The Philosophy of the Conditioned: Comprising Some Remarks on Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy, and on Mr. J. S. Mill's Examination of that Philosophy

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A. Strahan, 1866 - Knowledge, Theory of - 189 pages

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Page 166 - ... the highest human morality which we are capable of conceiving " does not sanction them ; convince me of it, and I will bear my fate as I may. But when I am told that I must believe this, and at the same time call this being by the names which express and affirm the highest human morality, I say in plain terms that I will not. Whatever power such a being may have over me, there is one thing which he shall not do : he shall not compel me to worship him. I will call no being good, who is not what...
Page 165 - I am informed that the world is ruled by a being whose attributes are infinite, but what they are we cannot learn, nor what are the principles of his government, except that ' the highest human morality which...
Page 25 - Dangerous it were for the feeble brain of man to wade far into the doings of the Most High; whom although to know be life, and joy to make mention of his name, yet our soundest knowledge is to know that we know him not as indeed he is, neither can know him; and our safest eloquence concerning him is our silence, when we confess without confession that his glory is inexplicable, his greatness above our capacity and reach. He is above, and we upon earth; therefore it behoveth our words to be wary and...
Page 41 - It is, indeed, only through an analogy of the human with the Divine nature, that we are percipient and recipient of Divinity.
Page 46 - For it is professedly a scientific demonstration of the impossibility of that ' wisdom in high matters' which the Apostle prohibits us even to attempt; and it proposes, from the limitation of the human powers, from our impotence to comprehend what, however, we must admit, to show. articulately why the ' secret things of God' cannot but be to man 'past finding out.
Page 155 - But the Infinite, if it is to be conceived at all, must be conceived as potentially everything and actually nothing ; for if there is anything in general which it cannot become, it is thereby limited ; and if there is anything in particular which it actually is, it is thereby excluded from being any other thing. But again, it must also be conceived as actually everything and potentially nothing ; for an unrealized potentiality is likewise a limitation.
Page 37 - 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 co-extensive with the horizon of our faith...
Page 37 - 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?) The second opinion, that of KANT, is fundamentally the same as the preceding.
Page 64 - For the mind of man is far from the nature of a clear and equal glass, wherein the beams of things should reflect according to their true incidence ; nay, it is rather like an enchanted glass, full of superstition and imposture, if it be not delivered and reduced.
Page 167 - ... with express reference to their different duties and different qualifications for performing them ? The duties of a father are not the same as those of a son ; is the word therefore wholly equivocal when we speak of one person as a good father, and another as a good son? Nay, when we speak generally of a man as good, has not the epithet a tacit reference to human nature and human duties ? and yet is there no community of meaning when the same epithet is applied to other creatures ? 'H...

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