Alexander F. Shand
Published: 2015-07-20
Total Pages: 618
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Excerpt from The Foundations of Character: Being a Study of the Tendencies of the Emotions and Sentiments A scientific treatment should not diminish, but increase the general interest taken in the character. To bring together the various aspects of the subject, - which, in literature, are treated in isolation from one another; to lead up to a general conception of it; to study the methods by which the knowledge of it may be increased in accuracy and extent; these are to make approaches to a scientific treatment of character. While I have had chiefly to confine myself to a study of the tendencies of the emotions and sentiments, this has been, throughout, my aim. This book, then, is a study of method. Yet I do not claim that this method is essentially new. It is in the main the hypothetical method of the sciences; it has had to be adapted to the treatment of character: that is all. Yet for a long time, like the philosophers of old, I was trying to find indisputable foundations. How long it took me before I saw the necessity of being content with good working hypotheses! Hence, as I only try to find such hypotheses, to interpret the facts of character as far as I have grasped them, I do not put them forward as finally true or adequate theories. On the contrary, I have tried to show how they may be corrected and improved as the facts come to be systematically investigated. And I have sought to give them such a form that they can be made use of and improved by others without being wholly abandoned. To make real progress possible has been my aim throughout. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.