"Metaphysics" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the priests' religion, is the most difficult book in the world to be understood; it requires a thorough knowledge in natural, civil, ecclesiastical history, law, husbandry, sailing, physic, pharmacy, mathematics, metaphysics, ethics, and everything else that can be named: And everybody who believes it ought to understand it, and must do so by force of his own freethinking, without ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... States, for four years a separate power and without representation in Congress, were all the time here in the Union, is a good deal less ingenious and respectable than the metaphysics of Berkeley, which proved that neither the world nor any human being was in existence. If this theory were simply ridiculous it could be forgiven; but its effect is deeply injurious to the stability of the nation. I can not doubt that the late Confederate States ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... of this is the case of the great trio, Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge. All three started as poets. Coleridge was distracted from poetry into metaphysics, mainly, I believe, by his indulgence in opium, and the torturing contemplation of his own moral impotence. He turned to philosophy to see if he could find some clue to the bewildering riddle of life, and he lost his way among philosophical speculations. Southey, ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... writes and lectures. He and Mr. S. were soon discoursing on German, English, Scotch, and American metaphysics, while I was talking with Lady Hamilton and her daughters. After we came away Mr. S. said, that no man living had so thoroughly understood and analyzed the German philosophy. He said that Sir William spoke of a call which he ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... Mr. Little Bear in the human habiliments of the Anglo-Saxon sect; and the leather of his shoes is patented and the loop of his necktie is copyrighted. For these things John Tom had grafted on him at college along with metaphysics and the knockout guard for the low tackle. But for his complexion, which is some yellowish, and the black mop of his straight hair, you might have thought here was an ordinary man out of the city directory that subscribes for magazines and pushes ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... [Footnote: See Mankind in the Making, Ch. II.] State breeding of the population was a reasonable proposal for Plato to make, in view of the biological knowledge of his time and the purely tentative nature of his metaphysics; but from anyone in the days after Darwin, it is preposterous. Yet we have it given to us as the most brilliant of modern discoveries by a certain school of sociological writers, who seem totally unable to grasp the modification of meaning "species" and ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... eleven, retire to write a little while in my journal, exercises on what I have read, or a series of characteristics which I am filling up according to advice. Thus, you see, I am learning Greek, and making acquaintance with metaphysics, and French and ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... excel others in the knowledge of what is excellent, than in the extent of my power and dominion. Farewell." And Aristotle, soothing this passion for pre-eminence, speaks, in his excuse for himself, of these doctrines, as in fact both published and not published. To tell the truth, his books on metaphysics are written in a style which makes them useless for ordinary teaching, and instructive only in the way of memoranda, for those who have been already conversant with that sort ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... given very material aid to the anarchist element in the syndicalist movement. For a number of years I have read faithfully Le Mouvement Socialiste, but I confess that I have not understood their dazzling metaphysics, and I am somewhat comforted to see that both Levine[9] and Lewis[10] find ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... great people, those Greeks; they knew everything—so the preface of my 'Heroes' says, and I want to learn the things they knew—mathematics and geometry, rather—and especially logic and metaphysics, because I want to know the meaning of words and the art of reasoning, and above everything I want to know about my own thoughts and soul." "You strange little girl," said the old man. "Have you ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... Count Fathom and Joseph Surface—have all met and exchanged commonplaces on the barren plains of the haute litterature—toil slowly on to the Temple of Science, seen a long way off upon a level, and end in one dull compound of politics, criticism, chemistry, and metaphysics.' ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... not. Julia can sew and run a machine; Daisy cannot. Julia gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night; Daisy does neither. Nobody ever waits for Julia; everybody waits for Daisy. Julia reads scientific works and dotes on metaphysics; Daisy does not know the meaning of the word. In short, Julia is a strong, high-toned, energetic, independent woman, while Daisy is—a little innocent, confiding girl, whom I would rather have without brains than all the Boston ...
— Miss McDonald • Mary J. Holmes
... ideal of gentle pietism, in Wilhelm Meister: but to the large vision of Goethe, that seemed to be a phase of life that a man might feel all round, and leave behind him. Again, it is easy to indulge the commonplace metaphysical instinct. But a taste for metaphysics may be one of those things which we must renounce, if we mean to mould our lives to artistic perfection. Philosophy serves culture, not by the fancied gift of absolute or transcendental knowledge, but by suggesting questions which help one to detect the passion, and strangeness, and dramatic ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... special line of achievement. For instance, if you would be a perfect Yogi, you must concentrate, concentrate, morning, noon and night, at all times, along that line of endeavour. You must study all the vast literature on Yoga, Psychology, Metaphysics, Mentalism, etc., and form your own synthesis on same. You must think hard and work hard for Yoga. "Genius is the power to bear infinite pain." Nothing ought to be too great a sacrifice, including your own life, for the right understanding ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji
... Medical Jurisprudence in the John A. Creighton Medical College, Omaha, Neb., author of Text-Books on Metaphysics, ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... while all else is advancing; that this is going to be held forever as a place where the old Aristotelian logic, which we have driven out of every other field, can keep its hold unchallenged still,—as a place for the metaphysics of the school-men, the empty conceits, the old exploded inanities of the Dark Ages, to breed ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... absence of all traffic upon the roads; no market carts came and went, neither did any wayfarer appear. Not a wisp of smoke arose from the chimneys above the screen of trees. We passed up a double avenue of elms—just such an avenue as that along which M. Bergeret discussed metaphysics and theology with the Abbe Lantaigne—yet not a soul was to be seen upon the trottoir. A brooding silence hung over the little town, a silence so deep as to be almost menacing. As we entered the main street I encountered a spectacle which froze my heart. Far ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... the divinity-student,—since we are getting into metaphysics, how you can admit space, if all things are in contact, and how you can admit time, if it is always ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... seem to have varied with him from time to time, and to have varied also in its formal expression. His mind was too positive, too much occupied in the detail of life, to have time either for brooding meditation or for the metaphysics of religious inquiry; and, at least in 1866, Christianity interested him mainly as one of the most potent shaping forces of human society. The desire to follow out and investigate at first hand certain of its modern manifestations helped to direct the impulse ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... suffering. When I think of your painful, barbarous methods of education through the ear, I shudder at it. Oddly enough, we have found lately that for a great many things there is no need to use the head. We lodge them—things like philosophy and metaphysics, and so on—in what used to be the digestive apparatus. They fill ...
— Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... so on, just in the same way does the force of free will form the content of history. But just as the subject of every science is the manifestation of this unknown essence of life while that essence itself can only be the subject of metaphysics, even the manifestation of the force of free will in human beings in space, in time, and in dependence on cause forms the subject of history, while free will itself is ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... of woman's sphere, to use the modern phrase, is not to be solved by applying to it abstract principles of right and wrong. Its solution must be obtained from physiology, not from ethics or metaphysics. The question must be submitted to Agassiz and Huxley, not to Kant or Calvin, to Church or Pope. Without denying the self-evident proposition, that whatever a woman can do, she has a right to do, the question at once arises, ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... formed and chiefly executed the plan of a great philosophical work. The common bounds of human knowledge are too narrow for his warm and aspiring imagination. He must go 'extra flammantia maenia Mundi', and explore the unknown and unknowable regions of metaphysics; which open an unbounded field for the excursion of an ardent imagination; where endless conjectures supply the defect of unattainable knowledge, and too often usurp both its ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... of love in a world of sorrow. Not their commission is it to declare to cowering criminals a GOD wrathful, vindictive, and scarcely less bloody than the Druid's deity, hating with infinite venom the unhappy violator of his laws; not theirs to deal out curious metaphysics and cold abstractions, giving a stone for bread and an adder for an egg to the sons of sorrow and the daughters of misfortune; but to inspire hope in the desponding and peace in the troubled bosom; to give light for ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... once so bold and so undoubting—her spirit of certainty, and her deep contemplations on the unseen and infinite. And in literature, he had taken as guides and models, above all criticism and all appeal, the classical writers. But with his mind full of the deep and intricate questions of metaphysics and theology, and his poetical taste always owing allegiance to Vergil, Ovid, and Statius—keen and subtle as a schoolman—as much an idolater of old heathen art and grandeur as the men of the Renaissance—his eye is yet as open to the delicacies of character, to the variety of external nature, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... the psychologists chose this somewhat barren way; it was a kind of reaction against the fantastic flights of the psychology of olden times. Speculations about the soul had served for centuries. Metaphysics had reigned and the observation of the real facts of life and experience had been disregarded. When the new time came in which the psychologists were fascinated by the spirit of scientific method and exact study of actual facts, the safest way was ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... however, though sometimes as abstruse, if not so continuous, as those of a metaphysician—for boys are not unfrequently more given to metaphysics than older people are able or, perhaps, willing to believe—were not by any means confined to such subjects: castle-building had its full share in the occupation of those lonely hours; and for this exercise of the constructive faculty, what ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... in his career he had written a versification of the Psalms, in 1788 his Conquest of Canaan, and later Triumph of Infidelity. President Dwight taught the seniors rhetoric, logic, ethics, and metaphysics, and the graduate students in theology. In 1805 he was appointed to the professorship ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... woman's work, Mr. Winthrop, just as much as painting pictures or studying German metaphysics is,—a much more important work for me, if I marry a poor man and become my own maid ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... thinks, like some other people, that Locke's chapter on 'Substance' is 'unsatisfactory'; and agrees with some 'strictures' on the early chapters of Mill's 'Political Economy.' He writes an essay to explode the poor old social contract. He holds that the study of metaphysics is desirable, but adds the note, 'not including ontological inquiries under the head of metaphysics.' He denies, however, the proposition that 'all general truths are founded on experience.' He thinks that a meaning can be attached to the term 'freewill'; but considers it impossible ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... and disgusted with their ancestral religion, they are striving in every possible way, short of being Christians, to seek for something better and higher. This is what we should expect. In the many schools and colleges of the land the subtle metaphysics of the East is supplanted by the modern philosophy of the West; their own bewildering ancient rules of logic are replaced by the more rational processes of the West. So that every university matriculate and graduate of India is today crammed with ideas, and trained in methods of thinking, ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... parts of one intelligible universe. He strove constantly after system, and the instrument on which his effort relied was the speculative reason. He embodied in an extreme form the spirit of his age. Nothing could be less like the spirit of ours. To many people now alive metaphysics means a body of wild and meaningless assertions resting on spurious argument. A professor of metaphysics may nowadays be held to deal handsomely with the duties of his chair if he is prepared to handle metaphysical statements at all, though it be only for the purpose of getting rid of them, by ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... engravers this year, retouched the engravings (generally the worst part of the business), and etched some on steel myself. In the course of the six hundred pages I have had to make various remarks on German Metaphysics, on Poetry, Political Economy, Cookery, Music, Geology, Dress, Agriculture, Horticulture, and Navigation,[6] all of which subjects I have had to 'read up' accordingly, and this takes time. Moreover, I have had my class of workmen out sketching every week in the fields ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... fellow-countrymen. Plato speaks of him as his "Father Parmenides," whom he "revered and honoured more than all the other philosophers together." To quote Professor Jowett in his introduction to Plato's dialogue Parmenides, he was "the founder of idealism and also of dialectic, or in modern phraseology, of metaphysics and of logic." Of the logical aspect of his teaching we shall see a fuller exemplification in his pupil and successor Zeno; of his metaphysics, by way of summing up what has been already said, it may ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... may be permitted here, without Mr. Thornton's knowledge, to recall a remark made by Mr. Mill only a few weeks ago. We were speaking of Mr. Thornton's recently published "Old-fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics," when I remarked on Mr. Mill's wide divergence from most of the views contained in it. "Yes," he replied, "it is pleasant to find something on which to differ from Thornton." Mr. Mill's prompt recognition of ...
— John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works • Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison and Other
... in his cloud" for all the encomiums of Mr. Tennyson, and had better come down immediately to the dreamy water-level where he floats dream within dream, like a stable vapor in a tangible sky. Anywhere else he seems a court-beauty wandering into metaphysics. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... Do they belong strictly to the domain of physics or of metaphysics? How nearly are they allied to insanity? May there not be a species of spiritual intoxication created by immaterial alcohol, producing, through the medium of the mind, the same bodily absurdities as your fluid ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... Yes: it is now we have to do with. Don't let us go into metaphysics.' Molly opened her eyes wide at this. Had she been talking metaphysics without knowing it? 'One looks forward to a mass of trials, which will only have to be encountered one by one, little by little. Oh, here is my mother! she will ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... would find it difficult to imagine that it would be amenable to soft influences. But I have studied this inert mass, and, as each person has special characteristics, some being more partial than others to, say, Literary pursuits, Athletics, Music, Poetry, Engineering, Science, or Metaphysics, so I am able to show that this iron mass has not only a number of these "partials," some of which are extraordinarily beautiful and powerful, audible over long distances, but that by the lightest touch of certain small generating rubbers, not more than an ounce ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... he could think of none at that time but Jacchaeus. He is of opinion, that as in Logic the rules of syllogism are chiefly to be attended to, so in Physics the enquiry into the nature and functions of the soul is of most importance. After Physics he advises him to proceed to Metaphysics, of which he might get some notion from Timplerus' book, which is neither long nor obscure. The study of Moral Philosophy is to be begun with Aristotle, whose books to Nicomachus are the best. "Your reader, says he, must give you in a small compass what the ablest interpreters ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... of metaphysics have doubted the plainest truths—the existence of matter! And even their own existence! But these doubts are a species of madness. To the person of common sense they are unnecessary. Let him only believe his senses, which the author of nature hath ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... asking him to dine at Eldon's, and spent twelve francs at that restaurant. During the dinner Daniel admitted Lucien into the secret of his hopes and studies. Daniel d'Arthez would not allow that any writer could attain to a pre-eminent rank without a profound knowledge of metaphysics. He was engaged in ransacking the spoils of ancient and modern philosophy, and in the assimilation of it all; he would be like Moliere, a profound philosopher first, and a writer of comedies afterwards. He was studying the world ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... glutton, the drunkard, the unclean, and of all voluptuous sensualists whatsoever—so excellent is all truth. What, then, is their delight who know the God of truth! What would I not give so that all the uncertain, questionable principles in logic, natural philosophy, metaphysics, and medicine were but certain in themselves and to me, that my dull, obscure notions of them were but quick and clear. Oh, what then should I not either perform or part with to enjoy a clear and true apprehension of ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... in the world to indulge in egoistic abstractions and to expatiate on them; for a Russian feels none of the Anglo-Saxon's mauvaise honte in describing his spiritual condition, and is no more daunted by metaphysics than the latter is by arguments on politics ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... poetry should have breadth as well as height and depth; it should meet men everywhere on the open levels of their common humanity, and not merely on their occasional excursions to the heights of speculation or their exploring expeditions among the crypts of metaphysics. ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... They were Arminians and Prelatists. They looked down on the Protestant Churches of the Continent, and regarded every line of their own liturgy and rubric as scarcely less sacred than the gospels. His opinions touching the metaphysics of theology were Calvinistic. His opinions respecting ecclesiastical polity and modes of worship were latitudinarian. He owned that episcopacy was a lawful and convenient form of church government; but he spoke with sharpness and scorn of the bigotry of those ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... not, but when I tell you that I am more than repaid by looking at you when I feel inclined, you will acknowledge that you do me service; but we will not enter into metaphysics or psychological questions just now, it shall all be explained by-and-bye. And now the first service I ask of you is at once to leap over the dull fortnight of gradual approaching, which at last ends in intimacy. I have ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... diploma. Indeed, there were many studies between her and the diploma which she loathed. She could never understand how a girl of healthy mind could care for mathematics, exact science, or dead languages. English and French were enough for her tongue, and history, literature, and metaphysics ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... placed, he made himself a man forbid, took his station on the railing between the pegs on which the sheets are belayed and the shrouds, and there, for hours, sat in silence, enamoured, it may be, of the moon. All these peculiarities, with his caprices, and something inexplicable in the cast of his metaphysics, while they served to awaken interest, contributed little to conciliate esteem. He was often strangely rapt—it may have been from his genius; and, had its grandeur and darkness been then divulged, susceptible of explanation; ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... are of people who are passed away like the snow in harvest; and now, with the sharp-sickle reapers of full shocks of the fattening wheat of metaphysics, and fair novelists Ruth-like in the fields of barley, or more mischievously coming through the rye,—what will the public, so vigorously sustained by these, care to hear of the lovely writers of old days, quaint creatures that they were?