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68
FAITH KNOWLEDGE AND CONDUCT
Parliamentary and platform speakers have been known to be imperrious to physical pain when engaged, full of enthusiasm, in pouring forth torrents of rhetoric before their audiences. The explanation of all this lies in the unity of conscious life which works and can work only with undivided attention.
Antagonistic impulses, e.g., standing still and ruining, must also inhibit each other when they occur, as no one can do two contrary things at one and the same time.
The antagonism between reflection and action is striking. Its effect on the functioning of the senses has already been noticed. But it also affects our knowledge. The general ideas embedded in the impulses which exist in the form of longings when the will is subject to the domination of desire, become stabilized when attention is engaged in reflection. The current of life's tendencies is then literally reflected (re, back, and flexin, to bend) on itself, and knowledge is revealed. Thus knowledge is liquefied into action by our impulsions, and crystallised into ideas by reflection.
The final form of memory which is independent of the nervous connections and groupings and of external stimulation is also preserved in the form of generalised experiences in the impulses. It can be recovered by way of precipitation in reflection, so to speak.
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