The Genius of Tolstoy

Tolstoy's description of a Russian Caravan six miles long as read in War and Peace.

Just as in the mechanism of a clock, so in the mechanism of the military machine, an impetus once given leads on to the final result; and the parts of the mechanism which have not yet been started into action remain as indifferently stationary. Wheels creak on their axles as the cogs engage, the revolving pulleys whir in rapid motion while the next wheel stands as apathetic and still as though it would stay so for a hundred years; but the momentum reaches it-the lever catches and the wheel, obeying the impulse, creaks and joins in the common movement, the result and aim of which are beyond its ken.

No Title Needed

For the truth, ask the least imaginative.
-Jacob Camac

Tolstoys Pseudonym Amie

It seems to me rather useless to spend time in reading what is unintelligible and can therefore bear no good fruit. I have never been able to understand the mania some people have for confusing their judgment by devoting themselves to mystical books which only arouse their doubts and excite their imaginations, giving them a bent for exaggeration utterly contrary to Christian simplicity. Let us rather read the epistles and the gospels. Let us not seek to penetrate the mysteries they contain, for how should we, miserable sinners that we are, presume to inquire into the awful and holy secrets of providence so long as we wear the garment of this mortal flesh which forms an impenetrable veil between us and the eternal? Let us rather confine ourselves to studying the sublime principles which our divine savior has left for our guidance here below; let us seek to conform to them and follow them, and let us be persuaded that the less we allow our feeble human minds to roam, the more pleasing it will be to God, who rejects all knowledge that does not proceed from Him; and the less we strive to search out what he has been pleased to conceal from us, the sooner will He discover it to us through His divine Spirit.

Someone please refute!

Time is a concept. Deterioration a percept. Deterioration exists outside the concept of time. Without the needlesly imposed concept of time, the past and future becomes the present?

Bertrand Russel

Philosophy is no longer the pillar of fire going before a few intrepid seekers after truth. It is rather an ambulance following in the wake of the struggle for existence and picking up the weak and wounded.

Milton's Satan

The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.

Diapsalmata

A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to warn the public; the acclaim was even greater. I think that's just how the world will come to an end: to general applause from wits who believe it's a joke.

Knowledge

The definition of knowledge is key to the search for truth as truth is the outcome of the correct application of knowledge.

Theaetetus thought that one who knows something is perceiving the thing that he knows, and, so far as he could see at the time, knowledge is nothing but perception. This definition suggests that there is no 'one truth' for anything in flux. For example, a man can not say that what he sees, hears, tastes, touches or smells is truth for this is dependent on perception.

However, concepts are universal truth. 2+2 only =4 because it is a product of a concept. It is not dependant on perception and therefore can not be tainted with falsehood.

Heraclitus backs up this thesis by stating...'A thing may change of quality, and the doctrine of flux is held to state that everything is always changing all its qualities. This has awkward consequences. We cannot be right in saying we are seeing a thing, for seeing is perpetually changing into not-seeing. If everything is changing in every kind of way, seeing has no right to be called seeing rather than not seeing, of perception to be called perception rather that not-perception. And when we say 'perception is knowledge', we might just as well say 'perception is not-knowledge'.

What the above argument amounts to is that, whatever else may be in perpetual flux, the meanings of words must be fixed, at least for a time, since otherwise no assertion is definite, and no assertion is true rather than false, condemning knowledge a non-entity.

'Plato goes one step further as he argues that we percieve through eyes and ears, rather than with them. Knowledge is not connected with any sense-organ. We can know, for instance, that sounds and colours are unlike, though no organ of sense can perceive both. There is no special organ for existance and non-existance, likeness and unlikeness, sameness and differences, and also unity and numbers in general. The same applies to GOOD AND BAD. The mind contemplates some things through its own instrumentality, others through the bodily faculties. We perceive hard and soft through touch, but it is the mind that judges that they exist and that they are contraries. Only the mind can reach existence, and we cannot reach truth if we do not reach existence. It follows that we cannot know things through the senses alone, since through the senses alone we cannot know that things exist.Therefore knowledge consists in reflection, not in impressions, and perception is not knowledge, because it has no part in apprehending truth since it has none in apprehending existence.'1

So, under the assumption that the only truth possible is that of a concept, we then need to differenciate concepts and percepts.

1.Bertrand Russel, History of Western Philosophy, pp.166.

The Three Truths

There are three types of truth. The first is crystalized truth which refers to the truth in God and his omniscient power.

The second is fluid. For example, what is true at one point may not be so in the future due to some unforseen circumstances. This truth is approptiated on levels. One dispute can incur multiple truths at different depths of thought.

The third is Convenient truth and differs from one person to another depending on their perceptual set.

