Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688)

A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality

London

Printed for James and John Knapton

1731

"Whereas Sense it self is but the Passive Perception of some Individual Material Forms, but to Know or Understand is Actively to Comprehend a thing by some Abstract, Free and Universal Reasonings, from whence the Mind as it were looking down (as Boetius expresseth it) upon the Individuals below it, views and understands them."

2. Sense is but the Offering or Presenting of some Object to the Mind, to give it an Occasion to exercise its own Inward Activity upon Which two things being many times nearly conjoyned together in Time, though they be very different in Nature from one another, yet they are vulgarly mistaken for one and the some thing, as if it were all nothing but meer Sensation or Passion from the Body. Whereas Sense it self is but the Passive Perception of some Individual Material Forms, but to Know or Understand is Actively to Comprehend a thing by some Abstract, Free and Universal Reasonings, from whence the Mind as it were looking down (as Boetius expresseth it) upon the Individuals below it, views and understands them. But Sense which lies Flat and Grovelling in the Individuals, and is stupidly fixed in the Material Form, is not able to rise up or ascend to an Abstract Universal Notion; For which Cause it never Affirms or Denies any thing of its Object, because (as Aristotle observes) in all Affirmation, and Negation at least, the Predicate is always Universal. The Eye which is placed in a Level with the Sea, and touches the Surface of it, cannot take any large Prospect upon the Sea, much less see the whole Amplitude of it. But an Eye Elevated to a higher Station, and from thence looking down, may comprehensively view the whole Sea at once, or at least so much of it as is within our Horizon. The Abstract Universal Reasons are that higher Station of the Mind, from whence looking down upon Individual things, it hath a Commanding view of them, and as it were a Priori comprehends or Knows them.
(III.iii.2, pp. 94-5)

Body::Vision Optics::Perspective

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See Ralph Cudworth, A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality (London: James and John Knapton, 1731). <Link to ECCO><Link to Google Books>

As it Were

01/22/2012