nduces the sense of bondage,
of collision with a world in which it has not yet learnt to find itself.
It places the end of human life not in harmony with the law which is the
highest form of itself, but in happiness, _i.e._, in the extraction of
the greatest possible amount of enjoyment from a world to which it seems
to be accidentally related. The view of things corresponding to this
stage of thought is what we commonly call their outward aspect. It is
the aspect of matter-of-fact, of logic, of "mere morality," as opposed
to that of art, of philosophy, and religion.
FOOTNOTE:
[4] "Life," says Professor Dewey ('Studies in Logical Theory,' p. 81),
"proposes to maintain at all hazards the unity of its own process." And
in a foot-note he adds: "Professor James's satisfaction in the
contemplation of bare pluralism, of disconnection, of radical
having-nothing-to-do-with-one-another, is a case in point. The
satisfaction points to an aesthetic attitude in which the brute
diversity becomes itself one interesting object; and thus unity asserts
itself in its own denial. When discords are hard and stubborn, and
intellectual and practical unification are far to seek, nothing is
commoner than the device of securing the needed unity by recourse to an
emotion which feeds on the very brute variety. Religion and art and
romantic affection are full of examples."
E. CONQUEST OF NATURE BY ART
5. The perfection of this of latter and higher view involves the
absolute fusion of thought and things. Its full attainment is a new
creation of the world. Yet it is but the discovery of a relationship
which was from the beginning, the adoption by thought of a child which
was never other than its own. The habitual interpretation of natural
events by the analogy of human design, to which every hour's
conversation testifies, is the evidence that to the ordinary man nature
presents itself not as something external, but, like a friend, as
"another himself." The true conquest of nature is but the completion of
the reconciliation thus anticipated in the everyday language and
consciousness of mankind. When the mind has come to see in the endless
flux of outward things, not a succession of isolated phenomena, but the
reflex of its own development into an infinite variety of laws on a
basis of identity--when the laws of nature are raised to the character
of laws which regulate admiration and love--when the experiences of life
are held together
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