The Spiritual Ascent of Man (Paperback) details from bookadda

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1917. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER VII THE NATURE OF SPIRIT Seeing that the Ought and the Values which have been now discussed constitute the essential factors in the development of the life of the spirit of man, it becomes necessary in this chapter to deal with some further aspects of the nature and life of spirit. In order to do this it is necessary to familiarise ourselves with the conception of grades or degrees of reality. Even in connection with human experience such grades or degrees are clearly perceptible. On the lowest levels, man is a creature of sense: he observes objects outside himself often almost without thinking. Myriads of impressions pour upon him in the course of a day, and it is only a few of these he is able to bring up to the level of reflective thought. Had he not been able to bring some of these impressions to the level of reflection he could not possibly have gone very far beyond the stage of the animal. But every normal mind is able to accomplish such a feat. What that feat involves is unknown in a large measure even to the psychologist. How sensations and impressions of external things come to mean anything is a mystery which cannot be completely solved. But it is a fact that impressions of things become for the mind something other than things--become meaning, value, significance. And in so doing they become a reality other than a physical reality; they become a reality of mind. Though connected both with space and time, a reality of meaning subsists in itself and constitutes a world of its own. But, as has already been noticed, man is not content to stay on the level of intellectual meanings of things: h also feels that there are needs and demands of his nature which require more than a mere explanation of external things or internal meanings in ...