The law within / by Sir Bampfylde Fuller.

  • Fuller, Bampfylde, Sir, 1854-1937.
Date:
1926
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The law within / by Sir Bampfylde Fuller. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of its material causes ; subjectively or objectively of ourselves, according as we are occupied with our feelings or with our sensations and conduct. As a source of information we are inclined to rank self-conscious introspection below the senses. The latter are of infinitely greater use to us in winning material success. But self-consciousness has an outstanding merit. It is the only instrument which can put us in direct touch with the immaterial forces of life. Our conscious ideas of motives and emotions no doubt mislead us as to the real nature of these inner experiences. But they are trustworthy indications of their relationships to one another. The feeling of admiration, for instance, may be very unlike the actual immaterial condition which it represents. But we can be sure that this is caused by a sensation or idea that contains an element of the successful, tne strong, or the excellent, that it introduces an imitative element into the behaviour which is its consequence, and that it possesses an element in common with love and faith. Self-consciousness can, then, reveal to us truths that are hidden from the senses. We turn our attention from it to the objective life of the senses because we depend upon the latter for the material requirements of existence. In themselves, as we shall see, our objective are not more reliable than our subjective experiences. Light and sound are objective sensations ; in reality they are vibrations that are dark and silent. But our sensations, again, are correct in what they tell us as to the relationships between our various impressions ; and this knowledge suffices for the necessities of life. The tendency towards “ objectiv¬ ity ”—to rate the external world higher than the internal—grows as civilization advances. It produces useful practical fruits. But it misleads us as to the true values of life, and obscures the laws by which the course of our evolution is swayed. We are, therefore, unable to resist the tendency to decadence which follows each wave of progress, so that man climbs only to fall back again. If sub¬ jective influences could withstand this reversion, their study would present us with immense practical advantages, as well as lead us to the truth. It is only, we may repeat, by the evolutionary method of examina¬ tion that one can hope to understand and classify the various faculties and activities that constitute human nature. The first part of this book is,.accordingly, concerned with their simplest manifestations, and the laws which these follow, lhe second, third and fourth parts deal, respectively, with the energetic conditions that are our “ motives ”, with the processes of sensation and thought