Philosophy

"Is it total or average happiness that we seek to make a maximum?...we foresee as possible that an increase in [population] numbers will be accompanied by a decrease in average happiness...if we take Utilitarianism to prescribe, as the ultimate end of action, happiness on the whole...it would follow that, if the additional population enjoy on the whole positive happiness, we ought to weigh the amount of happiness gained by the extra number against the amount lost by the remainder. So that, strictly conceived, the point up to which, on Utilitarian principles, population ought to be encouraged to increase, is not that at which average happiness is the greatest possible...but that at which the product formed by multiplying the number of persons living into the amount of average happiness reaches its maximum."

"One common, but mistaken, response to the impossibility theorems is to turn claim that these theorems are problematic only for consequentialists. It is important to see that this is a mistake. For one thing...all moral theories need an axiology: while non-consequentialists might spend much of their theorising time on the non-axiological part of their theory, the axiological part too must be part of the full normative story at the end of the day. For another, it can be shown...that there are straightforward deontological analogues of the impossibility theorems (concerning the relation 'ought to choose rather than' in place of 'is better than'), so that even a moral theory that has no place for axiology faces essentially the same set of issues."

"Another type of ultimate disagreement between utilitarians, whether hedonistic or ideal, can arise over whether we should try to maximize the average happiness of human beings...or whether we should try to maximize the total happiness or goodness...Would you be quite indifferent between (a) a universe containing only one million happy sentient beings, all equally happy, and (b) a universe containing two million happy beings, each neither more nor less happy than any in the first universe? Or would you, as a humane and sympathetic person, give a preference to the second universe? I myself cannot help feeling a preference for the second universe."

"For the last thirty years or so, there has been a search underway for a theory that can accommodate our intuitions in regard to moral duties to future generations. The object of this search has proved surprisingly elusive...The main problem has been to find an adequate population theory, that is, a theory about the moral value of states of affairs where the number of people, the quality of their lives, and their identities may vary. Since, arguably, any reasonable moral theory has to take these aspects of possible states of affairs into account when determining the normative status of actions, the study of population theory is of general import for moral theory."

"It sometimes happens that one possible population is better than another with respect to the distribution of welfare. A population axiology...is a theory of such comparisons. For example, suppose that two populations have the same size, and that in the first population everyone has a happy and fulfilling life, while in the second population every life is unhappy and devoid of meaning. Then any plausible population axiology will rule that the first population is better than the second."

"Parfit (1984) rejected Totalism and Averagism...[and] failed to find any alternative axiology that he himself considered satisfactory, but held out hope that...some fully satisfactory population axiology, called 'Theory X' by way of placeholder, might be found. Much of the subsequent literature has consisted of attempts to formulate such a 'Theory X'. However...every extant population axiology is open to serious objection: if it does not entail the Repugnant Conclusion then it entails the Sadistic Conclusion, or is anti-egalitarian, or has obviously unacceptable implications concerning future-people cases, or otherwise leads to some similarly serious objection. If this were where matters rested, one might yet hold out hope that the fully satisfactory 'Theory X' is lurking just around the corner. However, several authors have also formulated impossibility theorems for population axiology. These are formal results that purport to show, for various combinations of intuitively compelling desiderata ('avoid the Repugnant Conclusion', 'avoid the Sadistic Conclusion', 'respect Non-Anti-Egalitarianism', and so forth), that the desiderata are in fact mutually inconsistent: that is, simply as a matter of logic, no population axiology can simultaneously satisfy all of those desiderata"

"Total and average utilitarianism are very different theories, and where they differ most is over extinction. If global warming extinguishes humanity, according to total utilitarianism, that would be an inconceivably bad disaster. The loss would be all the future wellbeing of all the people who would otherwise have lived. On the other hand, according to at least some versions of average utilitarianism, extinction might not be a very bad thing at all; it might not much affect the average wellbeing of the people who do live. So the difference between these theories makes a vast difference to the attitude we should take to global warming. According to total utilitarianism, although the chance of extinction is slight, the harm extinction would do is so enormous that it may well be the dominant consideration when we think about global warming. According to average utilitarianism, the chance of extinction may well be negligible."

