The Significance of Existence (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1911 edition. Excerpt: ...feeling but is chiefly determined by existing external circumstances. Environment, country, fashion, fix as a rule the nature of a thing which desire shall have for its contents. That which might once have constituted a desirable object of ambition, may at a different epoch become an object of indifference or even of aversion. Although in all probability the average natural capacities of two generations at different epochs in history is the same, even though an interval of some hundreds of years intervenes between them, yet their activities and modes of thinking will, within a comparatively short time, differ radically. At the same time, and in the same country, different localities may hold diametrically opposite views on matters of vital importance, although the average character of the Joneses and Smiths will probably be somehow the same. There exists a certain atmosphere which creates, depreciates, and moulds the objects of our desires. The same ambitions and pre dispositions which lead one to adopt a spiritual career at one period, may lead him to adopt a military life at another period, and again at another a commercial or scientific life. Although the general atmosphere of a community depends upon the individual units and proceeds from them yet the community constitutes an independent phenomenon governed by its own laws. It is subject to its own laws of evolution, independent of the laws that govern the individual units which originated it. Thus the collective units of a community create an atmosphere which, in turn, is influenced by the activities of the single units. Such an atmosphere might cramp one set of impulses and overdevelop another set of impulses--an additional proof that pain and pleasure influences activity but...