"Metaphysics" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... position in Sumner High School, at Washington, D. C. He did not remain long in Washington. His fame as an educator had grown until he was celebrated as a teacher throughout the country. He was offered and accepted the Chair of Metaphysics and Logic in the University of South Carolina, situate at Columbia. He remained here until 1877, when the Hampton Government found no virtue in a Negro as a teacher in an institution of the fame and standing of this ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... 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 ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... literature recedes into metaphysics, or dwindles into novels. How ignoble seems the current material of London literary life, for instance, compared with the noble simplicity which, a half-century ago, made the Lake Country an enchanted ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... from you such an exhaustive and formed opinion as from an older man who had made metaphysics his business, and acquainted himself with all that had been said upon the subject; at the same time you must have expended a considerable amount of thought ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... sense, it seems to have no plural. But Crombie and the others cite one or two instances in which physic and metaphysic are used, not very accurately, in the sense of the singular of physics and metaphysics. Several grammarians also quote some examples in which physics, metaphysics, politics, optics, and other similar names of sciences are used with verbs or pronouns of the singular number; but Dr. Crombie justly says the plural construction of such words, "is more common, and more ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... Metaphysics teach us, that God is a pure spirit. But, is modern theology superior to that of the savages? The savages acknowledge a great spirit, for the master of the world. The savages, like all ignorant ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... marriage union is a result of the harmonious blending of the In and Yo (i.e. the Yin and Yang of Chinese metaphysics, the female and male principles of nature). It is therefore not a matter to be lightly undertaken. It is said in the 'Scowling' passage of the (Chow) Book of Changes, 'Not being enemies they unite in marriage.' Whilst (the ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... then in a muffled tone, having given the door another premonitory shake, and as if his darkness induced metaphysics, "how many yesterdays have there been and how many to-morrows are ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... his moral nature never possessed. He had the audacity which results from presumption, not the wholesome strength which comes from the conscious possession of a right purpose. But a truce to our metaphysics. ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... 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
... 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, and in March, 1122, Abbot of Saint-Denis. ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... England cant. Yet in this work he can find no words sufficiently strong to praise what he calls the zealous freedom and Christian earnestness of one of the most offensive canters that the whole range of fiction presents. It would be unjust to deny that when in "The Sea Lions" Cooper abandons his metaphysics and turns to his real business, that he creates a powerful story. One may almost be said at times to feel the cold, the desolation, the darkness, and the gloom of an Antarctic winter confronting and overshadowing the spirit. But ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... mixture of cosmogony and Greek philosophy, tradition and fable, paganism, Judaic sacerdotalism, and temporal power wrongly called spiritual dealt out by this same Church as the last word on science, philosophy, history, metaphysics, and government." ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Browning, not as the poet of metaphysics, but as the poet of life, his last book will be singularly welcome. Something like metaphysics we find, indeed, but humanised, made poetry, in the blank verse of Development, the lyrical verse of the Prologue, ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... things in which they are deficient with the Sophomore class while their own class recite other parts in which they exceed them." The studies of the Senior year do not appear to have differed materially from those of other colleges, of that period. Jonathan Edwards was a favorite author in metaphysics and theology. ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... be lighter without that scroll work and top hamper. It has nothing to do with its life. It is as helpful to us as wall-texts and those wonders we know as works of Pure Thought. Let us remember all the noble volumes of philosophy and metaphysics we ought to have read, to learn how wonderfully far our brains have taken us beyond the relic of Piltdown; and then recall what Ypres was like, and buy a teetotum instead. That much is saved. Now we need not read them. If we feel ourselves weakening ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... not given to metaphysics, and, indeed, had few or no opinions in that department of inquiry; but the odd girl interested him, and he was ready to meet her on any ground. He had uttered his own practical unbelief, however, with considerable accuracy. ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... between the Origenists and the anthropomorphites did not end in words. A proposition in theology, or a doubt in metaphysics, was no better cause of civil war than the old quarrels about the bull Apis or the crocodile; but a change of religion had not changed the national character. The patriarch, finding his party the stronger, attacked the enemy in ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... is farther 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 ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... 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 regard I myself have collected ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... but that the systems in question are essentially identical can hardly admit of doubt. The principal difference is as to the organon by which the revelation affirmed to be internal and universal is apprehended; it affects the metaphysics of the question, and, like all metaphysics, is characteristically dark. But about this you will not get the mass of mankind to, any more than you can get yourselves to agree; no, nor will you agree even about ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... his works, and in the works of his disciples. They knew that whenever the problems of man's relation to God, the creation of the world, the origin of evil, and the hope of salvation come to be discussed, the sharpest edge of logical reasoning will turn, and the best defined terms of metaphysics die away into mere music. They knew that the hard and narrow categories of the schoolmen do greater violence to the highest truths of religion than the soft, and vague, and vanishing tones with which they tried to shadow forth in the vulgar language of the people ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... 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; ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson
... merits. Life seemed to him made on purpose that Theobald Pallinson should flourish and succeed therein. He could hardly have formed any idea of the world except as an arena for himself. He was not especially given to metaphysics; but it would not have been very difficult for him to believe that the entire universe was an emanation from the brain of Theobald Pallinson—a phenomenal world existing only in his sense of sight and touch. Happy in this opinion of himself, it is not to be supposed that the surgeon had any ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... its annotators. Bacon's Reading upon the Statute of Uses, is a very profound treatise on that subject, though evidently left by its great author in an unfinished state. Sanders on Uses and Trusts, is a very comprehensive and learned work, and the subject, which may be styled the Metaphysics of the Law, requires close attention. Hill on Trustees, is a practical treatise, which may here be read with advantage, as also Lewis on Perpetuities. Sugden on Powers, has been said to be second to ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood
... he'll begin to, and we aren't ever going to let him hear baby-talk at all, if we can help it. And truly, when you come to think of it, it is absurd to expect a child to talk sensibly and rationally on the mental diet of 'moo-moos' and 'choo-choos' served out to them. Our Professor of Metaphysics and Ideology in our Child Study Course says that nothing is so receptive and plastic as the Mind of a Little Child, and that it is perfectly appalling how we fill it with trivial absurdities that haven't even the virtue of being accurate. So that's why we're trying to be so ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... "Prolegomina Logica," "Metaphysics," "Limits of Demonstrative Evidence," "Philosophy of Kant," etc. 12mo, cloth, ...
— The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George Mueller • George Mueller
... next thing most important to mention, Metaphysics will claim your attention! There see that you can clearly explain What fits not into the human brain: For that which will not go into the head, A pompous word will stand you in stead. But, this half-year, at least, observe From regularity ...
— Faust • Goethe
... ruler within the college walls, and moves about like an undergraduate's deity. The fellows, who form the general body from which the other college-officers are chosen, are the aggregate of those four or five bachelor scholars per annum, who pass the best examination in classics, mathematics, and metaphysics. The eight oldest fellows at any time in residence, together with the master, have the government of the college vested in them. The dean is the presiding officer in chapel: his business is to ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various
... under such conditions and with such limitations as he may impose; but to surrender any portion of his sovereignty to another is to annihilate the whole. The Senator from Delaware (Mr. Clayton) calls this metaphysical reasoning, which he says he cannot comprehend. If by metaphysics he means that scholastic refinement which makes distinctions without difference, no one can hold it in more utter contempt than I do; but if, on the contrary, he means the power of analysis and combination—that power which reduces the most complex idea ...
— Remarks of Mr. Calhoun of South Carolina on the bill to prevent the interference of certain federal officers in elections: delivered in the Senate of the United States February 22, 1839 • John C. Calhoun
... ray, God with a refracted ray, and man himself with a reflected ray." Theology is natural or revealed. Speculative (theoretical) natural philosophy divides into physics, concerned with material and efficient causes, and metaphysics, whose mission, according to the traditional view, is to inquire into final causes, but in Bacon's own opinion, into formal causes; operative (technical) natural philosophy is mechanics and natural magic. The doctrine concerning man comprises anthropology (including logic and ethics) and ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... "trap," a light spring-cart with capital horse. He was a tradesman of the village, and, like the rest of the world here, wore the convenient and cleanly blue cotton trousers and blue blouse of the country. The third spare seat was occupied by a neighbouring notary, the two men discussing metaphysics, literature, and the origin of ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... writing metaphysics this morning it will be to arrange some drawings for a young lady to copy. They are leaves of the best illuminated MSS. I have, and I am going to spend my whole afternoon in explaining to her what she is to aim at ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... English," said Phineas, "I would enter into the metaphysics of the subject with pleasure, but in French it is ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... of introduction was the more necessary because many of the ancient philosophers, too warmly attached to transcendental metaphysics and sequestered speculations, had affirmed that true philosophers ought not to interest themselves in the management of public affairs. Thus, as M. Villemain observes, it was a maxim of the Epicureans, "Sapiens ne accedat ad rempublicam" (Let no wise man meddle in politics). ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... 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 Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and art to the uses of mankind—is a peculiarly isolated one. But very little is known about it among those outside of the profession. Laymen know something about law, a little about medicine, quite a lot—nowadays—about metaphysics. But laymen know nothing about engineering. Indeed, a source of common amusement among engineers is the peculiar fact that the average layman cannot differentiate between the man who runs a locomotive ...
