right who contend that the world is a standing thing, with no progress, no
real history. The changing conditions of history touch only the surface of
the show. The altered equilibriums and redistributions only diversify our
opportunities and open chances to us for new ideals. But, with each new
ideal that comes into life, the chance for a life based on some old ideal
will vanish; and he would needs be a presumptuous calculator who should
with confidence say that the total sum of significances is positively and
absolutely greater at any one epoch than at any other of the world.
I am speaking broadly, I know, and omitting to consider certain qualifi-
cations in which I myself believe. But one can only make one point in
one lecture, and I shall be well content if I have brought my point home
to you this evening in even a slight degree. There are compensations and
no outward changes of condition in life can keep the nightingale of its
eternal meaning from singing in all sorts of different men’s hearts. That
is the main fact to remember. If we could not only admit it with our lips,
but really and truly believe it, how our convulsive insistencies, how our
antipathies and dreads of each other, would soften down! If the poor and
the rich could look at each other in this way, sub specie æternatis, How
gentle would grow their disputes! what tolerance and good humor, what
willingness to live and let live, would come into the world!
7.
Essays by a Barrister, London, 1862, p. 318.
402
Reading For Philosophical Inquiry: A Brief Introduction
Chapter 33. “What Makes a Life Significant?” by William James
From the reading. . .
“Now, taken nakedly, abstractly, and immediately, you see that mere
ideals are the cheapest things in life. Everybody has them in some
shape or other, personal or general, sound or mistaken, low or high; and
the most worthless sentimentalists and dreamers, drunkards, shirks and
verse-makers, who never show a grain of effort, courage, or endurance,
possibly have them on the most copious scale. ”
Related Ideas
William James (http://www.emory.edu/EDUCATION/mfp/james.html).
Links, articles, etexts, reviews, and discussion groups are part of what
make up this extensive James site.
Classics in the History of Psychology (http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/) .
York University History & Theory of Psychology Electronic Resource.
Special collections, extensive open-domain readings in the history of
psychology searchable by author or title, and suggested readings.
Reading For Philosophical Inquiry: A Brief Introduction
403
Index
artisans, 46
asceticism
Æneid, 164
principle of, 256
à posteriori, 121
astronomy, 325
Augustine, Saint, 150
Abraham, 284
authenticity, 298
axiology, 32
absurd, the, 3, 94, 107, 113, 186
Academy, 372
beauty, 34
Achilles, 54
(See Also æsthetics)
belief, 365
(See Also acts)
Bentham, Jeremy, 192, 249, 251,
authentic, 108
Bhagavad Gita, 174
Brahe, Tycho, 17
Brooks, Phillips, 396
afterlife, 71
Buddha, 99
Calandra, Alexander, 25
Alexander the Great, 233
anarchists, 400
meaning of life, 222
Anaxagoras, 51
capital punishment, 66
Anselm, Saint, 118, 122, 144, 145
categorical imperative, 341, 347
causality, 31, 102, 148, 163, 192,
local, 325
(See Also emotion)
bodily, 205
natural, 317
appetites, 239
proportioned to effect, 163
Aquinas, Saint Thomas, 119, 145
cell, organic
areté, 74
discovery of, 316
(See Also virtue)
centaur, 332
argument
Chaerephon, 44
Aristotle, 143, 145, 192, 305, 354,
(See Also option theory)
(See Also æsthetics)
Christianity, 280
404
Cicero, 166
Descartes, René, 103, 123, 141,
(See Also petitio principii)
knowledge, 336
cogito ergo sum, 335
Colding, Ludvig, 315
design argument, 155
compatibilism, 196
composition, 27
destiny, 114
determinism, 200
conceivability, 332
scientific, 195
degrees of, 334
soft, 196
concept
Spinoza, 205
of existence, 137
devil, 181
Dewey, John, 5
condition
dilemma, 74
necessary and sufficient, 211
disjunctive syllogism, 75
consciousness, 112
divine proportion, 33
consequentialism, 264
dogmatism, 82
contradiction, 52, 134, 138, 338
Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 75, 113, 119,
contraries, 147
duty, 35
culture, 399
Sisyphus, 110
Dali, Salvador, 34
economics, 75
Dawkins, Richard, 232
ethical, 231
death, 54, 65, 68, 69, 93, 110
psychological, 231
a good, 71
emotion, 173
as truth, 96
greed, 400
of an innocent, 185
deduction, 336
value, 288
geometrical method, 200
empiricism, 309
definition
ends
operational, 31
and means, 332
precising, 31
energy
Delphi effect, 2
and motion, 315
Delphic oracle, 44
Engels, Frederich, 304
demigods, 53
Engels, Frederick, 312
Epicureanism, 100
Greece, 58
(See Also ethics)
Reading For Philosophical Inquiry: A Brief Introduction
405
Epicurus, 166
and understanding, 186
error, 361
as true statements, 13
theory-dependence, 13
(See Also morals)
(See Also religion)
deontology, 249
and reason, 170
doctrine of the mean, 235, 241
fallacy
duty, 287
ad hominem, 157
feminist, 323
Kantian, 287
philosophical, 195
composition, 264
religious, 195
false dilemma, 174
Socratic, 39
genetic, 310
teleology, 249
fatalism, 70, 72, 113, 152, 197
Eudaimonia, 234
fate, 113
Euripides, 51
Fechner, Gustav, 33
felicific calculus, 252
moral, 179
(See Also hedonism)
non-moral, 152
Fermat, Pierre de, 168
Fibonacci numbers, 34
evolution
five-minute world hypothesis, 30
theory of, 316
free will, 192, 199, 201, 204, 286,
(See Also areté)
genuine option, 214
excluded middle
Spinoza, 206
law of, 376
friendship, 383
logic, 378
meaning of, 98
geometry
existential import, 136, 143, 379
non-Euclidean, 24
existentialism, 108, 249, 280, 294,
GFDL, 2
Christian, 169
Glaucon, 225
despair, 299
God, 124, 141, 181, 189, 196, 201,
psychoanalysis, 176
twentieth century, 210
argument from cause, 148
406
Reading For Philosophical Inquiry: A Brief Introduction
argument from design, 150, 162
progress, 402
argument from gradation, 150
argument from motion, 148
Homer, 110
argument from necessity, 149
human nature, 178
conceivablility, 133
Hume’s Fork, 191
existence of, 118, 120, 146, 154
Hume, David, 119, 134, 153, 160
faith, 104
hypothesis, 211
infinite, 163
James, 212
religious, 218
gods, 53
scientific, 215
golden ratio, 33
hypotheticals, 335
ichthyology, 9
Bentham, 260
idealists, 347
from evil, 151
ideals, 397
ideas, 346
person, 54
clear and distinct, 335
ignorance, 99
Grinnell, Frederick, 17
Iliad, 276
habits, 249
images, 332
Hanson, Norwood Russell, 17
imagination, 206
happiness, 112, 171, 206, 229, 237,
inauthenticity, 100
indeterminism, 198
and absurdity, 113
individuation
eudaimonia, 235
criterion of, 31
Hardy, G. H., 360
induction
Hazlitt, Henry, 6
problem of, 198
hedonism, 264
infinity, 97, 102, 148, 149, 163,
calculus, 257