But it would
seem the human mind cannot manage with that. It has to hold a thing
still for a moment before it can think it. It arrests the present moment
for its struggle as Joshua stopped the sun. It cannot contemplate things
continuously, and so it has to resort to a series of static snapshots.
It has to kill motion in order to study it, as a naturalist kills and
pins out a butterfly in order to study life.
You see the mind is really pigeon-holed and discontinuous in two
respects, in respect to time and in respect to classification; whereas
one has a strong persuasion that the world of fact is unbounded or
continuous.
1.9. PLANES AND DIALECTS OF THOUGHT.
Finally; the Logician, intent upon perfecting the certitudes of his
methods rather than upon expressing the confusing subtleties of truth,
has done little to help thinking men in the perpetual difficulty that
arises from the fact that the universe can be seen in many different
fashions and expressed by many different systems of terms, each
expression within its limits true and yet incommensurable with
expression upon a differing system.
Pages:
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56