— Opportunities in Engineering • Charles M. Horton
... 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 positive, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 6, 1917 • Various
... children reached manhood without knowing religion, and with the certainty that dogma, metaphysics, and abstract philosophy were not worth knowing. So one-sided an education could have been possible in no other country or time, but it became, almost of necessity, the more literary and political. As the children grew up, they exaggerated ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... young man desiring a liberal education, from twelve to twenty years of age, is given up to Greek and Latin. The other half is left for Mathematics, Geography, History, Geology, Chemistry, Natural History, Metaphysics, Ethics, Astronomy, and General Reading. Before entering college, his time must be almost wholly occupied with the study of Latin, Greek, and Mathematics. For he is required, in order to enter our ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... permitted to invest with it any particular object. If I could have done so, the torment would have ceased. When at last I was roused from this state of suffering, I could not of course in those days (knowing no verbal metaphysics, and no metaphysics at all, except by the dreadful experience of an abstract idea)—I could not of course find words to describe the nature of my sensations, and even now I cannot explain why it is that the forced contemplation of a mere quality, ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... of this kind seems to have had no significance for the men of those days; they were blind to all homosexual emotion which had no result in sodomy. Plato found such attraction a subject for sentimental metaphysics, but it was not until nearly our own time that it again became a subject of interest and study. Yet it undoubtedly had profound influence on Michelangelo's art, impelling him to find every kind of human beauty in the male form, and only a grave dignity or tenderness, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... that which says that if we 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 ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland
... cut off a grasshopper's wings, and frow him in a milk-pan, what would he do?" remarked Winnie, inclining to metaphysics, as was Winnie's custom when he wasn't wanted. Gypsy took several severe stitches, and ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... see; and several literary, charitable, and pious institutions at Manilla look up to him as their patron and head; among others may be mentioned the University of Santo Tomas, having chairs for students of Latin, logic, metaphysics, moral philosophy, canon ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... of truth has been given to the rhetorical dogma that metaphor, or simile, may be made to strengthen an argument as well as to embellish a description. The principle of the vis inertiae, for example, seems to be identical in physics and metaphysics. It is not more true in the former, that a large body is with more difficulty set in motion than a smaller one, and that its subsequent momentum is commensurate with this difficulty, than it is, in the latter, that intellects ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... ability, the French are certainly inferior to no other nation. They have not, perhaps, so frequently as others, that cool, sound judgment in matters of speculation, which can fit them for unravelling with success the perplexities of metaphysics; but their unparalleled success in mathematical pursuits is the best possible proof of the accuracy and quickness of their reasoning powers, when confined within due bounds. We do not refer to the astonishing efforts of such men as d'Alembert or La Place, but to the general diffusion of mathematical ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... temper, strong, keen, frank, and a little hard and mordent, brought him too near a mischievous disbelief in the dignity of men and their lives, at least it kept him well away from morbid weakness in ethics, and from beating the winds in metaphysics. But of this we shall see more in considering his public pieces than can be gathered ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... above, I know well, of things in which I have no skill to speak; I know no philosophy or metaphysics; to look into a philosophical book is to me like looking into a room piled up with bricks, the pure materials of thought; they have no meaning for me, until the beautiful mind of some literary architect has built them into a house of life; but just as a shallow ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... his literary, artistic, and scientific taste and knowledge. In a great hunting-party he carried off the honors by his fearless and admirable riding. Sporting men said: "Why, there really is something in the man beside good looks and German music and metaphysics. He can take hedges and ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... 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