—Merry Miss ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... considered, I believe, as taking rank among the few best scholars of the [Sophomore] class, although there was no branch in which I was not equalled—and in several I was excelled—by some of my classmates, except perhaps Metaphysics. Thus, I was surpassed by Cooper in Latin, but he was wholly deficient in Mathematics, and regarded with pity, not altogether unmixed with contempt, all who had a taste for that study. Story, a brother of Mr. Justice ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... shall take pleasure in the short jacket of the boy that comes after us; when people will be at liberty to be born without any legal permit, and will not be reviled for it; when humanity will speak one language; when metaphysics and religion have been forgotten, and knowledge of nature takes the place of noble birth. When we shall have broken away ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... me with such a metaphysics of genius," said the teacher's companion, "and I have only a hazy conception of the accuracy of your similitude. On the other hand, I fully understand what you have said about the surplus of public schools and the corresponding surplus of higher grade teachers; and in this ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... did not care for plants. All he cared for was his mysticism. But one day, as if the magic of poetry had slipped into his soul, he heard all the plants talking, and talking to him; and behold, he loved them and knew what they meant. Imagination had done more for him than all his metaphysics. So we give up our days to collating theory with theory, criticising, philosophising, till, one morning, we wake "and ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... unshakeable certainty. During his first year of philosophy, he had worked at his logic so earnestly that his professor had checked him, remarking that the most learned were not the holiest. In his second year, therefore, he had carried out his study of metaphysics as a regulation task, constituting but a small fraction of his daily duties. He felt a growing contempt for science; he wished to remain ignorant, in order to preserve the humility of his faith. Later on, he only followed the course of Rohrbacher's ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... subject might disincline you ever to take leave of the world of the unborn, whereas I am desirous of making your acquaintance as soon as possible. Let me, then, rather assure you that life is not all marionettes and metaphysics, and that I know of no reason why you should not at once enter upon an existence as real as that enjoyed by your dear father or your beautiful mother—it would be unbecoming in a son to expect more. Castellinaria is waiting to welcome you. You could not have a more ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... of the class mystifies you with metaphysics, half conned and unmastered by himself—more anxious still to make his points than to please his party; and, of the two, would rather sink his country than his climax. He is a rhetorician, a dealer in set phraseology, an ingenious gatherer and polisher of "other men's stuff." Of the faiseurs, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... eighteenth century, and especially of French materialism, was not only a struggle against the existing political institutions and against the existing religion and theology, but equally an open and outspoken campaign against all metaphysics, especially that of Descartes, Malebranche, Spinoza, and Leibnitz. Metaphysics was confronted with philosophy, just as Feuerbach, in his first decisive stand against Hegel, opposed sober philosophy to drunken ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... kind, or, in other words, that there is a veritable prolongation of identity or oneness of personality between parents and offspring. Professor Hering reaches his conclusion by physical methods, while I reached mine, as I am told, by metaphysical. I never yet could understand what "metaphysics" and "metaphysical" mean; but I should have said I reached it by the exercise of a little common sense while regarding certain facts which are open to every one. There is, however, so far as I can see, no difference in the conclusion ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... it to her letters to Musset. In the first place, it is not spoiled by that preoccupation which the Venice lovers had, of writing literature. Mingled with the accents of sincere passion, we do not find extraordinary conceptions of paradoxical metaphysics. It is Nature which speaks in these letters, and for that very reason they are none the less sorrowful. They, too, tell us of a veritable martyrdom. We can easily imagine from them that Michel was coarse, despotic, faithless and jealous. We know, too, that more than once George Sand came very near ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... interest with the tyrant Dionysius. He was a great general and statesman, as well as a philosopher. In philosophy he was a Pythagorean; and, like most of that school, a great mathematician; and applied his favourite science not only to music, but also to metaphysics. Aristotle is believed to have borrowed from ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... Abstract Entities Circumambulate her charm; But our lot crawls between dry ribs To keep our metaphysics warm. ...
— Poems • T. S. [Thomas Stearns] Eliot
... the title of cook, or a cook worthy to be a philosopher, according to the numerous curious passages scattered in Athenaeus, was an extraordinary genius, endowed not merely with a natural aptitude, but with all acquired accomplishments. The philosophy, or the metaphysics, of cookery appears ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... that the light he had imagined to be bestowed, was a light reflected from his own mind. It is easy to pass from criticism to metaphysics where Coleridge leads, and wise not ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... seek in the metaphysics of love the reasons for the following proposition, which throws the most vivid light on the question of honeymoons and ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... spiritualist and dualist view of the nature of man, contending that he is composed of a material frame (descended from the apes) and an immortal immaterial soul (infused by a higher power). This dual conception, moreover, is still predominant in the wide circles of modern theology and metaphysics, and has the general and influential adherence of the more conservative ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... of the conformists. Just because it is not a subtle book it should not be "dangerous." It is romantic, rather; inspired, you might loosely say. The Index Expurgatorius will of course list it when they learn of it; but foolishly, because while the philosophy, the cosmology, the metaphysics may be advanced (so advanced as to be called hasty and apt to run into the theological barrages), the religion, the mysticism, the "conviction of sin," the vision of the invisibles, the perception of the imponderables, are ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 6, 1917 • Various
... young hungry men's natural desire to mass behind a tribune and follow him onwards, they hope, along the high road to excitement, fame, power and riches. He warns us against our readiness to believe in myth and metaphysics, demonstrating how Man will believe anything, even the most mystical or incomprehensible religion or ideology, provided it is preached by his leaders. History, as seen by Taine, is one long series of such adventures and horrors and nowhere was this ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... that anybody else knows; but that is the information stated shortly. It is contained in a book reposing under my thoughtful eyes. {5} I know it is not a censored book, because I can see for myself that it is not a novel. The author, on his side, warns me that it is not philosophy, that it is not metaphysics, that it is not natural science. After this comprehensive warning, the definition of the book becomes, you will admit, a pretty ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... "Matthew," and "Luke" assert or imply the pre-existence of Jesus. At this early period he was regarded as a human being raised to participation in certain attributes of divinity; and this was as far as the dogma could be carried by the Jewish metaphysics. But soon after the date of our third gospel, a Hellenic system of Christology arose into prominence, in which the problem was reversed, and Jesus was regarded as a semi-divine being temporarily lowered to participation in certain ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... keep abreast of the times in all lines of mental science, new thought, applied psychology and metaphysics, you should subscribe for Mind Power Plus, the pace-making periodical in the field of mental ...
