Thought-Culture

d through many pages and endless speculation regarding the metaphysical theories regarding the origin and inner nature of Mind which, so far from establishing a fixed and definite explanation in

old Omar, he "came out the

ology has no more concern with the solution of the eternal riddle of "What is Mind?" than physics with the twin-riddle of "What is Matter?" Both riddles, and their answers, belong to entirely different branches and fields of thought than those concerned with their laws of operation and principles of activity. As Halleck says: "Psycholog

e association of ideas be changed, nor would the fact that interest and repetition aid memory cease to hold good. The man who thought his mind was a collection of little cells would dream, imagine, think and feel; so also would he who believed his mind to be immaterial. It is very fortunate that the same mental p

fine ourselves to the phenomena and manifestations of Mind which, after all, is the only way in which and by which we can know anything at all about it. As Brooks says: "The mind can be defined only by its activities and manifestations. In order to obt

ithin himself. For the very act of denial, in itself, is a manifestation of thought and consequently an assertion of the existence of mind. One may assert the axiom: "I think,

iew, which arose into prominence in the middle of the Nineteenth Century, held, on the contrary, that Mind was merely an activity or property of Matter-a function of matter akin to extension and motion. Huxley, voicing this conception said: "We have no knowledge of any thinking substance apart from an extended substance.... We shall, sooner or later, arrive at a mechani

derlying Something which, as Spencer says: "transcends not only our reason but also our imagination." The study of philosophy and metaphysics serves an important purpose in showing us how much we do not know, and why we do not know-also in showing us the fallacy of many things we had

cognitive, or knowing, activities, and the conative, or acting, activities, generally known as the Understanding and the Will, respectively. It took a long time before the authorities would formally recognize the great field of the Feelings as forming a class by themselves and ranking with the Understanding and the Will. There are certain sub-divisions and shadings, which we shall notice as we proc

es. As a spiritual activity, it takes the impressions derived from those forces, works them up into the organic growth of itself, converts them into conscious knowledge and uses these products as means to set other forces into activity and produce new results. Standing above nature and superior to its surroundings, i

ce, use the term "Thought" in its broadest, widest and most general sense, as: "The power or faculty of thinking; the mental faculty; the mind," rather than in its narrower and particular sense of: "the understanding or cognitive f