Present Issues: Or Facts Observable in the Consciousness of the Age (Classic Reprint) - Softcover

Excerpt from Present Issues: Or Facts Observable in the Consciousness of the Age

There are many field upon which the thinker may direct his powers of observation. If in thoughtfulness he turn his observation towards the heavenly bodies, he is an astronomer. If he look at nature and reflect upon what he observes there, he is a scientist, or perhaps an artist. If he look at God, he becomes a theologian. If he observe himself, looking inwards, examining the facts of his own consciousness, he is a psychologist, a moralist, or a metaphysician. A psychologist, if he confine his attention to operations within; a moralist, if he observe and reflect upon the facts connected with conscience; a metaphysician, if he occupy himself in reflecting upon those ideas and abstractions, which, in introspection, he comes in contact with. But besides all these fields of observation there is yet another, and just as real as any of the preceding. Society, as a whole, is as truly an existence, a reality, as is the individual man. The broadest view that can be taken of society, is to contemplate it as co-equal and co-extensive with the race. The human race, as a whole, is a unit; just as much so as is the individual man. It is an organism, as much so as is the plant, the animal, or the individual personal man. All the individuals are the members of one common body; all taken together are necessary in order to complete the whole. There are various orders of intelligent existence, each of them apparently constituted differently.

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