— The Silence • David V. Bush
... Brown in a late article on "Metaphysics and Pedagogics"[81] says, "Every one admits that there is much that must be done by the child in his elementary education which is a task, for the reason that his ideas of its worth to himself cannot be sufficiently appreciated to ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... out some of the speculative tendencies fostered by the position. If it be asked what philosophical doctrines were explicitly taught, the answer must be a very short one. English philosophy barely existed. Parr was supposed to know something about metaphysics—apparently because he could write good Latin. But the inference was hasty. Of one book, however, which had a real influence, I must say something, for though it contained little definite philosophy, it showed what kind of philosophy ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... not know how to answer. She was not versed in theology and metaphysics, but she knew he was wrong. Therefore she covered her confusion by quietly pouring him out another cup of tea, and then said, "Even my slight knowledge of the past has taught me how many absurd and monstrous things can be done and said in the name ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... an alcahest, a human victim for his crucible. We are left in doubt as to whether he chooses his wife, who wears a diamond set in one of her teeth, or a gorilla. There are dramas of dual personality and of death. Metaphysics and spiritualism rise dimly out of the charm of this book. There is a duchess who mews like a cat and somewhere we are assured that Perche non posso odiarte from La Sonnnambula is the most beautiful aria in the Italian ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... confederation. The Austrian government was therefore obliged to speak against the Poles, at the very time that it was acting in their cause, and to say to her subjects of Gallicia: "I forbid you to be of the opinion which I support." What metaphysics! they would be found very intricate, if fear ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... we peep over the wild mask of revolutionary metaphysics, and we see the winsome face of the child. Perhaps none of his poems is more purely and typically Shelleian than The Cloud, and it is interesting to note how essentially it springs from the faculty of make-believe. ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... nature of which few ever caught a glimpse,—a spirit and an imagination deeply tinged with German ideality and speculation. Often, when others slept, this man, who appeared so resolute, hard, and uncompromising in the performance of duties, and who was understood by but few, would read deeply in metaphysics and romantic poetry. Therefore, the men and women who dwelt in his imagination were not such as he had much to do with in real life. Indeed, he had come to regard the world of reality and that of fancy as entirely ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... it seems that always I must woo you in metaphysics and express my ardour in theorems. But have I not made myself understood? "Man's love is of man's life a thing apart," as a thousand women have quoted: and it is true. But do you not see that even for this reason his love ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... entitled to make a luxury of the fire, and to hiss it, as he would any other performance that raised expectations in the public mind, which afterwards it disappointed. Again, to cite another great authority, what says the Stagyrite? He (in the Fifth Book, I think it is, of his Metaphysics) describes what he calls [Greek: kleptaen teleion], i.e., a perfect thief; and, as to Mr. Howship, in a work of his on Indigestion, he makes no scruple to talk with admiration of a certain ulcer ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... was more at a loss than ever, and determined to make fresh and more decisive experiments. Curiosity, you know, is heightened by doubt. To cure myself of curiosity, it is necessary therefore to put my mind out of doubt. Admire the practical application of metaphysics! But metaphysics always make ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... they to do, Philippa?" he asked. "They have each one the same duties to perform—to please their partners and amuse themselves. You would not have a 'hapless lordling' talk about science or metaphysics while ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... we ask of those more intimately acquainted with the metaphysics of the Houyhnhnm than we pretend to be? Do the saddle or the rein convey, like metallic tractors, vibrations of the spirit betwixt the two? We know not, but this much is certain, that no servant partakes so much of the character of his master as the horse. The steed we are wont to ride ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... and a personal Infinite Being were impossibilities, for they mistook the inconceivable for the impossible. And thus a stringent test has admitted what a loose but capricious test discarded, and the true notion of God has issued safe out of the crucible of modern metaphysics. Reason has shown its strength, but then it has turned that strength back upon itself; it has become its own critic; and in becoming its own critic it ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... his people. She quite wore this book out, carrying it about with her in her working-dress pocket. After that, "Locke on the Understanding" was used in the same way. She must have known both books through and through by heart. Then she read Combe and Abercrombie, and discussed their physics and metaphysics with our girl boarders, some of whom had remarkably acute and well-balanced minds. Her own seemed to have turned from its early bent toward the romantic, her taste being now for serious and practical, though sometimes abstruse, themes. I remember that Young and ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... Shinto, unchanging and vitally unchanged, still remains all dominant in the land of its birth, and only seems to gain in power and dignity with time.[24] Buddhism has a voluminous theology, a profound philosophy, a literature vast as the sea. Shinto has no philosophy, no code of ethics, no metaphysics; and yet, by its very immateriality, it can resist the invasion of Occidental religious thought as no other Orient faith can. Shinto extends a welcome to Western science, but remains the irresistible opponent of Western religion; and the foreign zealots who would ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... moment, suffer a misconception to exist. Now your daughter, my favorite Lucy, is a girl of fine sense and high feeling, and I am at a loss, Sir Thomas, I assure you, to reconcile either one or the other with your metaphysics. If Miss Gourlay sat for the disagreeable picture you have just drawn, she must be a great hypocrite, or you have grossly misrepresented her, which I conceive it is not now your interest ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... Apart from politics and metaphysics, there were two directions in which the Lettres Philosophiques did pioneer work of a highly important kind: they introduced both Newton and Shakespeare to the French public. The four letters on Newton show Voltaire ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... Smoker; what he suffered in consequence of the habit; how he reformed and the happy results. The Wasp Waist—its metaphysics and physiology. Application—the ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... human guilt is infinitely great. It is thus that theology became complicated, even gloomy, and in some points false, by metaphysical reasonings, which had such a charm both to the Fathers and the Schoolmen. The attempt to reconcile divine justice with divine love by metaphysics and abstruse reasoning proved as futile as the attempt to reconcile free-will with predestination; for divine justice was made by deduction, without reference to other attributes, to conflict with those ideas of justice which consciousness attests,—even as a fettered will, of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... should be required from me than such as were connected with belles-lettres and philology; to this the big man readily assented. "Nothing will be required from you," said he, "but what you mention; and now and then, perhaps, a paper on metaphysics. You understand German, and perhaps it would be desirable that you should review Kant; and in a review of Kant, sir, you could introduce to advantage your peculiar notions about ex nihilo." He then reverted to the ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... had no experience, but which many of us know under wholly altered conditions. It was to carry on controversies as to the older and the later types of Christianity, as to Polytheism, Judaism, and Monotheism; it was to confute Romanism, Scepticism, and German metaphysics; it was to denounce celibacy and monasticism, to glorify muscular Christianity, to give glowing pictures of Greek sensuousness and Roman rascality, and finally to secure the apotheosis of Scandinavian heroism. And in spite of these incongruous and incompatible aims, ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... going to write Concerning Disappointment and Success. In the days when I studied metaphysics, I should have objected to that title, inasmuch as the antithesis is imperfect between the two things named in it. Disappointment and Success are not properly antithetic; Failure and Success are. Disappointment ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... Geology, Geography, Astronomy; Metaphysics, Philology, Theology; Economics, including Taxation and Finance; Politics and General Literature—all occupied by turn, and almost ...
