falsisms

Updated: May 12, 2025

Philosophy's choice lies between such patent truisms as that there can be no force but living force, no vis but vis vivida, no vis inertiæ otherwise than metaphorically, and such blatant falsisms as that inertness and exertion may coincide, unintelligence generate intelligence, agency of whatsoever sort produce, merely by its own act, and merely out of its own essence, other agency capable of higher action than its own.

William Thomas Thornton - Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics: With Some of Their Applications