Religion and Science: The Letters of "Alpha" on the Influence of Spirit Upon Imponderable Actienic Molecular Substances, and the Life-forces of Mind and Matter : Embracing a Review of the Address of Prof. John Tyndall ... Before the British Association at Belfast, August 19, 1874, with Additional Evidence, Through the Law of "evolution", of the Immortality of the Soul, Its Relations to Physical Life, and Accountability to the Deity |
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actienic and etheric animal Aristotle Atheism atmosphere atoms becomes Belfast believe Bishop Butler body brain cause Christian claim color combustion conception condition consciousness created creation Creator Darwin Deity Democritus deny divine doctrine earth electric electric telegraph elements energies Epes Sargent Epicurus essence eternal evolution existence experience fluid force forms germ Goethe highest human mind hypostasis idea immortality imponderable impulse independent individual infinite influence intellectual intelligence Joseph Cook knowledge laws life-force light and heat living Lucretius magnetic material materialist mechanical ment mental Middle Ages molecular molecules moral motion mysterious nature negative organism origin pantheistic perfect phenomena philosophy physical matter planets pole of cold ponderable primary principle produced Professor Tyn Professor Tyndall progress prove rays reason recognized Religion religious result revealed says Sargent says Tyndall Science scientific scientists soul spirit substance teachings things thought tion true truth Tyndall's unity universe vital whole zodiacal lights
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Page 131 - I feel bound to make before you is, that I prolong the vision backward across the boundary of the experimental evidence, and discern in that Matter which we, in our ignorance, and notwithstanding our professed reverence for its Creator, have hitherto covered with opprobrium, the promise and potency of every form and quality of life.
Page 149 - And grotesque in relation to scientific culture as many of the religions of the world have been, and are — dangerous, nay, destructive, to the dearest privileges of freemen as some of them undoubtedly have been, and would, if they could, be again — it will be wise to...
Page 131 - By an intellectual necessity, I cross the boundary of the experimental evidence, and discern In that matter which we, in our ignorance of its latent powers, and notwithstanding our professed reverence for its creator, have hitherto covered with opprobrium, the promise and potency of all terrestrial life.
Page 163 - I would exhort you to refuse the offered shelter, and to scorn the base repose; to accept, if the choice be forced upon you, commotion before stagnation, the leap of the torrent before the stillness of the swamp. In the course of this address I have touched on debatable questions, and led you over what will be deemed dangerous...
Page 132 - Its matter is for the most part transmuted gas ; its force transformed solar force. The animal world was proved to be equally uncreative, all its motive energies being referred to the combustion of its food. The activity of each animal, as a whole, was proved to be the transferred activity of its molecules.
Page 147 - His overthrow of the restriction of experience to the individual is, I think, complete. That restriction ignores the power of organizing experience furnished at the outset to each individual; it ignores the different degrees of this power possessed by different races and by different individuals of the same race. Were there not in the human brain a potency antecedent to all experience, a dog or cat ought to be as capable of education as a man.
Page 149 - In fact, the whole process of evolution is the manifestation of a Power absolutely inscrutable to the intellect of man. As little in our day as in the days of Job can man by searching find this Power out. Considered fundamentally, then, it is by the operation of an insoluble mystery that life on earth is evolved, species differentiated, and mind unfolded, from their prepotent elements in the immeasurable past.
Page 122 - Your atoms are individually without sensation, much more are they without intelligence. May I ask you, then, to try your hand upon this problem. Take your dead hydrogen atoms, your dead oxygen atoms, your dead carbon atoms, your dead nitrogen atoms, your dead phosphorus atoms, and all the other atoms, dead as grains of shot, of which the brain is formed. Imagine them separate and sensationless ; observe them running together and forming all imaginable combinations.
Page 163 - ... times to dwell together, in unity of spirit and in the bond of peace. And now the end is come. With more time, or greater strength and knowledge, what has been here said might have been better said, while worthy matters, here omitted, might have received fit expression. But there would have been no material deviation from the views set forth. As regards myself, they are not the growth of a day ; and as regards you, I...
Page 148 - Either let us open our doors freely to the conception of creative acts, or abandoning them let us radically change our notions of Matter.