Riddle of America, The - Waldorf Research Institute

2. Even Franklin felt this and recorded in his autobiography in referenceto the Native American (quoted by Wilson on p. 52) the thought that“ … indeed, if it be the Design of Providence to extirpate these Savages inorder to make room for the Cultivators of the Earth, it seems not improbablethat Rum may be the appointed Means.”3. Much could be said about this fateful distinction, from the reasonsfor its creation, and the fallacy in it, to the significantly negative consequencesof its being taken up. However, here we offer merely the following for thoseunfamiliar with it. Galileo, in The Assayer (1623):Now I say that whenever I conceive any material or corporeal substance,I immediately feel the need to think of it as bounded, andas having this or that shape; as being large or small in relation toother things, and in some specific place at any given time, as beingin motion or at rest; as touching or not touching some other body;and as being one in number, or few, or many. From these conditionsI cannot separate such a substance by any stretch of my imagination.But that it must be white or red, bitter or sweet, noisy or silent, andof sweet or foul odor, my mind does not feel compelled to bring inas necessary accompaniments. Without the senses as our guides,reason or imagination unaided would probably never arrive atqualities like these. Hence I think that tastes, odors, colors, and soon are no more than mere names so far as the object in which weplace them is concerned, and that they reside only in the consciousness.Hence if the living creature were removed, all these qualitieswould be wiped away and annihilated. But since we have imposedupon them special names, distinct from those of the other and realqualities mentioned previously, we wish to believe that they reallyexist as actually different from these.Descartes, in Meditations on the First Philosophy (1641), Meditation II:And with regard to the ideas of corporeal objects, I never discoveredin them anything so great or excellent which I myself did not appearcapable of originating; … there is but little in them that is clearlyand distinctly perceived. As belonging to the class of things that areclearly apprehended, I recognize the following, viz., magnitude orextension in length, breadth, and depth; figure, which results fromthe termination of extension; situation, which bodies of diverse fig-333