christian Logos that was in the beginning and has become flesh in the Son of man. If anything is supernatural, it alone is worthy of name.
There are philosophers who show great grief if all those features which appear to their conception unexplainable, are not ascribed to some transcendental entity, a thing-in-itself or a god.
Arid if a philosophy denies the existence of their supposed cement to combine the disjecta membra of their world-conception, it is generally declared to lead straight on to Nihilism – not because the world itself, but because their world system would thereby be annihilated.
Blasphemy = not to be exact, not to speak the truth with mathematical accuracy.
Things are not separate things in the sense of isolated, absolute or abstract beings, although we may speak of them as such for our ephemeral purposes.
Economy of thought. Is Reality unknowable? No. It is the very material on which and with which our cognition is written.
It is both the slate and the slate-pencil which in their inter-action produce the writing.
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“Parallelism of subjectivity and objectivity” misnomer. Because there are no two things parallel but two sides of a curve disparate and analogous.
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Vedanta furnishes a correct world-picture that will serve the sailors on the ocean of life as a reliable chart for orientation and as a mariner’s compass for a guide.
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Although the relation between circumference and diameter cannot be exactly expressed in arithmetical figures, but for that reason the relation itself is definite and rational. We can construct it geometrically and its actuality is traceable in the mathematical relations, e. g. of the starry heavens, for the calculation of which the No. II. is indispensable.
Is Reality like square root of -2 a surd, (irrational), remaining deaf to our questions?
No. But even surd is not absurd.
“Positivism: does not know the Unknowable, but it recognises its existence. This is the highest philosophy;
To go beyond is chimerical^ not to go so far is to miss the mark”
Causation is transformation and Causality is the formula under which we comprehend the changes of matter and energy that take place.
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The problem of the a priori reasoning is the question, “Why can we know certain things before we have tested them by experiment?”
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We call certain properties of facts matter, and others force. When we say that, we do not know certain phenomena; we mean that we have not as yet succeeded in placing them properly in that system of thought symbols of which our mind consists.
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It does not commit his to a belief in anything intrinsically unknowable, which is always the confession of philosophical insolvency.
Far from being foreign or incomprehensible it forms the very essence of our knowledge and existence.
Says Du Bois-Reymond, “If only one single brain-atom could be moved by thought one-millionth fraction of a millimetre from the path prescribed by the laws hi mechanics, the whole world-formula would cease to have meaning.”
Here the mistake is in regarding thought as different from mechanical brain-motion.
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The Rule of Three in Philosophy.
(Clifford, precursor of Schopenhauer).
“As the physical configuration of my cerebral image of the object, Is to the physical configuration of the object, So is my perception of the object, To the thing in itself.”
In other words: As brain structure: the analogous idea, so is object: innermost nature of object.
Or cerebral activity: my mind, as is materials-object: soul of object. This conception, which is a consistent Monism, recognises the spirituality of all existence, but it excludes the possibility of ghosts.
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It is the macrocosm in whose image the microcosm has been created.
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” . . . But thou,
Examine thou, thy own self well,
Whether thou art kernel or art shell.”
Kant about Time, Space, and Causality makes a great mistake— great in the best sense of the word* A grand mistake.
What are ideas?
Pure forms
Form-in-itself
Parallel idea
Cognition is possible only by limiting the attention to a special point.
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Every sense-organ is an organ of abstraction.
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The idea of the Unknowable is like the horizon – an optical illusion. The more we advance, the farther it recedes, yet it can never debar us from further progress.
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Man’s knowledge has value as well as information concerning the facts he has to deal with and the infinitude of the unknown which he will never face, is of no consequence whatever.
Suppose a man is to buy a farm. Shall we discourage him by saying: “The whole amount of soil on the surface of the Earth and on another planet is infinite and your tiny means are of no avail “?
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God is the most familiar of all facts – the self. All knowledge aiming at reaching the Unknown from the known, dispels Maya, proceeding from the starting point of Atman – which is the postulate and axiom of existence.
Perfect knowledge is that where universal unity is established in the Atman.
Cognition is that mental process through which we grasp the sameness of several phenomena. When Newton comprised the motion of the moon and the fall of a- stone into one common formula, we were put in possession of a comprehension and explanation of these phenomena. This formula we call gravitation and not that gravitation is an unknown thing in itself.
This sameness – Unity – instead of calling it gravity, let us call it God.