... some fundamental difference of opinion, amid a prismatic spray of epigram. Jane kept up a sort of obbligato to the show, inserting provocative little witticisms here and there, sometimes as Rodney's ally, sometimes as her husband's, and luring them, when she could, into the quiet backwaters of metaphysics, where she was more than a match for the two of them. Jane could juggle Plato, Bergson and William James, with one hand tied behind her. But when she incautiously ventured out of this domain, as occasionally she did—when, for example, ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... What an abyss of mystery, surmise, and metaphysics you fell into while I was eating my dinner! I used the phrase 'brown thrush,' only in reference to her dress and ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... attempt in his Metaphysics of Ethics to overcome the speculative difficulty in question, it is evident that he is not satisfied with his own solution of it, since he has repeatedly declared, that the practical reason furnishes the only ground on which it can be surmounted. "This view of Kant," says Knapp, "implying ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... not fail to make a fortune in this business; of which the present head was one Beinkleider, a German. Beinkleider was skilful in his trade (after the manner of his nation, which in breeches and metaphysics—in inexpressibles and incomprehensibles—may instruct all Europe), but too fond of his pleasure. Some promissory notes of his had found their way into Hayes's hands, and had given him the means not only of providing Master Billings with a cheap ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... into collision, the warlike qualities of these masses, the energy and talent of their commanders, the spirit, more or less martial, of nations and epochs,[51]—in a word, every thing that can be called the poetry and metaphysics of war,—will have a permanent influence ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... condemns the propriety or usefulness of human learning, or denies it to be promotive of the temporal comforts of man. He says that the knowledge of Latin, Greek and Hebrew, or of logic and philosophy, or of ethics, or of physics and metaphysics, is not necessary. But not necessary for what? Mark his own meaning. Not necessary to make a minister of the Gospel. But where does he say that knowledge, which he himself possessed to such a considerable extent, was not necessary, or ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... with pains, and kept with care; 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
... idleness, and what not, let us at once take a high ground, and say,—Go you to your own employments, and to such dull studies as you fancy; go and bob for triangles, from the Pons Asinorum; go enjoy your dull black draughts of metaphysics; go fumble over history books, and dissert upon Herodotus and Livy; OUR histories are, perhaps, as true as yours; our drink is the brisk sparkling champagne drink, from the presses of Colburn, Bentley and Co.; our ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the six millions of gold, the least inclined to quackery of any of the professors of alchymy. His writings were very numerous, and include nearly five hundred volumes, upon grammar, rhetoric, morals, theology, politics, civil and canon law, physics, metaphysics, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... not remember him as especially studious. Mr. Ripley had classes in German philosophy and metaphysics, in Kant and Spinoza, and Isaac used to look in, as he turned wherever he thought he might find answers to his questions. He went to hear Theodore Parker preach in the Unitarian Church in the neighboring village ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... should sing, against her will, and when he next met her, inquired, 'Pray, madam, are you as proud and ill-natured to-day as when I saw you last?' It seems, indeed, that throughout his life Swift's mind was positively abnormal, and this may help to excuse the repulsive elements in his writings. For metaphysics and abstract principles, it may be added, he had a bigoted antipathy. In religion he was a staunch and sincere High Churchman, but it was according to the formal fashion of many thinkers of his day; he looked on the Church not as a medium of ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... of law the dervish Khalid wends his way to that of science, and from the house of science he passes on to that of metaphysics. His staff in hand, his wallet hung on his shoulder, his silver cigarette case in his pocket, patient, confident, content, he makes his way from one place to another. Unlike his brother dervishes, he is clean and proud of it, too. He knocks at this or that door, makes his ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... many respects an advance, and in others a decline, in his views of life and the world. His Theory of Ideas in the next generation passed into one of Numbers, the nature of which we gather chiefly from the Metaphysics of Aristotle. Of the speculative side of this theory there are no traces in the Laws, but doubtless Plato found the practical value which he attributed to arithmetic greatly confirmed by the possibility of applying number and measure to the revolution of the heavens, and to the regulation of human ...
