"'Abstraction may present perils to whimsical minds.
"'Memory brings us into contact with the past, as foresight does with the future.
"'Imagination is rather a special faculty, sui generis.'"
So many intricacies in order to demonstrate platitudes, the pedantic tone of the author, and the monotony of his forms of expression—"We are prepared to acknowledge it," "Far from us be the thought," "Let us interrogate our consciousness"—the sempiternal eulogy on Dugald Stewart; in short, all this verbiage, disgusted them so much that, jumping over the faculty of willing, they went into logic.
It taught them the nature of analysis, synthesis, induction, deduction, and the principal causes of our errors.
Nearly all come from the misuse of words.
"The sun is going to bed." "The weather is becoming brown," "The winter is drawing near"—vicious modes of speech which would make us believe in personal entities, when it is only a question of very simple occurrences. "I remember such an object," "such an axiom," "such a truth"—illusion! These are ideas and not at all things which remain in me; and the rigour of language requires, "I remember such an act of my mind by which I perceived that object," "whereby I have deduced that axiom," "whereby I have admitted this truth."
As the term that describes an incident does not embrace it in all its aspects, they try to employ only abstract words, so that in place of saying, "Let us make a tour," "It is time to dine," "I have the colic," they give utterance to the following phrases: "A promenade would be salutary," "This is the hour for absorbing aliments," "I experience a necessity for disburdenment."
Once masters of logic, they passed in review the different criterions; first, that of common sense.
If the individual can know nothing, why should all individuals know more? An error, were it a hundred thousand years old, does not by the mere fact of its being old constitute truth. The multitude invariably pursues the path of routine. It is, on the contrary, the few who are guided by progress.