This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1899 Excerpt: ...what has already been said, there must before everything else exist in us a true idea which is as it were an innate instrument; and when it is understood, the difference is at the same time understood which there is between such a perception and all others. Herein consists one part of method. And since it is self ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1899 Excerpt: ...what has already been said, there must before everything else exist in us a true idea which is as it were an innate instrument; and when it is understood, the difference is at the same time understood which there is between such a perception and all others. Herein consists one part of method. And since it is self-evident that the more things the mind understands about Nature the better it understands itself, it is evident that this part of Method will be more perfect, the more things the mind understands, and that it will be most perfect when the mind turns itself to the knowledge of the most perfect Being or reflects thereon. Again, the more things the mind knows the better it understands its own powers and the order of nature; but the better it understands its own powers, so much the more easily can it direct itself and propose rules to itself; the better also it understands the order of Nature, the more easily can it restrain itself from what is useless. In what we have enumerated consists, as we have said, the whole of the method. It is also to be observed that it is with the idea objectively as it is with the object of the idea really. If therefore there were anything in Nature which had no connection with other things; if also its objective essence existed; since it must altogether agree with its formal essence, this objective essence would have no connection1 with other ideas, that is to say, we could conclude nothing from it; on the other hand, those things which are connected with other things, like everything which exists in Nature, will be understood, and their objective essences will have the same connection, that is to say, other ideas will be deduced from them, which again will be connected with others; and thus instruments for proceeding furt...
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