⇉ Handshift:Mary Baker Eddy(Here [?] Unclear or illegible Mind and immortal or good and evil are both Intelligence and one
⇉ Handshift:PrintedSYNOPSIS OF
PHILOSOPHICAL REALISM,
By WM. I. GILL,
Will be Ready in September.
Price in cloth, $1.50Editorial Note: $1.50 in 1886 is the equivalent of $50.03 in 2024.. Price in paper, 85 centsEditorial Note: $0.85 in 1886 is the equivalent of $28.35 in 2024..
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I. Its foundation is a consistent and thorough Subjectivism.
(1) It affirms the pure egoism of all the knowable. Nothing exists but phenomena and their subject, which is the noumenon. Hence is proved the absolute unity of the universe as the complex state of the conscious ego, or subject.
(2) This subject, or ego, is extra-organic as well as organic. It is the subject of one class of phenomena as well as of the other, and one as well as the other are its modes. All phenomena are the ego itself existing in those forms and conditions and connections of experience. Therefore, the ego itself is wherever its phenomena are, because it is wherever it feels. It cannot be less than commensurate with its sensations both as to time and place, and so commensurate and identical with all its motions and forms.
(3) This ego may not be wholly self-conscious at all times. But the conscious and the unconscious, in that case, are the same,–– simply a power to be, to do, and to suffer. Such a power is the only existence, the only reality that is or can be. Hence there can be no difference between attribute and substance, or between phenomenon and noumenon, except as different aspects of the same thing,–– a force or power to be and do so and so. Phenomenon is a mode of the noumenon or the noumenon modally manifest; and the noumenon as known is the conscious source and subject of phenomena, and as unknown it is both possible source of phenomena and their possible subject, or the power which may generate phenomena as subjective states. Thus, the noumenon is a power which constitutes the unity of real and possible plurality.
II. Its Method of Egress from the Ego.
(1) By means of the law of Sematology, it justifies our assumption of the existence of other men and of our intercourse with them.
(a) As all things are uniformly related, each is a sign relative to all others in some respect; and the known are the base of inductive inferences concerning the unknown and unverifiable.
(b) Hence other known human organisms, which are only subjective states, become signs of other spirits like our own.
(2) As we have no direct knowledge of other men, we have no direct intercourse with them. As the known universe is ourselves, and as we cannot transcend it, there is no natural medium of communication between them and us. It is only by the law of Sematology we can prove any correspondent action between different minds; and this is explicable only on the assumption of an infinite Mind who has ordained them to act in harmony.
III. Its Inference concerning God and Supernaturalism.
(1) It defines and justifies the conception of God as an Infinite Self-conscious Reality.
(2) It defines creation as an increase in the sum of existence, and justifies it as the loftiest of all thoughts, and real and genuine.
(3) It expounds the required proofs of the Creator's existence.
(a) Shows the defects of the old etiology and of the old teleology.
(b) And makes a new and scientific application of both.
(c) Its Relation to Christian Science.