An Epitome of the Synthetic Philosophy

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Appleton, 1889 - 571 pages
 

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Page 512 - 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 214 - In other words, those races of beings only can have survived in which, on the average, agreeable or desired feelings went along with activities conducive to the maintenance of life, while disagreeable and habitually-avoided feelings went along with activities directly or indirectly destructive of life...
Page 12 - Our consciousness of the unconditioned being literally the unconditioned consciousness, or raw material of thought to which in thinking we give definite forms, it follows that an ever-present sense of real existence is the very basis of our intelligence.
Page 60 - Motion as well as matter being fixed in quantity, it would seem that the change in the distribution of matter which motion effects, coming to a limit in whichever direction it is carried, the indestructible motion thereupon necessitates a reverse distribution.
Page 23 - Our inability to conceive Matter becoming non-existent, is immediately consequent on the nature of thought. Thought consists in the establishment of relations. There can be no relation established, and therefore no thought framed, when one .of the related terms is absent from consciousness.
Page 46 - Evolution is an integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion; during which the matter passes from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coke-rent heterogeneity ; and during which the retained motion undergoes a parallel transformation.
Page 252 - And this brings us to the true conclusion implied throughout the foregoing pages—the conclusion that it is one and the same Ultimate Reality which is manifested to us subjectively and objectively. For while the nature of that which is manifested under either form proves to be inscrutable, the order of its manifestations throughout all mental phenomena proves to be the same as the order of its manifestations throughout all material phenomena.
Page 517 - The foregoing exposition shows that the conduct to which we apply the name good, is the relatively more evolved conduct; and that bad is the name we apply to conduct which is relatively less evolved.
Page 495 - The saying that one half the world does not know how the other half lives...
Page 8 - Matter then, in its ultimate nature, is as absolutely incomprehensible as Space and Time. Frame what suppositions we may, we find on tracing out their implications that they leave us nothing but a choice between opposite absurdities.

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