— "Stops" - Or How to Punctuate. A Practical Handbook for Writers and Students • Paul Allardyce
... with great delight, not at all regretting that it is not a gold one, and much less wishing it an Arabian horse which he would not know how to manage. I am reading an idle tale, not expecting wit or truth in it, and am very glad it is not metaphysics to puzzle my judgment, or history to mislead my opinion. He fortifies his health by exercise; I calm my cares by oblivion. The methods may appear low to busy people; but if he improves his strength, and I forget my infirmities, we ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... New Englander, of whom I wrote last night, is perhaps the most intolerable bore on this vast continent. He drones, and snuffles, and writes poems, and talks small philosophy and metaphysics, and never will be quiet, under any circumstances. He is going to a great temperance convention at Cincinnati; along with a doctor of whom I saw something at Pittsburgh. The doctor, in addition to being everything that the New Englander ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... rocks and echoes no metaphysics can make right or tolerable. This result is so against nature, such a half-view, that it must be corrected by a common sense and experience. "A man is born by the side of his father, and there he remains." A man must be clothed with society, or we shall feel a certain bareness ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... Lost Sealers, was published in 1849. It deals to some extent in metaphysics, and its characters are for the most part of humble conditions. It has more of domestic life than any of the other ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... "In Memoriam" had sunk into the public mind, Mr. Tennyson had taken his rank as our first then living poet. Over the fresh hearts and understandings of the young, notwithstanding his obscurities, his metaphysics, his contempt of gewgaws, he had established an extraordinary sway. We ourselves, with some thousands of other spectators, saw him receive in that noble structure of Wren, the theatre of Oxford, the decoration of D.C.L., which we perceive he always wears ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... that, in the Scottish philosopher's words, "it is to the schoolmen that the vulgar languages are indebted for what precision and analytical subtlety they possess;" and that, as the Frenchman, going still further, but hardly exaggerating, lays it down, "logic, ethics, and metaphysics itself owe to Scholasticism a precision unknown to ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... we will find ph with the sound of f. We know that symmetrical, hypophosphite, metaphysics, emphasis, etc., are Greek because of the key we find in the prefix, and we are thus prepared for the y's and ph's. F does not exist in the Greek alphabet (except as ph) and so we shall never find it in words ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... subjects that conjunctions always connect words, not propositions. The only work in which I leave seen Dr. Latham's fundamental error exposed, is in Boole's Mathematical Analysis of Logic; the learned author, though he seems unsettled on many matters of logic and metaphysics, has clearly made up his mind on the point now under ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 213, November 26, 1853 • Various
... received from Owen's Oxford some of its most distinguished ornaments; whilst men like Philip Henry and Joseph Alleine, went forth to perpetuate Owen's principles; and in founding the English schools of metaphysics, architecture, and medicine, Locke and Wren, and Sydenham taught the world that it was no misfortune to have been the pupils of the Puritan. It would be pleasant to record that Owen's generosity was reciprocated, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... the metaphysics, Fall to them as you find your stomach serves you: No profit grows, where is no pleasure ta'en: In brief, sir, study what ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... but what has haunted me most is the recollection of a human brain, which the doctor had preserved in spirits, and on which he has given me several lectures. I remember well my sensations when I first held the soft, dark, pulpy mass in my hand. All that I had ever read in psychology and metaphysics came back to me. This is the instrument of God's masterpiece,—the human soul. Over these nodes and fissures it floated, like the spirit of God over the face of the deep. Here, as on a beautiful instrument, the spirit touched the keys, and thought, ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... land is like nearing truth in metaphysics), and ere we yet touched the beach, Borabolla declared, that we were already landed. Which paradoxical assertion implied, that the hospitality of Mondoldo was such, that in all directions it radiated far out upon the lagoon, embracing a great circle; ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... Church is too unpractical. If she were truly the Church of Jesus Christ, she would surely imitate Him better in that which, after all, was the mark of His highest Divinity—namely in His Humanity towards men. Christ did not come into the world to preach metaphysics and talk forever of a heaven that is to come; He came rather to attend to men's simplest needs, to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to reform society on better lines. It was not by His dogma that He won men's hearts; it was by His simple, natural sympathy with ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson
... must see, from their operation in the cure of the old evil, and in the cure of those new evils which are inseparable from all remedies, how they balance each other, and what is the total result. The excellence of mathematics and metaphysics is, to have but one thing before you; but he forms the best judgment in all moral disquisitions who has the greatest number and variety of considerations in one view before him, and can take them in with the best possible consideration of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... signification; so that he is elaborately enforcing upon us we know not what. That the Spirit of God meant in the New Testament God in the heart, had long been to me a sufficient explanation: and who by logic or metaphysics will carry ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... well acquainted with American university undergraduates, the intellectual maturity of the Russian or Polish student and his eagerness for the discussion of abstract problems in sociology and metaphysics are very impressive. The amount of space given in Russian novels to philosophical introspection and debate is a truthful portrayal of the subtle Russian mind. Russians love to talk; they are strenuous in conversation, and forget ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... and sinister detail of the world, that had always been a horror to his mind, became more horrible beneath the stimulus of futile thought. But whisky was the mighty cure. He was the gentleman who gained notoriety on a memorable occasion by exclaiming, "Metaphysics be damned; let us drink!" Omar and other bards have expressed the same conclusion in more dulcet wise. But Gourlay's was equally sincere. How ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... not trained in metaphysics, and there was lots I couldn't quite grasp, but I did feel it was inspiring. And she speaks so readily. I do think you ought to have got something out ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... 