All the old supports going, gone, this man reaches out a hand to steady himself on a ledge of rough brick that is warm in the sun:... his hand feeds him messages of solidity, but his mind messages of destruction, for this breathing substance, made of earth, will be a dance of atoms, he knows it, his intelligence tells him so: there will soon be war, he is in the middle of war, where he stands will be a waste, mounds of rubble, and this solid earthy substance will be a film of dust on ruins.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The human body is not a thing or substance, given, but a continuous creation. The human body is an energy system ... which is neve...r a complete structure; never static; is in perpetual inner self-construction and self-destruction; we destroy in order to make it new.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We men know very little a priori, and have our senses to thank for nearly all our knowledge. Through experience we know only appea...rances ..., but not the modum noumenon ..., not things as they are in themselves.... God knows all things as they are in themselves a priori and immediately through an intuitive understanding.... If we were to flatter ourselves so much as to claim that we know the modum noumenon, then we would have to be in community with God so as to participate immediately in the divine ideas. To expect this in the present life is the business of mystics and theosophists. Thus arises the mystical self- annihilation of China, Tibet, and India, in which one is under the delusion that he will finally be dissolved in the Godhead. Fundamentally Spinozism could just as well be called a great fanaticism as a form of atheism. For of God, the one substance, Spinoza affirms two predicates: extension and thought. Every soul, he says, is only a modification of God's thought, and every body is a modification of his extension. Thus Spinoza assumed that everything existing could be found in God. But by making this assumption he fell into crude contradictions. For if only a single substance exists, then either I must be this substance, and consequently I must be God (but this contradicts my dependency); or else I am an accident (but this contradicts the concept of my ego, in which I think myself as an ultimate subject which is not the predicate of any other being).LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Of all illusions in the world, the most universally received is the concern for reputation and glory, which we espouse even to the... point of giving up riches, rest, life, and health, which are effectual and substantial goods, to follow that vain phantom and mere sound that has neither body nor substance.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We are nothing but ceremony; ceremony carries us away, and we leave the substance of things; we hang on to the branches and abando...n the trunk and body.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The line that I am urging as today's conventional wisdom is not a denial of consciousness. It is often called, with more reason, a... repudiation of mind. It is indeed a repudiation of mind as a second substance, over and above body. It can be described less harshly as an identification of mind with some of the faculties, states, and activities of the body. Mental states and events are a special subclass of the states and events of the human or animal body.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Identity is a bag and a gag. Yet it exists for me with all the force of a fatal disease. Obviously I am here, a mind and a body. T...o say there's no proof my body exists would be arty and specious and if my mind is more ephemeral, less provable, the solution of being a writer with solid (touchable, tearable, burnable) books is as close as anyone has come to a perfect answer.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I stand in awe of my body, this matter to which I am bound has become so strange to me. I fear not spirits, ghosts, of which I am ...one,--that my body might,--but I fear bodies, I tremble to meet them. What is this Titan that has possession of me? Talk of mysteries! Think of our life in nature,--daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it,--rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! the solid earth! the actual world! the common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? where are we?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Let girls take a serious interest in art; let them take up some congenial study, let it be a branch of science or history. Let the...m write. They can do almost anything they try to do, but let their mothers never rest until they have implanted in their daughters' lives one growing interest beyond flirtation and gossip, whether it be work at the easel, music, literature, the structure of the human body and the laws of health, any solid interest that will occupy their thoughts and their hearts.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
He shall love my soul as though Body were not at all,... He shall love your body Untroubled by the soul, Love cram love's two divisions Yet keep his substance whole.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »