Читать книгу The Origin of Thought and Speech онлайн

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But the Greeks were right: no doubt it may be an advantage to be able to distinguish between two sides of the same thing, but that advantage is more than neutralised if such distinction leads us to suppose that these two sides are two different things. Let us avoid the very common error that things which can be distinguished can therefore claim an independent existence; we can distinguish between an orange and its peel, but no orange can grow without peel, nor peel without the fruit.

Let it not be supposed that I am such a bigoted upholder of the unity of the Ego as to wish to see all these names banished from our philosophical dictionaries. Let us use the word Sense when speaking of the Ego as perceiving. Let us use Intellect when the Ego is simply conceiving; and the word language when it is speaking; let us even use the word memory when we wish to speak of the partial permanence of the work done by sensation, perception, and conception; and let us use Reason or Reasoning for the process which produces what the logicians call propositions and syllogisms; but let us never forget that neither to remember nor to reason implies the possession of a thing called reason or memory. All our mental life will remain just the same though we deny the existence of the terms which obscure our vision; let us hold fast to the existence of the Ego, it exists in its entity, it only is the worker, and it receives its highest expression in the Logos.

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