"It is the unintelligent me," writes Dr. O. W.
Holmes, "stupid as an idiot, that has to try a thing a thousand times
before he can do it and then never knows how he does it, that at last
does it well. We have to educate ourselves through the pretentious
claims of intellect into the humble accuracy of instinct; and we end
at last by acquiring the dexterity, the perfection, the certainty
which those masters of arts, the bee and the spider, inherit from
nature."
REFERENCES ON NATURE AND SPIRIT
Green's Prolegomena, Section 297.
Dewey's Study of Ethics, Section xli.
Seth's Study of Ethical Principles, pt. i. ch. 3, Section 6.
Alexander's Moral Order and Progress, bk. i. ch. i. Section iii.
Earle's English Prose, p. 490-500.
Palmer in The Forum, Jan. 1893.
VII
THE THREE STAGES OF GOODNESS
I
Such is the mighty argument conducted through several centuries in
behalf of nature against spirit as a director of conduct. I have
stated it at length both because of its own importance and because it
is in seeming conflict with the results of my early chapters. But
those results stand fast. They were reached with care. To reject them
would be to obliterate all distinction between persons and things.
Self-consciousness is the indisputable prerogative of persons.
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