The Project Gutenberg eBook, Cobwebs of Thought, by Arachne

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Title: Cobwebs of Thought

Author: Arachne

Release Date: October 16, 2004 [eBook #13766]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COBWEBS OF THOUGHT***

E-text prepared by Clare Boothby, Keith M. Eckrich, and the Project
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COBWEBS OF THOUGHT

by

"ARACHNE"

London

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER

I. OUR IGNORANCE OF OURSELVES

II. CONTRASTS

III. MAETERLINCK ON HAMLET

IV. AN IMPOSSIBLE PHILOSOPHY

V. IMPRESSIONS OF GEORGE SAND

MOTTO.

"The first philosophers, whether Chaldeans or Egyptians, said there
must be something within us which produces our thought. That something
must be very subtle: it is breath; it is fire, it is ether; it is a
quintessence; it is a slender likeness; it is an intelechia; it is a
number; it is harmony; lastly, according to the divine Plato, it is a
compound of the _same_ and the _other_! It is atoms which think in us,
said Epicurus after Democritus. But, my friend, how does an atom
think? Acknowledge that thou knowest nothing of the matter."
--VOLTAIRE.

I.

OUR IGNORANCE OF OURSELVES.

Self-Analysis, apart from its scientific uses, has seldom rewarded
those who have practised it. To probe into the inner world of motive
and desire has proved of small benefit to any one, whether hermit,
monk or nun, indeed it has been altogether mischievous in result,
unless the mind that probed, was especially healthy. Bitter has been
the dissatisfaction, both with the process, and with what came of it,
for being miserably superficial it could lead to no real knowledge of
self, but simply centred self on self, producing instead of
self-knowledge, self-consciousness, and often the beginnings of mental
disease.

For fruitful self analysis it is apparently necessary then to have a
clear, definite aim outside self--such as achieving the gain of some
special piece of knowledge, and we find such definite aims in
psychology, and certain systems of philosophy--