"[The Repugnant Conclusion:] For any possible population of at least ten billion people, all with a very high quality of life, there must be some much larger imaginable population whose existence, if other things are equal, would be better even though its members have lives that are barely worth living."

"Classical Utilitarians...would claim, as Sidgwick did, that the destruction of mankind would be by far the greatest of all conceivable crimes. The badness of this crime would lie in the vast reduction of the possible sum of happiness."

"The Jabirian alchemists... believed that metals were ultimately composed of the four Aristotelian elements earth, water, air and fire... A base metal had to be treated with a medicine or elixir to adjust... qualities... with the proportions of gold. ...[Q]ualities of heat, cold, moisture and dryness could each be separated in pure form. ...First they subjected various organic materials to dry distillation... which often resulted in... a volatile combustible... (air), a liquid (water), a combustible tarry material (fire) and a dry residue (ash). [Each of] [t]hese elements were supposed... composed of two qualities, and... could be isolated by... purification. Thus water... could be converted into pure cold by repeated distillation... and further [distillations] in the presence of a drying agent. The resulting pure cold... a brilliant white solid."

"Aristotle had considered metals to be formed by the combination of moist and dry exhalations, and in the Jabirian works these... are... vapours of mercury and sulphur. The cause of the different metals was the... quality of the sulphur... The term sulphur ...as a component of metals probably referred to a volatile combustible material to which no... substance corresponded exactly. Likewise mercury... may... have been... an approximation to the other volatile liquid component of metals. ...The notion that metals contained a combustible principle persisted, and... provided the inspiration for the phlogiston theory."

"Paracelsus made an important contribution to chemical theory. He extended the sulphur-mercury theory of the Islamic chemists by adding a third principle... salt. Thus, when wood burned, the combustible component was identified with sulphur, the volatile component with mercury and the ashes... with salt. The composition of all substances could be expressed in terms of these three principles, or tria prima. As in previous theories... [these] were not... common materials... but rather... essential qualities."

"These mystic alchemists interpreted the three principles in their own fashion. Mercury, the passive and female principle, was matter; sulphur, the active and male principle, was force; and salt, the middle term in the proposition, was movement, which applied force to matter. Or, expressed in another shape, mercury was the subject: sulphur, the cause; and salt, the effect. Symbolically, the theory was represented by an equilateral triangle, in one angle of which was the sign of sulphur or force; in the second, the sign of mercury or matter; and in the third, the sign of salt or movement."

"Mercury, sulphur, and salt were not three matters, but one, derived from the '."

"The salt of the was merely a means of union between the mercury and the sulphur, just as the vital spirit in man unites soul and body. It was doubtless devised to impart a triple form to the idea, in conformity with the method of the theological schoolmen."

"[W]hen an alchemist converted a metal into its oxide, or, as they expressed it, "made a " of it, he thought he had volatilised its mercury and fixed its sulphur. When he distilled ordinary mercury and found a solid residue in the , he called it the "sulphur" of mercury; when he found a sublimed product in the receiver (mercury bichloride), he termed it the "mercury" of mercury or "corrosive sublimate.""

"Traces of these ancient conceptions are still to be recognised in the word "quick-silver," that is living silver, a literal translation of argentum vivum. A term "quick-sulphur" (sulphur vivum) was also in use, but it has long since disappeared."

"All metals and minerals consist of certain principles. These were at first called "mercury" and "sulphur," not the ordinary substances... but a philosophical mercury and a philosophical sulphur. ...At a later period the alchemists added a philosophical salt, or a philosophical arsenic, but they never ascribed to these the importance they attached to the other two principles."

"The mercury of a metal... represented its lustre, volatility, fusibility, and malleability; the sulphur of the metal, its colour, combustibility, affinity, and hardness."

"The more logical mind of Artephius Longaevus introduced a modification of this theory. He distinguished two properties in a metal—the visible and the occult. The former, comprehending its colour, lustre, extension, and other properties visible to the eye, he called its "sulphur"; the latter, comprehending its fusibility, malleability, volatility, and other properties not visible until after... special treatment, he called its "mercury.""

