Category: Thought

Strictly speaking, the mass, as a psychological fact, can be defined without waiting for individuals to appear in mass formation. In the presence of one individual we can decide whether he is ‘mass’ or not. The mass is all that which sets no value on itself — good or ill — based on specific grounds, but which feels itself ‘just like everybody,’ and nevertheless is not concerned about it; is, in fact, quite happy to feel itself as one with everybody else.

José Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses, 1929.

The main feature in their system is the prominence which they give to a study which I can only translate by the word ‘hypothetics.’ They argue thus — that to teach a boy merely the nature of the things which exist in the world around him, and about which he will have to be conversant during his whole life, would be giving him but a narrow and shallow conception of the universe, which it is urged might contain all manner of things which are not now to be found therein. To open his eyes to these possibilities, and so to prepare him for all sorts of emergencies, is the object of this system of hypothetics. To imagine a set of utterly strange and impossible contingencies, and require the youths to give intelligent answers to the questions that arise therefrom, is reckoned the fittest conceivable way of preparing them for the actual conduct of their affairs in after life.

Samuel Butler, describing the residents of the imagined southern hemispheric utopians in his satirical novel, Erewhon, 1872.

Truth is the enfant terrible of the Virtues.

William J. Locke, The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne (1905), p. 50.

Looked at from an economic point of view, I hold socialism to be the active or direct distribution of products by the state. Regarded from its more general or political aspect, I designate as socialistic any extension of state interference or activity beyond the point up to which that interference is necessary in order that freedom may be at the maximum. Individualism postulates that some government — that is, some compulsory cooperation for political purposes — is needed in order to keep freedom at this point, that so much government is justifiable and good, and that all government beyond this is unjustifiable and mischievous. This quantum of government desiderated by the individualist constitutes a norm from which anarchism diverges on one side and socialism on the other. If we are suffering from a poison we find it advantageous to take a second poison, which acts as an antidote to the first. But, if we are wise, we limit our dose of the second poison so that the toxic effects of both combined are at the minimum. If we take more of it, it produces toxic effects of its own beyond those necessary to counteract, so far as possible, the first poison. If we take less of it, the first poison, to some extent, will do its bad work unchecked.

Joseph Hiam Levy, The Outcome of Individualism (1892), Chapter Two.

Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.

Samuel Butler, Speech at the Somerville Club, February 27, 1895.

In all the works on pedagogy that ever I read — and they have been many, big, and heavy — I don’t remember that any one has advocated a system of teaching by practical jokes, mostly cruel. That, however, describes the method of our great teacher, Experience.

C.S. Peirce, “Pragmatism and Pragmaticism” (1903).

The most important service rendered by the press and the magazines is that of educating people to approach printed matter with distrust.

Samuel Butler, Notebooks (1951).

Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object.

The first formulation of “the pragmatic maxim,” by C.S. Peirce, “How to Make Our Ideas Clear,” Popular Science Monthly, v. 12 (January 1878), pp. 286-302.

One swallow does not a summer make, nor one fine day; similarly one day or brief time of happiness does not make a person entirely happy.

Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics.

The early Greek philosopher, such as we read about in Diogenes Laertius, is certainly one of the most amusing curiosities of the whole human menagerie. It seems to have been demanded of him that his conduct should be in marked contrast with the dictates of ordinary common sense. Had he behaved as other men are supposed to do his fellow-citizens would have thought his philosophy had not taught him much.

C.S. Peirce, Reasoning and the Logic of Things: The Cambridge Conferences Lectures of 1898, Kenneth Laine Ketner, ed. (1992).