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The service of philosophy, of speculative culture, towards the human spirit is to rouse, to startle it into sharp and eager observation.
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“The service of philosophy, of speculative culture, towards the human spirit is to rouse, to startle it into sharp and eager observation.”

Walter Pater

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Source
The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry
Date
1873
Meaning

Meaning of “The service of philosophy, of speculative culture, towards…”

Pater values philosophy for sharpening attention: its practical intellectual service is to make perception more alert rather than allowing experience to pass unnoticed through habit.

Source context

Where does it come from?

The Renaissance, Conclusion; Project Gutenberg #2398. The line belongs to Pater’s historically controversial conclusion on experience and culture.

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Culture is then properly described not as having its origin in curiosity, but as having its origin in the love of perfection.
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“Culture is then properly described not as having its origin in curiosity, but as having its origin in the love of perfection.”

Matthew Arnold · Culture and Anarchy · 1869
Meaning & context

Curiosity becomes more than collecting information when it is directed toward fuller development, better judgment, and a serious desire to improve understanding.

Source details

Culture and Anarchy; Arnold distinguishes idle curiosity from the pursuit of intellectual and moral perfection.

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If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.
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“If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.”

Francis Bacon · The Advancement of Learning · 1605
Meaning & context

Intellectual confidence can be improved by beginning with questions rather than pretending certainty too early.

Source details

The Advancement of Learning, First Book, Project Gutenberg #5500, transcribed from the 1893 Cassell & Company edition. Bacon contrasts impatience of doubt with mature suspension of judgment and then sets out two ways of contemplation before saying that beginning with certainties ends in doubts while beginning with doubts can end in certainties. It remains early-modern epistemological argument rather than a modern experimental rule for scientific method.

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it is only when he has turned it over that he can be said to know it.
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“it is only when he has turned it over that he can be said to know it.”

Arthur Schopenhauer · The Art of Literature · 1851
Meaning & context

Learning becomes knowledge, in this account, when material has been actively reconsidered and integrated rather than merely encountered or memorized.

Source details

The Art of Literature, section “On Thinking for Oneself,” T. Bailey Saunders translation; Project Gutenberg #10714. The preceding sentence says a person must first learn something before turning it over in the mind.

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What we have to do is to be for ever curiously testing new opinions and courting new impressions, never acquiescing in a facile orthodoxy
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“What we have to do is to be for ever curiously testing new opinions and courting new impressions, never acquiescing in a facile orthodoxy”

Walter Pater · The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry · 1873
Meaning & context

Pater recommends intellectual openness and repeated testing rather than easy conformity, making revision and exposure to new impressions part of an active critical life.

Source details

The Renaissance, Conclusion; Project Gutenberg #2398. The sentence names Comte, Hegel and one’s own orthodoxy in its immediate continuation.

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The first thing that experience finds to do is to free us from the phantoms of the brain—those false notions that have been put into us in youth.
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“The first thing that experience finds to do is to free us from the phantoms of the brain—those false notions that have been put into us in youth.”

Arthur Schopenhauer · Counsels and Maxims · 1851
Meaning & context

Experience is presented as corrective: inherited assumptions and youthful projections can be revised when later encounters expose a mismatch between expectation and reality.

Source details

Counsels and Maxims, T. Bailey Saunders translation; Project Gutenberg #10715. The statement belongs to Schopenhauer’s broader, characteristically pessimistic discussion of age and experience.

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experience, intellectual attainments, the practice of seeing to the bottom of things, and so a perfect mental vision, form in themselves a mass which continues to increase in size
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“experience, intellectual attainments, the practice of seeing to the bottom of things, and so a perfect mental vision, form in themselves a mass which continues to increase in size”

Arthur Schopenhauer · Counsels and Maxims · 1851
Meaning & context

Schopenhauer describes accumulated experience and practiced inquiry as resources that can continue growing even while other capacities change with age.

Source details

Counsels and Maxims, T. Bailey Saunders translation; Project Gutenberg #10715. The passage appears in an age-related comparison of intellectual powers and accumulated material.

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