"[Paracelsus] arranged the several parts of man, his own universal elements, and the Aristotelian elements in triplets, thus :—"

"He concludes... that the Paracelsian elements—their "salt," "sulphur," and "mercury"—are not the first and most simple principles of bodies; but that these consist, at most, of concretions of corpuscles or particles more simple than they, and possessing the radical and universal properties of volume, shape, and motion."

"[T]he writings and labours of the alchemists were both extensive and important. ...[T]heir studies, although misdirected, were not... haphazard. The alchemists had a definite, and... logical, system of philosophy... [T]hey recognised—(1) the unity of matter; (2) the three principles—philosophical mercury, sulphur, and salt; (3) the four elements—fire, air, water, and earth; and (4) the seven metals—gold, silver, mercury, copper, , tin, and ."

"In this treatise Boyle sets out to prove that the number of the peripatetic elements or principles hitherto assumed by chemists is, to say the least, doubtful."

"The "Chemico-physical Doubts and Paradoxes" raised by Boyle "touching the experiments whereby vulgar Spagyrists are wont to endeavour to evince their Salt, Sulphur, and Mercury to be the true Principles of Things," eventually sealed the fate of the doctrine of the tria prima, and of the tenets of the school of Paracelsus."

"The words "element" and "principle" are used by him as equivalent terms, and signify those primitive and simple bodies of which compounds may be said to be composed, and into which these compounds are ultimately resolvable."

"The original matter, or ', was called by various names—universal substance, seed, chaos. Although matter changes its form, it cannot be destroyed. ...In its nature the ' was assumed to be a liquid, containing everything in posse, but nothing in esse."

"Practically... there was little difference in the application of these diverse theories regarding the three principles."

"The alchemists seem to have attached only a very indefinite meaning to the terms salt, sulphur, and mercury: since by salt they appear to have designated every thing which is fixed in the fire; all inflammable substances they denominated sulphur; and every substance which flies off without burning, mercury."

"The doctrine of the four elements seems to have continued undisputed till the time of the alchemists. These men, better acquainted than the ancient philosophers with the analysis of bodies, became convinced of the inadequacy of that doctrine to explain all the phenomena which were presented to their view. Hence they substituted in its stead a theory of their own; namely, that all bodies are composed of three elements, salt, sulphur, and mercury, which they distinguished by the appellation of the tria prima. To these principles, which were embraced by succeeding writers, Paracelsus added two more, phlegm and caput mortuum."

"In conformity with this theory they maintained, that all bodies may be decomposed by means of fire into these three principles; the salt remains behind fixed, the sulphur takes fire, and the mercury flies off in the form of smoke. The phlegm and caput mortuum of Paracelsus were the water and earth of the ancient philosophers."

"It is somewhat strange to me, that neither the Spagyrists themselves, nor yet their Adversaries, should have taken notice that Chymists have rather supposed than evinced, that the Analysis of bodies by fire, or even that at least some Analysis is the onely instrument of investigating what Ingredients mixt bodies are made up of, since in divers cases That may be discovered by Composition as well as by Resolution; as it may appear, that consists of metalline parts (whether Martial, or Venereal, or both) associated by Coagulation with ones, one may, I say, discover this as well by making true Vitriol with Spirit (improperly called Oil) of Sulphur, or that of Salt, as by distilling or Resolving Vitriol by the fire."

"And first the Doctrine that all their Theory is grounded on, seems to me Inevident and undemonstrated, not to say precarious."

"But I will not... trouble you with what I have largely discoursed in the Sceptical Chymist, to call in question the grounds on which Chymists assert, that all mixt bodies are compounded of Salt, Sulphur, and Mercury. For it may suffice me now to tell you that, whatsoever they may be able to obtain from other bodies, it does not appear by Experience, which is the grand, if not the onely, Argument they rely on, that all mixt bodies that have Qualities consist of their tria prima, since they have not been able, that we know, truly, and without new Compositions, to resolve into those three, either Gold, or Silver, or Crystal, or Venetian Talck, or some other bodies, that I elsewhere name; & yet these bodies are endowed with divers Qualities, as the two former with Fusibleness and Malleability, and all of them with Weight and Fixity; so that in these and the like bodies, whence Chymisats have not made it yet appear, that their Salt, Sulphur and Mercury, can be truly and adequately separated, 'twill scarce be other than precarious to derive the malleableness, colour, and other Qualities of such bodies from those Principles."

