The Drift of Romanticism: Shelburne Essays, Eighth SeriesHoughton Mifflin, 1913 - 302 pages |
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absolute activity agnosticism aspects attempt beauty Beckford belief bhante called cause century character chariot Christian mythology Christianity consciousness contrary creed dæmonic desires difference dreams dualism egotism element emotions ence essay eternal evil evolution existence experience expression fact faith and disillusion feel Fiona Macleod flux Fonthill happiness heart human Huxley Huxley's hypothesis ical ideal ideas imagination impulses infinite inner check insight instinct intellectual literature luminiferous ether meaning ment metaphysical mind moral mystical Nāgasena nature negation ness Newman Nietzsche Oxford pain panpsychic pantheistic pass passions Pater pathetic fallacy pathy Peter Beckford Pforta phenomena philosophical science philosophy Plato pleasure positive science Protestantism pure rational mythology reality reason religion religious revelation romantic romanticism scepticism scientific self-knowledge sense sentiment sion society soul spiritual spontaneous mythology strange Superman superrational sympathy theory things ticism tion truth Vathek virtue whole William Beckford word writing
Popular passages
Page 93 - I put for a general inclination of all mankind a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death.
Page 121 - Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained; and the restrainer or Reason usurps its place & governs the unwilling. And being restrain'd, it by degrees becomes passive, till it is only the shadow of desire.
Page xiii - IN Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree : Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea. So twice five miles of fertile ground With walls and towers were girdled round : And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree ; And here were forests ancient as the hills, Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
Page 46 - That she drinks water, and her keel ploughs air. There is no danger to a man, that knows What life and death is : there's not any law Exceeds his knowledge ; neither is it lawful That he should stoop to any other law : He goes before them, and commands them all, That to himself is a law rational.
Page 7 - I can only answer, that either there is no Creator, or this living society of men is in a true sense discarded from His presence. . . . I argue about the world; -if there be a God, since there is a God, the human race is implicated in some terrible aboriginal calamity.
Page 43 - Every moment some form grows perfect in hand or face; some tone on the hills or the sea is choicer than the rest ; some mood of passion or insight or intellectual excitement is irresistibly real and attractive to us, — for that moment only. Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end.
Page 129 - In other words, education is the instruction of the intellect in the laws of nature, under which name I include not merely things and their forces, but men and their ways; and the fashioning of the affections and of the will into an earnest and loving desire to move in harmony with those laws.
Page 43 - How shall we pass most swiftly from point to point, and be present always at the focus where the greatest number of vital forces unite in their purest energy? To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life...
Page 15 - On these things, looking over an interval of five and twenty years, how vividly comes back the remembrance of the aching blank, the awful pause, which fell on Oxford when that voice had ceased, and we knew that we should hear it no more. It was as when, to one kneeling by night, in the silence of some vast cathedral, the great bell tolling solemnly overhead has suddenly gone still.
Page 7 - And so I argue about the world ; — if there be a God, since there is a God, the human race is implicated in some terrible aboriginal calamity. It is out of joint with the purposes of its Creator. This is a fact, a fact as true as the fact of its existence ; and thus the doctrine of what is theologically called original sin becomes to me almost as certain as that the world exists, and as the existence of God.