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Updated: May 27, 2025
Whatever the nature of the building which may be submitted to his criticism, if it be an edifice at all, if it be anything else than a mere heap of stones like a pyramid or breakwater, or than a large stone hewn into shape, like an obelisk, it will be instantly and easily resolvable into some of the parts which we have been hitherto considering: its pinnacles will separate themselves into their small shafts and roofs; its supporting members into shafts and arches, or walls penetrated by apertures of various shape, and supported by various kinds of buttresses.
We find it resolvable in all cases into the following elements: Certain individuals have a given attribute; an individual or individuals resemble the former in certain other attributes; therefore they resemble them also in the given attribute. This type of ratiocination does not claim, like the syllogism, to be conclusive from the mere form of the expression; nor can it possibly be so.
It thus tends to preserve him from all those partial and inconsistent courses, into which men are led by the mere desire of approbation, or love of distinction, or by any other of those inferior motives which are really resolvable into self-love. Such uniformity of moral feeling is equally opposed to another distortion of character, not less at variance with a sound condition of the mind.
It will thus be seen that "substantial forms" play nearly the same part in the scholastic philosophy as "forces" do in modern science; the general tendency of modern thought being to conceive all bodies as resolvable into material particles and forces, in virtue of which last these particles assume those dispositions and exercise those powers which are characteristic of each particular kind of matter.
"Matter is no longer the dead, inorganic, 'godless thing' which the old-time theologians declared it to be. Matter, so far from being some inert lump, is permeated with life is life itself. So far as we now know, all the visible and tangible universe is resolvable into terms of force that is to say, chemical process. There may be no line of demarcation between the organic and the inorganic."
Is it possible, it is asked, that we can crowd into such a space of time so many acts of the will, and that we are, at the moment when each happens, conscious of its presence? Is it not more probable that these rapid muscular actions are resolvable, in some way, into the law of habit? May they not become in some sense mechanical and automatic, so as to require no intervention of the will?
It is, therefore, highly probable that all sequences from complex antecedents are thus resolvable, and that ultimate laws are in all cases comparatively simple.
It sets out from that which is 'constant, eternal, and universal'; but from that which is 'constant, eternal, and universal in nature. It sets out from that which is fixed; but it is from the fixed and constant causes: 'forms' not 'ideas. The simplicity which it seeks is the simplicity into which the historical phenomena are resolvable; the terms which it seeks are the terms which do not come within the range of the unscientific experience; they are the unknown terms of the unlearned; they are the causes 'which, like the alphabet, are not many'; they are the terms which the understanding knows, which the reason grasps, and comprehends in its unity; but they are the convertible terms of all the multiplicity and variety of the senses, they are the convertible terms the practically convertible terms of the known practically that is the difference.
But the very fact that it is being asked for its credentials means that the force on which it has hitherto relied is weakening, that its power to punish and reward, which has always been resolvable into the power to make people believe that it can punish and reward, is being called in question and is therefore crumbling away. And behind that power there is nothing but chaos.
The conduct rewarded by Society is chiefly resolvable into Beneficence. Whoever is moved to incur sacrifices, or to go through labours, for the good of others, is the object, not merely of gratitude from the persons benefited, but of approbation from society at large. Any remarkable strictness or fidelity in the discharge of duties properly so called, receives general esteem.
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