'I don't understand metaphysics, my dear, nor witchcraft. I sometimes believe in the supernatural, and sometimes I don't. Silas Ruthyn is himself alone, and I can't define him, because I don't understand him. Perhaps other souls than human are sometimes born into the world, ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... of a gentleman of Gloucestershire, who had run through his fortune and kept an inn at Cirencester, ed. at Westminster School and Oxf., entered the Church, was a zealous Royalist, and an eloquent preacher, and lecturer in metaphysics. He also wrote spirited lyrics and four plays. He was the friend of Ben Jonson, H. Vaughan, and Izaak Walton. He d. at Oxf. of camp fever. Among his plays are The Royal Slave, The Siege, and The Lady Errant. ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... description of a musical mood, but the showing of a man who has the mood. It is the exultation and religious feeling of a man in the very act. The noble lines are not fine things attempting to set forth the metaphysics of musical expression and enjoyment, but they represent a man at the very climax of his musical passion. Is the effect any the less dramatic because the man is not committing a murder, or conspiring, or seducing, or overreaching, or infecting an honest ear with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... it is only after considerable reflection that I perceive the weak points. My power to follow a long and purely abstract train of thought is very limited; and therefore I could never have succeeded with metaphysics or mathematics. My memory is extensive, yet hazy: it suffices to make me cautious by vaguely telling me that I have observed or read something opposed to the conclusion which I am drawing, or on the other ...
— The Autobiography of Charles Darwin - From The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin • Charles Darwin
... only cut off the heads of two of the little boys, they will not want hats; and then the hats will exactly go round. The suggestion that heads are rather more important than hats is dismissed as a piece of mystical metaphysics. The assertion that hats were made for heads, and not heads for hats savours of antiquated dogma. The musty text which says that the body is more than raiment; the popular prejudice which would prefer the lives of boys ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland
... to train and discipline the mind, but to utilize science, and become a school of technology. Greek and Latin exercises are comparatively worthless, and even mathematics, unless they can be converted into practical use. Philosophy, as ordinarily understood,—that is, metaphysics,—is most idle of all, since it does not pertain to mundane wants. Hence the old Grecian philosopher labored in vain; and still more profitless were the disquisitions of the scholastics of the Middle Ages, since they were chiefly used to prop up unintelligible creeds. Theology ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... complicated by the question of usefulness; for many of the arts and sciences require considerable intellectual power for their pursuit, and yet become contemptible by the slightness of what they accomplish: metaphysics, for instance, exercising intelligence of a high order, yet useless to the mass of mankind, and, to its own masters, dangerous. Yet, as it has become so by the want of the true intelligence which its inquiries need, and by substitution of vain subtleties in its stead, it may in future vindicate ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... The Council of Soissons was held while the architects and sculptors were building the west porch of Chartres and the Aquilon at Mont-Saint-Michel. Averroes was born at Cordova in 1126; Omar Khayyam died at Naishapur in 1123. Poetry and metaphysics owned the world, and their quarrel with theology was a private, family dispute. Very soon the tide turned decisively in Abelard's favour. Suger, a political prelate, became minister of the King, ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... accents of the inspired charity-boy!" As Coleridge was the elder by two years he left Christ's Hospital for Cambridge before Lamb had finished his course, but he came back to London now and then, to meet his schoolmate in a smoky little room of the Salutation and discuss metaphysics and poetry to the accompaniment of egg-hot, Welsh rabbits, and tobacco. Those golden hours in the old tavern left their impress deep in Lamb's sensitive nature, and when he came to dedicate his works to Coleridge he hoped that some of the sonnets, carelessly regarded by the general reader, ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... time Aristotle published his books of physics and metaphysics. Of this, Alexander who was now in Asia, got information. That ambitious prince, desirous of being in everything the first man in the world, was dissatisfied that the learning of his master ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... lines of every new battle-ship by arguments as to the sea-worthiness of the ark. Those of us who control a quarter of the habitable globe, and the inhabitants thereof, are much too busy to discuss the legal aspects of the land-grabbing of the Pharaohs. Geography is not metaphysics, but it is wofully hard for the professorial mind to ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... all pairs of friends, except such a one as Boswell and Dr. Johnson's, sooner or later must separate. Taine is an observer, an investigator, a critic; and having devoted himself in turn to travel and to the study of metaphysics, of art and of literature, he has now turned his attention to recent French history; and the book he has written is not at all to the taste of sentimental politicians of the About type. The reader will not need to be reminded ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... sale at Vienna, and the Mohawk set up his carriage, on the difference in the value of markets! Thus, you see, in order to run a fair race, the horses must start even, carry equal weights, and, after all, one commonly wins. Your metaphysics are no better than so much philosophical gold leaf, which a cunning reasoner beats out into a sheet as large as the broadest American lake, to make dunces believe the earth can be transmuted into the precious material; while a plain practical man puts the value of the metal into ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... enjoyment of a Frenchman is to hear the last cantatrice, the Spaniard enjoys