Certain characteristics of the subject are clear. To begin with, we do not in this subject deal with particular things or particular properties: we deal formally with what can be said about any thing or any property. We are prepared to say that one and one are two, but not that Socrates and Plato are two.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the distinction between abstract concepts and specific entities.
In this quote, Bertrand Russell highlights the difference between the formal properties we can attribute to abstract concepts and the particular characteristics of individual entities. He is pointing out that while we can make universal statements about quantities, such as one and one being two, we cannot define specific individuals like Socrates and Plato in the same abstract manner. This underscores the importance of understanding both the general and the specific in philosophical discussions, as well as in our perception of reality.
In practice
In a philosophy class discussing the nature of knowledge, this quote can illustrate the difference between abstract principles and specific examples.
St. Paul introduced an entirely novel view of marriage, that it existed primarily to prevent the sin of fornication. It is just as if one were to maintain that the sole reason for baking bread is to prevent people from stealing cake.
Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.
Of these austerer virtues the love of truth is the chief, and in mathematics, more than elsewhere, the love of truth may find encouragement for waning faith. Every great study is not only an end in itself, but also a means of creating and sustaining a lofty habit of mind; and this purpose should be kept always in view throughout the teaching and learning of mathematics.
At all times, except when a monarch could enforce his will, war has been facilitated by the fact that vigorous males, confident of victory, enjoyed it, while their females admired them for their prowess.
Moreover, the attitude that one ought to believe such and such a proposition, independently of the question whether there is evidence in its favor, is an attitude which produces hostility to evidence and causes us to close our minds to every fact that does not suit our prejudices.
Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.
A man is as much affected pleasurably or painfully by the image of a thing past or future as by the image of a thing present.
Compromise, while at times morally necessary or at least justifiable, is more often only the first permission for a person (or society) to begin a long downhill descent.
I sometimes think that the price of liberty is not so much eternal vigilance as eternal dirt.
Ed Koch will never "rest in peace." That was not his way. He was always nervously squirming, while making others squirm as well. Comfort was not his goal. He understood that to be a proud and assertive Jew meant never being able to leave a sigh of relief and say "it's over, we are at peace, we can now put down our guard and relax."
I am not African because I was born in Africa but because Africa was born in me.
I don't believe we have a professional self Monday through Friday and a real self the rest of the time. It is all professional, and it is all personal.
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