Aids to Reflection:

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: AIDS TO REFLECTION. INTRODUCTORY APHORISMS. APHORISM I. In philosophy equally as in poetry, it is the highest and most useful prerogative of genius to produce the strongest impressions of novelty, while it rescues admitted truths from the neglect caused by the very circumstance of their universal admission. Extremes meet. Truths, of all others the most awful and interesting, are too often considered as so true, that they lose all the power of truth, and lie bed-ridden in the dormitory of the soul, side by side with the most despised and exploded errors. APHORISM II. There is one sure way of giving freshness and importance to the most common-place maxims?that of reflecting on them in direct reference to our own state and conduct, to our own past and future being. APHOEISM III. To restore a common-place truth to its firstuncommon lustre, you need only translate it into action. But to do this, you must have reflected on its truth. APHORISM IV. LEIGHTON AND COLERIDGE. It is the advice of the wise man, Dwell at home, or, with yourself; and though there are very few that do this, yet it is surprising that the greatest part of mankind cannot be prevailed upon, at least to visit themselves sometimes; hut, according to the saying of the wise Solomon, The eyes of the fool are in the ends of the earth. A reflecting mind, says an ancient writer, is the spring and source of every good thing. Omnis boni principium intellectus cogitabundus. It is at once the disgrace and the misery of men, that they live without forethought. Suppose yourself fronting, a mirror. Now what the objects behind you are to their images at the same apparent distance before you, such is reflection to fore-thought. As a man without fore-thought scarcely deserves the name of a man, so f...

James L. Marsh is a professor emeritus of philosophy at Fordham University.