the most skillful thrust of the matador in the bull arena, the Neapolitan the taste of the maccaroni, the German his beer and metaphysics, the darkey his banjo, ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... In books he sought it, which his friends might view, When their kind host the guarding curtain drew. There were historic works for graver hours, And lighter verse to spur the languid powers; There metaphysics, logic there had place; But of devotion not a single trace - Save what is taught in Gibbon's florid page, And other guides of this inquiring age. There Hume appear'd, and near a splendid book Composed by Gay's "good lord of Bolingbroke:" ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... to the modern mind and seeming altogether sacrilegious to most students of Greek philosophy, need not here detain us; neither have we much concern in the present connection with any part of the teaching of the martyred philosopher. For the historian of metaphysics, Socrates marks an epoch, but for the historian of science he is a much less ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... instruments.' Professor Starling, the author of the standard work on Physiology, and Professor Oliver, the well-known Plant-Physiologist, also became impressed by the delicacy and importance of Dr. Bose's work and methods. Professor Carveth Read, author of "Metaphysics of Nature," wondered how far the researches would profoundly affect the philosophical thoughts. Mr. Balfour, the ex-premier, became enthralled with what he saw. Professor James A. H. Murray, Editor of ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... of recognition; "there is another strong argument against your doctrine of Destiny." And then Mr. Beckendorff, taking Vivian by the arm, began walking up and down part of the saloon with him; and in a few minutes, quite forgetting the scene of the discussion, he was involved in metaphysics. This incident created another great sensation, and whispers of "secret mission, Secretary of State, decidedly a son," &c. &c. &c. were in an instant afloat in ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... speech we call the realm of the material universe, Creation; but philosophy denies its claim to that title. Man alone is Creation: everything else is appearance. The universe appears, because man exists: he implies the universe, but is not implied by it. We may assist our metaphysics, here, by a physical illustration. Take a glass prism and hold in the sunlight before a white surface. Let the prism represent man: the sun, man's Creator: and the seven-hued ray cast by the prism, nature, or the material universe. Now, if we remove the light, ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... prominent and appropriate designation," i.e., the letters C. L. in black letter. This catalogue is a classified catalogue with the following nine classes, seven of which are subdivided, and the arrangement in each class is alphabetical by authors' names: I. Theology; II. Ethics, Metaphysics, and Logic; III. Sciences and the Arts; IV. Jurisprudence, Government, and Politics; V. History and Biography; VI. Geography, Topography, Voyages and Travels; VII. Polite Literature and Philology; VIII. Poetry and Dramatic Works, Novels and Romances; IX. Transactions of Literary and Scientific ...
— Three Centuries of a City Library • George A. Stephen
... anathematised by, the founder of Buddhism. The principal of the sects now existing in Japan are the Tendai, Shingon Yoko and Ken, all of which, I may observe, are of Chinese origin. Besides these there are the Shin and the Nichiren evolved in Japan and dating from the thirteenth century. Respecting the metaphysics of Buddhism and their effect on the Japanese people I cannot, I think, do better than quote from that great authority on all things Japanese, Mr. Basil Hall Chamberlain, whose writings have done so much, not only to awaken an interest in Japan but to give correct ideas respecting the ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... doctor's pet maniac. They were often closeted together in high discourse, and indeed discussed Psychology, Metaphysics, and Moral Philosophy with indefatigable zest, long after common sense would have packed them both off to bed, the donkeys. In fact, they got so thick that Alfred thought it only fair to say one day, "Mind, doctor, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... that it was a dram-bottle, which someone raised a ghost to explain. Then the Entelecheia of Aristotle; did you ever read about that, excellent reader? Most people fancy it to have meant some unutterable crotchet in metaphysics, some horrible idea (lest the police should be after it) without a name; that is, until the Stagyrite repaired the injustice of his conduct by giving it a pretty long one. My opinion now, as you are anxious to know it, is, that it was a lady, a sweetheart of Aristotle's; for what was to hinder ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... stuck to his contention, and a terrific correspondence ensued. With the arguments exchanged—which tended more and more to appeal from common sense to metaphysics—we need not concern ourselves. The most of them reappeared the other day (1900-1901) in the public press, and will doubtless reappear at the alleged beginning of every century to come. But in his sixth letter the Vicar of Helleston opened what I ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... that the truth was everything, but a lie came that seemed better than the truth. In his soul he knew he was not acting truly; that had he honestly loved the truth, he would not have played hocus-pocus with metaphysics and logic, but would have made haste to a manly conclusion. He took the package, and on his way to the dining-room, dropped it into ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... my life," he replied. "Why, I've been splendidly entertained by a little black princess, who called herself your waiting maid, and discoursed most eloquently of METAPHYSICS ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... destiny. He did not speculate on the creation of things or the end of them. He was not troubled to account for the origin of man, nor did he seek to know about his hereafter. He meddled neither with physics nor metaphysics [2]. [Sidebar] Subjects on which Confucius did not treat.— That he was unreligious, unspiritual, and open to the charge of insincerity. The testimony of the Analects about the subjects of his teaching is the following:— 'His frequent themes of discourse were the Book ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge
... expansion of the Arabian Empire. The religious zeal of the Arab-Moors. The foundations of science and art. The beginnings of chemistry and medicine. Metaphysics and exact science. Geography and history. Discoveries, inventions, and achievements. Language and literature. Art and architecture. The government of the Arab-Moors was peculiarly centralized. Arabian civilization soon reached ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar |
