Encyclopedia of sacred theology - pagina 48

CHAPTER

III

THE COXCEPTIOX OF ENCYCLOPEDIA § 13.

The word,

Forming of

the

Conception

the idea, and the conception of Encyclopedia

are genetically related.

Hence

in

Encyclopedia also the old

feud can be renewed, whether the conception lies at the beginning or at the end of the development of the encyclopedic To prevent misunderstanding, let it be stated that thought.

paragraph takes "conception" in the last-mentioned It is not difficult to account for this choice in the use The process of thought that takes place in the of the word. human spirit consists by no means merely in the linking this

sense.

together of those series of thoughts which you have willed

and by thinking have produced. This is but the labor which as an arboriculturist you have performed in the garden of your thoughts. But as the work of the gardener is only possible because of the fertility of the garden, and because this growth in his garden impels him to work, which work he himself directs, so also in the human mind there lives a world of thought, in which is growth and luxuriance of life independently of the human will and disposition and from this living world of thought one receives the impulse to think himself, and by this impulse mental effort When this is lost from sight, we is directed and defined. who think, but there is no development persons may have The common element is of thought in the human mind. then wanting from our thinking, by which alone the underIn this way all standing of each other becomes possible. thought becomes aphoristical dilettantism and human language inconceivable. If we now apph' this to the "conception," it follows that the conception also is no form to think,

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