Some Problems of Existence |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
absolute Deity animal minds become belief benevolent CHAPTER character colloid complexity conception conclusion conduct consciousness consequences course creation creed Deity of philosophy Deity of religion Determinism Determinist difficulty distinct Divine power Divine purpose Divine scheme doctrine Dualism element eschatology eternal evil existence explanation external penalties fact feeling finite free-will freedom future God's higher human evolution human soul idea Illingworth impossible infinite instance intelligible internal sanction Lactantius Libertarians limited lower animals man's manifestations means mental structure metempsychosis mind-structure mind-stuff moral responsibility motives mystery natural requital necessary objection offender omnipotence organism origin past personal Deity physical possible prayer predestination prescience present protoplasm punishment question realise recognise regard relations religious right and wrong sanction seems self-consciousness Self-determinism Self-determinists sense of inferiority sentience Shadworth Hodgson special creation spirit stage struggle upwards suppose survival theory Theosophy things thought tion true unity volition worship
Popular passages
Page 42 - And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly ; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ
Page 130 - God might, indeed, have refrained from creating, and continued alone, self-sufficient and perfect to all eternity; but his infinite Goodness would by no means allow it; this obliged him to produce external things; which things, since they could not possibly be perfect, the Divine Goodness preferred imperfect ones to none at all. Imperfection, then, arose from the infinity of Divine...
Page 148 - Then sawest thou that this fair universe, were it in the meanest province thereof, is in very deed the Stardomed City of God ; that through every star, through every grass-blade, and most through every living soul, the glory of a present God still beams.
Page 107 - I will not now decide on all the steps thereto. At various points, ambiguous possibilities shall be left open, either of which, at a given instant, may become actual. But whichever branch of these bifurcations become real, I know what I shall do at the next bifurcation to keep things from drifting away from the final result I intend.
Page 26 - ... Lingers, a light on the magic seas, The wide fire flames, as a flower uncloses, Heavy with odour, and loose to the breeze. The red rose clouds, without law or leader, Gather and float in the airy plain; The nightingale sings to the dewy cedar, The cedar scatters his scent to the main. The strange flowers...
Page 18 - To most thoughtful persons they must be already familiar ; and on those who fail to recognise them, argument would probably be wasted. The impossibility of conceiving hell as the design of an omnipotent and benevolent God presents a dilemma from which there is no escape. Orthodoxy jealously insists on the combination of these attributes in the Deity, but it never has answered, and never can answer, the objection that if God could have dispensed with hell, and did not, then He is not benevolent ;...
Page 91 - A, is equal to 12, and the sum of influences to counter volition B, equal to 8 — can we conceive that the determination of volition A should not be necessary? — We can only conceive the volition B to be determined by supposing that the man creates (calls from non-existence into existence) a certain supplement of influences. But this creation as actual, or, in itself, is inconceivable, and oven to conceive the possibility of this inconceivable act, we must suppose some cause by which the man is...
Page 107 - ... however, all the possible moves of the latter; and he knows in advance how to meet each of them by a move of his own which leads in the direction of victory. And the victory infallibly arrives, after no matter how devious a course, in the one predestined form of check-mate to the novice's king. Let now the novice stand for us finite free agents, and the expert for the infinite mind in which the universe lies. Suppose the latter to be thinking out his universe before he actually creates it. Suppose...
Page 8 - When molecules are so combined together as to form the film on the under side of a jelly-fish, the elements of mind-stuff which go along with them are so combined as to form the faint beginnings of Sentience.
Page 132 - ... truth. If there were retained the separation . . . between necessary laws and the creative activity of God, in our view evil would undoubtedly belong not to that which must be, but to that which is freely created. Let us therefore . . . say that where there appears to be an irreconcilable contradiction between the omnipotence and the goodness of God, there our finite wisdom has come to the end of its tether, and that we do not understand the solution which yet we believe in