— Laws • Plato
... becomes a careful student, examines everything, examines his own enthusiasm, examines his last examination, tries every estimate again and again. He distrusts his tools, and then distrusts his own distrust, lifting himself by the very boot-straps in his metaphysics, to get at some foundation which will not move. He will know what he is about and what is great. He puts Caesar, Milton, and Whitfield into his crucible; but that which went in Caesar comes out a part of himself. The bold yet modest young chemist ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... deal of French tournure; and the gentleness with which her fine eyes and sweet voice directed the movements of a young female slave, was really touching: the way, too, in which she blended her French talk of modes with her customers, and her English talk of metaphysics with her friends, had a pretty air of indifference in it, that gave ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... world what the world calls the scandale of love, one must have at least the courage of one's passion. In this respect the women of the eighteenth century are better than you: they did not subtilise love in metaphysics [elles n'alambiquaient pas ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... testily, after having filled and lighted a pipe,—"Phew! So that's over, and I a'n't sorry; it's as bad as reading the 'Diary of a Physician.' The boy will be all right now, and the lesson won't hurt him, though it has been a rough one. But no more metaphysics for him, Ned Blount! And, boys, let this be a warning to you. He's too brittle a toy to be ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... the metaphysics of individualism, just as the conception of national and international federalism corresponds to the scientific ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... understanding in the search of truth,' though wide enough, would err through including truths known from intuition; for, though doubtless many seeming intuitions are processes of inference, questions as to what facts are real intuitions belong to Metaphysics, not to Logic. ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing
... 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 ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... received from the Rev. Archibald Alison, Episcopalian clergyman in Edinburgh, a copy of his once famous, but now, I believe, forgotten, Essay on Taste, which contained (p. 129) the authorized exposition of that theory, so congenial to Scotch metaphysics, that objects seem beautiful to us only because our minds associate them with sensible objects which have previously given us pleasure. In his letter to the author, acknowledging the receipt of his book, Burns says, "I own, sir, at first glance, several of your propositions ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... Shelley's poetry, 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. The same thing is conspicuous, though ...
— Shelley - An Essay • Francis Thompson
... Oxford drawing-room, she had found herself absorbing metaphysics, as it were through the pores of her skin, without any previous discipline in that exacting science; now, in a London studio, she became aware of a similarly miraculous influx of power. Yesterday she would have told you that she ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... them for their morality, yet he looked on them as dreamers seeking for the type of a universal constitution, and considering the character of man in the abstract only. The ideologues, according to him, looked for power in institutions; and that he called metaphysics. He had no idea of power except in direct force: All benevolent men who speculate on the amelioration of human society were regarded by Bonaparte as dangerous, because their maxims and principles were diametrically ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... eloquence was overwhelming. His language, his style, his figures, his argument, were most brilliant and sparkling. He spoke like a great statesman and patriot and a sound constitutional lawyer. All the cobwebs of sophistryship and metaphysics about State Rights and State Sovereignty he brushed away with ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... order to make my credo look reasonable and "according to plan." What I wanted to do was to say frankly, fairly, and truthfully what I do believe as a matter of fact and not as a matter of ought or ought not. I wanted to record an existing set of actualities, not to write a piece of philosophy or metaphysics. I wanted, in fact, to photograph my soul. But this, again, must wait, though I hope it will ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... share alike. He was at that time employed on his Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge, which was his first work. When this was finished, the difficulty was to find a bookseller who would take it. The booksellers of Paris are shy of every author at his beginning, and metaphysics, not much then in vogue, were no very inviting subject. I spoke to Diderot of Condillac and his work, and I afterwards brought them acquainted with each other. They were worthy of each other's esteem, and were presently on the most friendly terms. Diderot persuaded the bookseller, ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... never liked any of her charges since the renowned Anna Webster so well as Phoebe Fulmort; although her abilities did not rise above the 'very fair,' and she was apt to be bewildered in metaphysics and political economy; but then she had none of the eccentricities of will and temper of Miss Fennimore's clever girls, nor was she like most good-humoured ones, recklessly insouciante. Her only drawback, in the governess's eyes, was that she never seemed desirous of going ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... my admiration, and 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 hand in favour of it; and after a time I can generally recollect where ...
