Scottish Metaphysics: Reconstructed in Accordance with the Principles of Physical Science

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Blackwood, 1887 - 244 pages
 

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Page 186 - The chasm between the two classes of phenomena would still remain intellectually impassable. Let the consciousness of love, for example, be associated with a right-handed spiral motion of the molecules of the brain, and the consciousness of hate with a left-handed spiral motion. We should then know when we love that the motion is in one direction, and when we hate that the motion is in the other; but the
Page iii - For it connects thought with the other phenomena of the universe, and suggests inquiry into the nature of those physical conditions or concomitants of thought which are more or less accessible to us, and a knowledge of which may in future help us to exercise the same kind of control over the world of thought as we already possess in respect of the material world; whereas the alternative or spiritualistic terminology is utterly barren, and leads to nothing but obscurity and confusion of ideas.
Page 237 - I have long held an opinion, almost amounting to conviction, in common I believe with many other lovers of natural knowledge, that the various forms under which the forces of matter are made manifest have one common origin; or, in other words, are so directly related and mutually dependent, that they are convertible, as it were, one into another, and possess equivalents of power in their action.
Page 137 - All things have been delivered unto me of my Father : and no one knoweth who the Son is, save the Father ; and who the Father is, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him.
Page 233 - ... for ever against a constant resistance, or only be stopped, as in the voltaic trough, by the ruins which its exertion has heaped up in its own course. This would indeed be a creation of power, and is like no other force in nature. We have many processes by which the form of the power may be so changed, that an apparent conversion of one into the other takes place.
Page 138 - And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life.
Page 140 - We are unable, on the one hand, to conceive nothing becoming something, or, on the other, something becoming nothing. When God is said to create out of nothing, we construe this to thought by supposing that he evolves existence out of himself ; we view the Creator as the cause of the universe. "Ex nihilo nihil, in nihilum nil posse reverti,"ltl expresses, in its purest form, the whole intellectual phenomenon of causality.
Page 158 - That at the first the soul of Man was not produced by heaven or earth, but was breathed immediately from God ; so that the ways and proceedings of God with spirits are not included in Nature, that is, in the laws of heaven and earth ; but are reserved to the law of his secret will and grace...
Page 81 - It is, therefore, acknowledged by this philosopher (Hume) to be a natural instinct or prepossession, an universal and primary opinion of all men, that the objects which we immediately perceive, by our senses, are not images in our minds, but external objects, and that their existence is independent of us and our perception.
Page 174 - What limit can be put to this power, acting during long ages and rigidly scrutinising the whole constitution, structure, and habits of each creature, — favouring the good and rejecting the bad? I can see no limit to this power, in slowly and beautifully adapting each form to the most complex relations of life. The theory of natural selection, even if we look no farther than this, seems to be in the highest degree probable.

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