Unthinkables

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R. Bentley and Son, 1897 - 160 páginas

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Página 114 - The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioning our characters in the wrong way. Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state. We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone.
Página 115 - Van Winkle in Jefferson's play, excuses himself for every fresh dereliction by saying, 'I won't count this time.' Well, he may not count it, and a kind heaven may not count it, but it is being counted none the less. Down among his nerve cells and fibres the molecules are counting it, registering and storing it up, to be used against him when the next temptation comes.
Página 157 - Nor did they halt there, but wandered on through molten worlds to that nebulous haze which philosophers have regarded, and with good reason, as the proximate source of all material things. I tried to look at this universal cloud, containing within itself the prediction of all that has since occurred ; I tried to imagine it as the seat of those forces whose action was to issue in solar and stellar systems, and all that they involve. Did that formless fog contain potentially the sadness with which...
Página 153 - For the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity...
Página 79 - Those who can may find relief in believing in absolutely void space and absolutely unoccupied time before some very remote but not infinitely remote epoch, which may in such belief be called the beginning of all things ; but the void time before that beginning can have had no beginning, unless it were preceded by time not unoccupied by events, which is inconsistent with the supposition. We find no absolute beginning if we look backwards...
Página 31 - So that the personality of which each is conscious, and of which the existence is to each a fact beyond all others the most certain, is yet a thing which cannot truly be known at all: knowledge of it is forbidden by the very nature of thought.
Página 39 - Thou canst not prove thou art immortal, no Nor yet that thou art mortal — nay my son, Thou canst not prove that I, who speak with thee, Am not thyself in converse with thyself, For nothing worthy proving can be proven, Nor yet disproven...
Página 51 - ... final realization of their very being. The beauty of colours and tones, warmth and fragrance, are what Nature in itself strives to produce and express, but cannot do so by itself ; for this it needs as its last and noblest instrument the sentient mind, which alone can put into words its mute striving and, in the glory of sentient intuition, set forth in luminous actuality what all the motions and gestures of the external world were vainly endeavouring to express.
Página 114 - If we can only strike a blow with such power as to seize possession of a man's entire thoughts and voluntary dispositions for a certain length of time, we may succeed in launching him in a new career, and in keeping him in that course, until there be time for habits to commence, and until a force is arrayed in favour of the present state of things, able to cope with the tendencies and growth of the former life.
Página 31 - The mental act in which self is known, implies, like every other mental act, a perceiving subject and a perceived object. If, then, the object perceived is self, what is the subject that perceives ? or if it is the true self which thinks, what other self can it be that is thought of ? Clearly, a true cognition of self implies a state in which the knowing and the known are one—in which subject and object are identified ; and this Mr Mansel rightly holds to be the annihilation of both.

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