"Boyle attacked this hypothesis in his Sceptical Chemist, and several of his other publications: proving that under each of the terms salt, sulphur, mercury, phlegm, and earth are comprehended substances of very different properties; that all bodies are not composed of these principles; and that the principles themselves are not elements, but compounds."

"Alchemical theory was essentially static throughout the medieval period. ...Paracelsus was the herald of a new era, an era of . His contribution to alchemical theory lay in the addition to sulphur and mercury of a third principle, which he called 'salt.' Materially this was recognised as the principle of uninflammability and fixidity. ...[T]he tria prima, or three 'hypostatical principles' could be interpreted in either a material or a spiritual sense. In the words of Paracelsus himself: 'Know, then, that all the seven metals are born from a threefold matter... Mercury is the spirit, Sulphur is the soul, and Salt is the body... the soul... unites those two contraries, the body and spirit, and changes them into essence.' ...similar to the material effect of the liquid menstruum, or Hermetic Stream, in uniting sophic sulphur and sophic mercury to produce the Philospher's Stone."

"Tria Prima. The three elements of the alchemists, their salt, sulphur, and mercury: the first of which appears to have denoted whatever remained fixed in the fire; the second, whatever was inflammable; and the third, whatever was neither fixed nor inflammable, but rose in vapour without being burned."

"Since a great part of those Learned Men, especially Physicians who have discerned the defects of the vulgar Philosophy, but are not yet come to understand and relish the Corpuscularian, have slid into the Doctrine of the Chymists; and since the Spagyrists are wont to pretend to make out all the Qualities of bodies from the Predominancy of some one of their three Hypostatical Principles, I suppose it may both keep my opinion from appearing too presumptuous, and (which is far more considerable) may make way for the fairer Reception of the Mechanical Hypothesis about Qualities, if I here intimate (though but briefly and in general) some of those defects, that I have observed in Chymists Explications of Qualities."

"Now a man need not be very conversant in the writings of Chymists to observe, in how Laxe, Indefinite, and almost Arbitrary Senses they employ the Terms of Salt, Sulphur and Mercury; of which I could never find that they were agreed upon any certain Definitions or setled Notions; not onely differing Authors, but not unfrequently one and the same, and perhaps in the same Book, employing them in very differing senses."

"Van Helmont adds a... criticism to the Paracelsian theory. The tria prima play no role in disease, as they cannot be isolated from the living body. Paracelsus, he believes, was mistaken in assuming that the salt in urine was one of the tria prima, when in fact it is only salt water that has not yet been separated into its components. In fact, the tria prima cannot be obtained from living things at all; only by the destruction of the living principle... Hence diseases cannot be caused by the three principles... Surprisingly... he employs the tria prima in his theory... Van Helmont first postulates that water presents itself in four distinct states: ice, water, vapour and Gas... [and] contends that water is formed of 'atoms', which in turn are made up of the three principles (mercury, salt, and sulphur) in different spatial arrangements within the atom. These... give water both its resiliance and diversity of character."

"From this epocha the hypothesis of the tria prima seems wholly to have been abandoned: whilst a very different doctrine was proposed by Beccher in his Physica Subterranea [1669], and to which we are perhaps indebted for the present advanced state of chemical science; since he was the first to point out chemical analysis as the only true method of ascertaining the elements of bodies. According to his doctrine, all terrestrial bodies are composed of water, air, and three earths; viz. the fusible, the inflammable or sulphureous, and the mercurial. The three earths, combined in nearly equal proportions, compose the metals: when the proportion of mercurial earth is very small, they compose stones; when the fusible predominates, the resulting compounds are the precious stones; when the sulphureous predominates, and the fusible is deficient, the compounds are the calorific earths: fusible earth and water compose an universal acid, very much resembling sulphuric acid, from which all other acids derive their acidity; water, fusible earth, and mercurial earth, constitute common salt; sulphureous earth and the universal acid form sulphur. Such was the theory of Beccher, which was afterward considerably modified by Stahl."

"At a still later date [post-16th century] it was argued that exact and natural sciences proceed by induction and deduction, and occult and spiritual sciences by analogy. Following out this line of thought the alchemists produced the following remarkable trilogy:—"

"Each of these was a trinity in unity, and a unity in trinity. In each world was a distinct design,—in the material, the perfection of the metals; in the human, the perfection of the soul; in the divine, the contemplation of the Deity in His splendour."

"That man who lives with his heart and who constantly dwells on the idea of being of service to the welfare of humanity, that man is in complete harmony with his higher Self."

"The only difference between the ordinary man on the one hand and the Christ-man and the Buddha-man on the other is this: that we ordinary men have not succeeded in becoming absolutely at one with the Guardian Angel within, and the Buddhas and the Christs have. The Buddha or Christ is one who has made himself, his whole being, his heart, so pervious to the entrance of the Guardian Angel within him that that Guardian Angel within him has actually imbodied himself, so that the lower man is scarcely any longer there: it is then the Guardian Angel that speaks with the lips of flesh, it is the Bodhisattva, the inner Christ."

"Illusions will not last. Their death is sure, and this alone is certain in their world. It is the ego’s world because of this. What is the ego? But a dream of what you really are. A thought you are apart from your Creator and a wish to be what He created not. It is a thing of madness, not reality at all. A name for namelessness is all it is. A symbol of impossibility; a choice for options that do not exist."

"Traffic with one's higher self. Everyone has his good day, when he finds his higher self; and true humanity demands that we judge someone only when he is in this condition, and not in his workdays of bondage and servitude. We should, for example, assess and honor a painter according to the highest vision he was able to see and portray. But people themselves deal very differently with this, their higher self, and often act out the role of their own self, to the extent that they later keep imitating what they were in those moments. Some regard their ideal with shy humility and would like to deny it: they fear their higher self because, when it speaks, it speaks demandingly. In addition, it has a ghostly freedom of coming or staying away as it wishes; for that reason it is often called a gift of the gods, while actually everything else is a gift of the gods: this, however, is the man himself."

"I often say to my students, when they first come and they begin to feel the infiniteness, the joy and the deep peace, and they feel very happy, I say to them, Don’t just joy ride. Be quiet. Be one with this. Know that this is beyond belief. This is direct experience. But because this is taking place in you, a storm is coming. And this storm is the storm of ego! The storm of ego is going to come to crush what you have discovered, to bring fear in you, to make you feel that you are making a mistake, to bring in states of confusion. And some of you may give in to that and run away, and feel, ‘No, I must not do this anymore!’ But I want to encourage you. This exercise, this ‘meditation’, you may call it, comes from the very core of your Self. It comes from the God-place in you. And this tendency to run comes from the negativity, the toxicity that we have picked up in life. That is going to come up as though it wants to ruin your Garden of Eden inside your heart. I am telling you ahead of time that all beings who awakened to their true nature experienced these types of resistance, this type of aggression from the mind."

"Now what is this Guardian Angel? Is it outside of man? It is a part of man's spirit, pertinent to his pneumatology; not the human part but a part of his spiritual being. You can call it the Higher Self, but I prefer to call it the Spiritual Self... man's inmost entity, the Guardian Angel, this spiritual self, is like a god compared with the man of flesh... Compared with his knowledge it has omniscience; compared with his vision it has vision of the past, the present and the future, which three really are but one eternal now in the ever present. This Guardian Angel will always strive and is incessantly striving to guide its wilful errant child, the man of flesh. There is the whole thing in a nutshell, and if you can make your mind pervious to this inner monitor, and follow its mandates, your life will be safe and happy and prosperous."

"Thoughts can represent lower-order or higher-order reality. This is the basic distinction between intellectualizing and thinking. One makes the physical and the other creates the spiritual, and we believe in what we make or create. p. 2"