As we are not enlightend to the full extent of Crystalized truth, we are perpetually in conflict over the Fluid truth and mostly resort to the Convenient truth.

Truth?

The oracle of Delphi, it appears, was once asked if there were any man wiser than Socrates, and replied that there was not. Socrates professes to have been completely puzzled, since he knew nothing, and yet a god cannot lie. He therefore went about among men reputed wise, to see whether he could convict the god of error. First he went to a politician, who 'was thought wise by many and still wiser by himself'. He soon found that the man was not wise, and explained this to him, kindly but firmly, 'and the consequence was that he hated me'. He then went to the poets, and asked them to explain passages in their writings, but they were unable to do so. 'Then I knew that not by wisdom do poets write poetry, but by a sort of genius and inspiration.' Then he went to the artisans, but found them equally disappointing. In the process, he says, he made many dangerous enemies. Finally he concluded that 'God only is wise; and by his answer he intends to show that wisdom of men is worth little or nothing.

Socrates

In 399Bc, Socrates was tried for being an evil-doer and a 'curious' person, searching into things under the earth and above the heaven; and making the worse appear the better cause and teaching all this to others. The majority of the court found him guilty.

Socrates, representing himself, was then given the chance to plead for a lesser sentence. The judges then had to choose between the sentence of the defence or prosecution. It was therefore in the interest of socrates to suggest a substantial penalty, which the court might accept as adequate. He, however proposed a fine of a mere thirty minae. This was so small a punishment that the court was annoyed, and condemned him to death by a larger majority than that which had found him guilty. Undoubtedly he foresaw the result. It was clear that he had no wish to avoid the death penalty by concessions which might seem to acknowldge his guilt.

Socrates then proceeds to examine his prosecutor Meletus, 'that good man and true lover of his country, as he calls himself'. He asks who are the people who improve the youth. Meletus first mentions the judges; then, under pressure, is driven, step by step, to say that every Athenian except Socrates improves the young; whereupon Socrates congratulates the city on its good fortune. Next, he points out that good men are better to live among than bad men, and therefore he cannot be so foolish as to corrupt his fellow-citizens intentionally, but if unintentionally, then Meletus should instruct him, not prosecute him.

Socrates was excecuted shortly after.

Protagoras

The pursuit of truth, when it is wholehearted must ignore moral considerations; we cannot know in advance that the truth will turn out to be what is thought edifying in a given society.

One of the defects of all philosophers since Plato is that their inquires into ethics proceed on the assumption that they already know the conclsion to be reached.

Parmenides

Sense is an illusion.

In studying a philosopher, the right attitude is neither reverence nor contempt, but first a kind of hypothetical sympathy, until it is possible to know what it feels like to believe in his theories, and only then a revival of the critical attitude, which should resemble, as far as possible, the state of mind of a person abandoning opinions which he has hitherto held. Contempt interferes with the first part of this process, that a man whose opinions and theories are worth studying may be presumed to have had some intelligence, but that no man is likely to have arrived at complete and final truth on any subject whatever. When an intelligent man expresses a view which seems to us obviously absurd, we should not attempt to prove that it is somehow true, but we should try to understand how it ever came to seem true.This exercise of historical and psychological imagination at once enlarges the scope of or thinking, and helps us to realize how foolish many of our own cherished prejudices will seem to an age which has a different temper of mind.

We are strangers in this world, and the body is the tomb of the soul, and yet we must not seek to escape by self-murder; for we are the chattels of God who is our herdsman, and without His command we have no right to make our escape.

Spurgeon

I value a semron not by the approbation of men, or of the ability manifest in it, but by the effect produced in comforting the saint and awakening the sinner.

D.L. Moody

Men generally pray in public in inverse proportion to their private prayers. If they pray a great deal in private, they are apt to be rather short in public prayer. If they pray very little in private, they are in danger of being more lengthy.

John Gardner

Our lives are either sand dunes or sculptures. Our lives are shaped either by influences or by purposes.

I find my relationship with God a lot like a fishing trip. As I cast my rod, there is hope. Half an hour later there is boredom, an hour later I give up hope and just as i go to reel in the line, i feel a tug. my heart rate sky rockets and I have faith enough to wait another half hour in hope. This cycle continues, never catching a fish but never completely giving up.

Soren Kierkegaard

For me nothing is more dangerous than recollection. Once I have recalled some life situation it ceases to exist. People say that separation helps to revive love. That is quite true, but it revives it in a purely poetic way. A life in recollection is the most perfect imaginable; memory gives you your fill more abundantly than all of reality and has a security which no reality possesses. A life situation recalled has already passed into eternity and has no more temporal interest.