The World of Mind Author:Isaac Taylor Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: III. METAPHYSICS: ULTIMATE ABSTRACTIONS, 38. The popular belief concerning the subjects which are now immediately before us is this—that they are in an ex... more »treme degree difficult of apprehension; that they are obscure, indeterminate, and such as can be attractive to none but a very few whose minds are peculiarly constituted. 39. A supposition of this kind is so far well founded as this—that metaphysical notions are not to be distinctly apprehended without some effort of attention or labour; and it is for this very reason that they may, with so much advantage, be made use of as a means of intellectual discipline. Further than this, the popular belief is well founded; for it must be granted that, when metaphysical problems are treated controversially, and critically, and historically, the discussion of them drags itself out to great length, and it is apt to become, at every stage, less and less intelligible, and less and less attractive, except to a very few. 40. It is, or it may be, otherwise, if only the limits of the human faculties, in this region, are seen and are regarded ; if verbiage be avoided, if brevity be studied, and especially, if a writer in this department be freefrom the ambition to create for himself a reputation as a discoverer, or as a reformer. In this case metaphysical science may be simplified, and it may be brought within narrow limits. 41. Great freedom in the use of language may safely be admitted in treating the physical sciences, because the things which are spoken of are near at hand—visibly or palpably, whether they be material elements, or organized bodies; so that if any ambiguity has had place, it may at once be dispelled by a reference to the objects or the phenomena in question. In mathematical reasoning no licence or freedom whatever...« less