Essays I Xxx

will it avail us to strive for precision of statement at the expense of perspicuity. When we are to make an obscure topic more distinct to ourselves, if not to others, our language must not cast additional darkness upon what can at best only be dimly discerned. And yet we must not conceal a difficulty by words which, although simple in appearance, are really only denials, not statements, of the problems before us. How far it is possible to comply with such precepts for the use of language can be learned only by experience. All men will probably admit, as an indisputable proposition, the assertion that something is happening, going on, or taking place. But to obtain universal assent to this proposition, we must introduce ideas which we are notyet ready to discuss, by limiting what happens to feeling, intention, and thought. Here many will add that they are incapable of separating this conception from another, which insists upon the existence of something which does not happen, but which feels, intends, and thinks. This incapacity, to my mind, is an instance of the control of thought by language, above mentioned; and the thinkers whom I follow maintain that the separation of the two conceptions is possible. Existence, then, to us, implies only what can happen, not what is. But a perfectly monotonous existence, like that which Buddhist doctrines are reported to describe as a state of final blessedness for the just, is not easily to be distinguished from a state i...