APHORISM (ἀφορίζω, to bound or limit).—A precise, sententious saying; e.g., «It is always safe to learn from our enemies, seldom safe to instruct even our friends.»Heraclitus is known by his aphorisms, which are among the most brilliant of those Jewels five words long, That on the stretched forefinger of all time, Sparkle for ever.» Among the most famous are—War is father of all things, i.e., all things are evolved by antagonistic force. No man can bathe twice in the same stream, i.e., all things are in perpetual flux.Bacon says:—»The first and most ancient inquirers into truth were wont to throw their knowledge into aphorisms, or short, scattered, unmethodical sentences » (Nov. Organ., bk. I. sec. 86). And the Novum Organum itself is written in aphorisms.Coleridge, Aids to Reflection, I. 16, edit. 1848, note; 5th ed. p. 17:—»In order to get the full sense of a word, we should first present to our minds the visual image that forms its primary meaning…This twofold act of circumscribing and detaching, when it is exerted by the mind on subjects of reflection and reason, is to aphorise, and the result an aphorism.» «In philosophy, equally as in poetry, it is the highest and most useful prerogative of genius to produce the strongest impressions of novelty, while it rescues admitted truths from the neglect caused by the very circumstance of their universal admission. Extremes meet. Truths, of all others the most awful and interesting, are too often considered as so true that they lose all the power of truth, and lie bedridden in the dormitory of the soul, side by side with the most despised and exploded errors » (ib., p. 1). |
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