Theism in the Light of Present Science and Philosophy |
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abstract action agnosticism animals anthropomorphic antithe become belief Benjamin Kidd cell changes character chemical elements conception consciousness Cosmic Philosophy divine earth Edward Caird elements ence environment eternal energy ethical evolution existence experience explanation fact feeling finite grasp Hegel Hegelian HENRY VAN DYKE Herbert Spencer higher human ideal individual infinite and eternal intelligence irrational Kidd kind knowledge larger ligion limits living look manifested matter meaning ment merely method mind monism moral natural selection object ourselves personality phenomena physical point of view possible preadaptation present problem progress purpose qualities race rational reality realized reason recognition recognize regard relation religion religious rience science and philosophy seems self-conscious simply social organism speak Spencer Spinoza story striving struggle teleological theism theology theory things thought tion true truth unity universe unknowable vidual whole widen wider
Popular passages
Page 136 - Can we realize for an instant what a cross-section of all existence at a definite point of time would be? While I talk and the flies buzz, a sea-gull catches a fish at the mouth of the Amazon, a tree falls in the Adirondack wilderness, a man sneezes in Germany, a horse dies in Tartary, and twins are born in France.
Page 168 - A religion is a form of belief, providing an ultrarational sanction for that large class of conduct in the individual where his interests and the interests of the social organism are antagonistic, and by which the former are rendered subordinate to the latter in the general interests of the evolution which the race is undergoing.
Page 186 - But, setting aside some metaphysicians of this kind, I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind, that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity and are in a perpetual flux and movement.
Page 188 - The mind is a kind of theatre, where several perceptions successively make their appearance, pass, repass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations.
Page 186 - For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception.
Page 288 - There is of course progress in the world, and there is also retrogression, but we cannot think that the Whole either moves on or backwards. The Absolute has no history of its own, though it contains histories without number.
Page 251 - Amid the mysteries which become the more mysterious, the more they are thought about, there will remain the one absolute certainty, that he is ever in the presence of an Infinite and Eternal Energy, from which all things proceed.
Page 187 - The comparison of the theatre must not mislead us. They are the successive perceptions only, that constitute the mind ; nor have we the most distant notion of the place where these scenes are represented, or of the materials of which it is composed.
Page 249 - See now the implications. That internal energy which in the experiences of the primitive man was always the immediate antecedent of changes wrought by him — that energy which, when interpreting external changes, he thought of along with those attributes of a human personality connected with it in himself ; is the same energy which, freed from anthropomorphic accompaniments, is now figured as the cause of all external phenomena.
Page 186 - If any one, upon serious and unprejudiced reflection, thinks he has a different notion of himself, I must confess I can reason no longer with him. All I can allow him is, that he may be in the right as well as I, and that we are essentially different in this particular. He may, perhaps, perceive something simple and continued, which he calls himself; though I am certain there is no such principle in...