George Henry Lewes Quotes (1817-1878)

“The separation of Science from Knowledge was effected step by step as the Subjective Method was replaced by the Objective Method: i.e., when in each inquiry the phenomena of external nature ceased to be interpreted on premisses suggested by the analogies of human nature.”

“To his [ Plato's ] great disappointment, he found Anaxagoras adducing simple physical reasons, instead of the teleological reasons, which he had expected. Such a teacher could no longer allure him.”

“Aristotle's failure in Biology is not less conspicuous than his failure in Mechanics; yet the ideas of Final Cause, Likeness, and Vitality, which are said to be the ideas appropriate to this science, were assuredly possessed by him with a distinctness unsurpassed in modern times.”

“He who is ignorant of Motion, says Aristotle, is necessarily ignorant of all natural things. ...Not only was he entirely in the dark respecting the Laws, he was completely wrong in his conception of the nature of Motion. ...He thought that every body in motion naturally tends to rest.”

“Many a genius has been slow of growth. Oaks that flourish for a thousand years do not spring up into beauty like a reed.”

“Many a genius has been slow of growth. Oaks that flourish for a thousand years do not spring up into beauty like a reed.”

“To write much, and to write rapidly, are empty boasts. The world desires to know what you have done, and not how you did it.”

“And to some men popularity is always suspicious. Enjoying none themselves, they are prone to suspect the validity of those attainments which command it.”

“Deference to popular opinion is one great source of bad writing, and is all the more disastrous because the deference is paid to some purely hypothetical requirement.”

“Thus, although each effect is the resultant of its components, the product of its factors, we cannot always trace the steps of the process, so as to see in the product the mode of operation of each factor. In this latter case, I propose to call the effect an emergent. It arises out of the combined agencies, but in a form which does not display the agents in action.”

“Principles of Vision insists on the artist assuring himself that he distinctly sees what he attempts to represent. What he sees, and how he represents it, depend on other principles. To make even this principle of Vision thoroughly intelligible in its application to all forms of Literature and Art, it must be considered in connection with the two other principles sincerity and beauty, which are involved in all successful works.”

“...The doctrine of Spinoza was of great importance, if for nothing more than having brought about the first crisis in modern Philosophy.”

“Most expositions of Aristotle's doctrines, when they have not been dictated by a spirit of virulent detraction, or unsympathetic indifference, have carefully suppressed all, or nearly all, the absurdities, and only retained what seemed plausible and consistent. But in this procedure their historical significance disappears.”

“We must limit even the conception of necessary sequence, which is held to express all that is known of causation. There is no following of effects from causes; but as Sir John Herschel more truly says, the causes and effects are simultaneous.”

“Roger Bacon, a disciple of the Arabs, also insisted on the primary necessity of Mathematics, without which no other science can be known; yet by Mathematics it is clear that he meant something very different from what we mean, including under that head even dancing, singing, gesticulation, and performance on musical instruments.”

“It is not in Science only that Plato is misled by his Method. The same confidence in deduction from unverified premisses vitiates his teaching in every other department of inquiry, moral and political; but in Science his errors are more patent, because his statements admit of a readier, and less equivocal, confrontation with fact.”

“Many glaring errors of the Greeks will have to be noticed ... few of them can be referred to the cause assigned by Dr. Whewell.”

“Hegel... scornfully characterizes Empiricism as seeking truth in Experience instead of in Thought. It is on such principles that the modern German Philosophy has reproduced the ambitious but inane attempts of Scholasticism.”

“Kant truly says "it is the fate of human reason in speculation to build as rapidly as possible, and only when the edifice is completed to examine the solidity of its foundations." And the source of such carelessness he finds in this, that knowledge often consisting in the analysis of our conceptions, we are led to pay exclusive attention to them, rather than to their origin.”

“Since... it appears that Aristotle very distinctly recognized the cardinal principles of the Baconian philosophy, why... has the world credited Bacon with a great reform in the very attacks he made on Aristotle? The answer is simple. Bacon did not attack the Method which Aristotle taught; indeed, he was very imperfectly acquainted with it. He attacked the Method which the followers of Aristotle practised.”

“"There is one basis of science," says Descartes, "one test and rule of truth, namely, that whatever is clearly and distinctly conceived is true." A profound psychological mistake. It is true only of formal logic, wherein the mind never quits the sphere of its first assumptions to pass out into the sphere of real existences; no sooner does the mind pass from the internal order to the external order, than the necessity of verifying the strict correspondence between the two becomes absolute. The Ideal Test must be supplemented by the Real Test, to suit the new conditions of the problem.”

“The delight derived from her pictures arises from our sympathy with ordinary characters, our relish of humor, and our intellectual pleasure in art for art's sake. But when it is admitted that she never stirs the deeper emotions, that she never fills the soul with a noble aspiration, or brightens it with a fine idea, but, at the utmost, only teaches us charity for the ordinary failings of ordinary people, and sympathy with their goodness, we have admitted an objection which lowers her claims to rank among the great benefactors of the race; and this sufficiently explains why, with all her excellence, her name has not become a household word. Her fame, we think, must endure. Such art as hers can never grow old, never be superseded. But, after all, miniatures are not frescoes, and her works are miniatures. Her place is among the Immortals; but the pedestal is erected in a quiet niche of the great temple.”