MS 447-454 (1903) - Lowell Lecture I

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been made the basis of such multitudes of predictions, all of which have been fulfilled to the letter, that no doubt can remain that here is something of the nature of a general formula to the sense of which lifeless matter really does and will conform. So then, some general formulae are mere artificial expressions of coincidences that have happened, while some express really operative laws. The sense of a general formula cannot exist not act. It is not of it nature to do so; because all that exists or acts in every possible respect entirely determinate; every predicate is either true or false of it while a general formula is only determinate in one or two respects. To be sure, the difference is only one of quantity of how much the determination is, it is however a difference of of infiniyer quantity. I shall recur to that point in another lecture. Although the sense of a general formula cannot exist, it can be thought and reasoned about. Indeed, it is the only sort of thing that can be reasoned or thought about. A sensation entering the mind sets thoughts in motion. How can it be do? The sessation is not general. We can trace back our thought towards the sensation, until they became expanded and indistinct.

As I am sitting in my study, I get a feeling due to the project of initiation. At first, I am only half conscious of it. My mind is on

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back to the very sensation. It would have to be endless. It may be a continuous process. However, in some way reasoning gets set in motion. We think something to be desirable. We reason out the ways and means of bringing it about. Our reasonings become more and more concrete, nearer and nearer to the point of action, and then they are so crowded that we cannot, in our review of them, make out what they were. The next thing we know, we are doing the thing we determined to do. How has this been brought about? A mere general formula cannot act, it can only produce a logical conclusion. Shall we say that since a law is nothing but a mental formula, it is not inconceivable that a thought should alter a law, so long as it did not exert any force. Suppose, for example, that thought could render a body, say a table an electrical conductor which was not so before. We place the table on the ground and on it a metallic pot. We let down

what I am writing. At length I say to myself "Whew! This room is stuffy." That is a mental formulation. How could the feeling get transformed into something so utterly unlike it, as the sense of a mental formula? Only by some continuous process. Not by successive inferences, since every inference requires a mentalformula for its premiss. However, I do formulate that thought and begin to reson about it. It cocerned me that when rooms are stuffy they need airing. To air a room, a window should be opened. Then I want the window opened. Here I recall an old maxim that if you want anything done, one may as to do it yourself. But of I am to open the window, I must stand near it. Then I must go to it. Then I must rise from my chair. Then I must bend forward and drawback my feet. Here the inferences become so minute and crowded that in my review of them, I can no longer distinguish them. There is an interval concerning which I can give no account, and after it, I am actually rising + moving towards the window. Now, how is it that the sense of a mental formula has been converted into something so utterly different as a living volition? The difficulty is so

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into the pot, by a silk thread, an electrfied body.

Give thought the power to make that table a conducter for a fraction of a second + when the electrified body is taken out the pot will be electrified.

Or suppose one started be revolving round another under an attraction inversely as the square of the distance. When the revolving star is at A, give thought the power, without changing the attraction at the moment, to change the law of attraction. The consequence used be an entire change in the orbit.