First Principles

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D. Appleton and Company, 1864 - Philosophy, Modern - 612 pages
 

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Page 570 - Evolution is an integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion ; during which the matter passes from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity ; and during •which the retained motion undergoes a parallel transformation.
Page 67 - He realizes with a special vividness the utter incomprehensibleness of the simplest fact, considered in itself. He, more than any other, truly knows that in its ultimate essence nothing can be known.
Page 92 - We are thus taught the salutary lesson, that the capacity of thought is not to be constituted into the measure of existence; and are warned from recognizing the domain of our knowledge as necessarily coextensive with the horizon of our faith. And by a wonderful revelation, we are thus, in the very consciousness of our inability to conceive aught above the relative and finite, inspired with a belief in the existence of something unconditioned beyond the sphere of all comprehensible reality.* 2.
Page 124 - He must remember that while he is a descendant of the past he is a parent of the future ; and that his thoughts are as children born to him which he may not carelessly let die.
Page 563 - Every body continues in its state of rest or of uniform motion in a straight line, except in so far as it may be compelled by impressed forces to change that state.
Page 198 - Force, we really mean the persistence of some Cause which transcends our knowledge and conception. In asserting it we assert an Unconditioned Reality, without beginning or end.
Page 405 - In other words, the phenomena of Evolution have to be deduced from the Persistence of Force. As before said, ' to this an ultimate analysis brings us down, and on this a rational synthesis must build up.
Page 40 - Thus we are landed in an inextricable dilemma. The Absolute cannot be conceived as conscious, neither can it be conceived as unconscious : it cannot be conceived as complex, neither can it be conceived as simple : it cannot be conceived by difference, neither can it be conceived by the absence of difference : it cannot be identified with the universe, neither can it be distinguished from it.
Page xiv - A statement of the ultimate principles discernible throughout all manifestations of the Absolute — those highest generalizations now being disclosed by Science which are severally true not of one class of phenomena but of all classes of phenomena ; and which are thus the keys to all classes of phenomena.
Page 114 - By continually seeking to know and being continually thrown back with a deepened conviction of the impossibility of knowing, we may keep alive the consciousness that it is alike our highest wisdom and our highest duty to regard that through which all things exist as The Unknowable.

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