Philosophical Miscellanies: Translated from the French of Cousin, Jouffroy, and B. Constant. With Introductory and Critical Notices. By George Ripley ...Hilliard, Gray,, 1838 |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
absolute substance action activity Aristotle authority Beautiful believe causality cause century character commence common sense comprehend Condillac condition consequences Cousin Descartes destiny destroy developement doctrine doubt Eclecticism elements error existence external world fact of consciousness faculties faith Fichte finite France Germany give Hegel history of philosophy human mind human nature human race ideas induction Infinite intellectual intelligence Kant knowledge labors laws laws of thought legitimate less liberty limits losophy Maine de Biran Malebranche manifested ment metaphysical method moral necessary ness never not-me notion object observation ontology ourselves Pantheism perceive personal power phenomena phenomenon philo philoso Plato possess present principle problem produced profound psychology question reality reason recognise refer reflection regard relation religion revealed Royer-Collard sciousness sensation sensibility Sensual school skepticism soul sphere spirit spontaneous substance theocracy thing thought tion true unity universal voluntary whole Xenophanes
Popular passages
Page iv - For the sun, which we want, ripens wits as well as fruits ; and as wine and oil are imported to us from abroad, so must ripe understanding, and many civil virtues, be imported into our minds from foreign writings, and examples of best ages: we shall else miscarry still, and come short in the attempts of any great enterprise.
Page 69 - It is reason which gives us (his threefold knowledge on the same authority with that of the slightest cognition which we possess ; reason, the sole faculty of all knowing, the only principle of certainty, the exclusive standard of the True and the False, of good and evil, which alone can perceive its own mistakes, correct itself when it is deceived, restore itself when it is in error, call itself to account, and pronounce upon itself the sentence of acquittal or of condemnation.
Page 273 - ... the disposition to communicate himself, or diffuse his own FULNESS,* which we must conceive of as being originally in God as a perfection of his nature, was what moved him to create the world.
Page 238 - I shall be thought extremely devot at Paris. Yet it is not from Rome, but from Berlin, that I address you. The man who holds this language to you is a philosopher, formerly disliked^ and even persecuted, by the priesthood ; but this philosopher has a mind too little affected by the recollection of his own insults, arid is too well acquainted with human nature and with history., not to regard religion as an indestructible power ; genuine Christianity, as a means of civilization for the people...
Page 302 - Christian whence comes the human race, he knows ; or whither it goes, he knows ; or how it goes, he knows. If we ask that poor child, who has never reflected on the subject in his life, why he is here below and what will become of him after death, he will give you a sublime answer, which he will not thoroughly comprehend, but which is none the less admirable for that. If we ask him how the world was created, and for what end ; why God has placed in it plants and animals ; how the earth was peopled...
Page 237 - I ask, then, is it our object to respect the religion of the people, or to destroy it ? If we mean to set about destroying it, then, I allow, we ought by no means to have it taught in the people's schools. But if the object we propose to ourselves is totally different, we must teach our children that religion which civilized our fathers; that religion whose liberal spirit prepared, and can alone sustain, all the great institutions of modern times.
Page 273 - But the diffusive disposition that excited God to give creatures existence, was rather a communicative disposition in general, or a disposition in the fulness of the divinity to flow out and diffuse itself. Thus the disposition there is in the root and stock of a tree...
Page 272 - Thus it is fit, since there is an infinite fountain of light and knowledge, that this light should shine forth in beams of communicated knowledge and understanding...
Page 270 - God, if he is a cause, can create ; and, if he is an absolute cause, he cannot but create ; and in creating the universe he does not draw it forth from nothingness, but from himself. God therefore creates, he creates by virtue of his creative power ; he draws forth the world not from nothingness, which is not, but from him who is absolute existence. An absolute creative force, which cannot but pass into act, being eminently his characteristic, it follows, not that creation is possible, but that it...
Page 237 - Normal course ; so that at the end of the entire course, the young masters, without being theologians, may have a clear and precise Knowledge of the history, doctrines, and, above all, the moral precepts of Christianity. Without this, the pupils, when they become masters, would be incapable of giving any other religious instruction than the mechanical repetition of the catechism, which would be quite insufficient I would particularly urge this point, which is the most important and the most delicate...