— The Autobiography of Charles Darwin - From The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin • Charles Darwin
... Company, but such as were distinguish'd for Men of Sense. As he was well-grounded, in all the Sciences of the antient Chaldeans, he was no Stranger to those Principles of Natural Philosophy, which were then known: And understood as much of Metaphysics as any one in all Ages after him; that is to say, he knew little or nothing of the Matter. He was firmly convinc'd, that the Year consisted of 365 Days and an half, tho' directly repugnant to the new Philosophy of the Age he liv'd in; and that the ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... heard too many well-attested facts (facts to which belief could not be refused upon any known laws of evidence) not to believe that impressions are sometimes made in this manner, and forewarnings communicated, which cannot be explained by material philosophy or mere metaphysics.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... extent of denying any reality to sense or matter, declaring that sense is a delusion. It sought to leave the soul emancipated from desire, from a material body, in a state which according to Indian metaphysics is being, but not existence. Desire, anger, ignorance, evil thoughts are consumed by the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... farm. [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 "individual" have undergone ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... to find words to describe Nieuport as it is to talk of metaphysics in slang. The words don't seem invented that will convey that haunting sense of desolation, that supreme quiet under the shock of continually firing guns. Hardly anything is left now of the little homely bits that, when I saw the ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... 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 the ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... antagonist *Cata down catalepsy, cataclysm *Dia through, across diameter, dialogue *Epi upon epidemic, epithet, epode, ephemeral *Hyper over, extremely hypercritical, hyperbola *Hypo under, in smaller hypodermic, hypophosphate measure *Meta after, over metaphysics, metaphor *Para beside paraphrase, paraphernalia *Peri around, about periscope, peristyle *Pro before proboscis, prophet *Syn together, with synthesis, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... Metaphysics. Special topics. Mind and body. Philosophic systems. Mental faculties, psychology. Logic, ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... found in reconciling these two views, which to the natural mind seem absolutely contradictory; but by ingenious manipulation of texts, by dexterous play upon phrases, and by the abundant use of metaphysics to dissolve away facts, a reconciliation was effected, and men came at least to believe that they believed in a creation of the universe instantaneous and at the same ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... a sovereign, they will say to him: "Four branches of study are said to be proper for kings—the vedas, the puranas, metaphysics, and political science;—but the first three are of very little advantage; they may safely be neglected, and he should give up his mind to the last only. Are there not the six thousand verses composed for the use of kings, and containing the whole science? Learn these by heart, and you ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob
... Desmoulins, the inaugurator of the Revolution, and St. Just, its fiery and immaculate apostle, sat on its benches. To obtain admission to the college of Cluny (1269) the scholar must pass an entrance examination. He then spent two years at logic, three at metaphysics, two in Biblical studies; he held weekly disputations and preached every fortnight in French; he was interrogated every evening by the president on his studies during the day. If students evinced no aptitude for learning they were dismissed; if only moderate progress were made, the secular duties ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... symbolic and does not attempt to rationalize its symbolism, a dogmatic religion must always contain within the circle of its creed many profound and illuminating secrets. The false and ephemeral portion of a dogmatic religion is its metaphysical aspect, because the whole science of metaphysics is an ambiguity from the start, since it is a projection of one isolated ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... itself painfully with this impression of pretty, scented women, and the clatter of tongues and coffee-cups. He stood rooted to the threshold in a sudden bitter realization that the great world cared nothing about metaphysics. Ease, fine furniture, a position in the world—these were the things that counted. Why had all his genius brought him none of these things? Wifeless, childless, moneyless, he stood, a solitary soul wrestling with problems. How had Mendelssohn managed to obtain everything? Doubtless he had ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... its opinions, not only as to the end of life, which was the main point of division, but as to all questions on all subjects. The Stoic did not differ merely in his ethics from the Epicurean; he differed also in his theology and his physics and his metaphysics. Aristotle, as Shakespeare knew, thought young men "unfit to hear moral philosophy". And yet it was a question—or rather the question—of moral philosophy, the answer to which decided the young man's opinions on all other points. The language which Cicero sometimes uses about ...
— A Little Book of Stoicism • St George Stock
... all your energies along a 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 and ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji
... forefathers and their obliging astrology, fell involuntarily into their way of thinking. However, I stopped myself in time from following that dangerous road, and, as I have made it a rule not to reject anything decisively and not to trust anything blindly, I cast metaphysics aside and began to look at what was beneath my feet. The precaution was well-timed. I only just escaped stumbling over something thick and soft, but, to all appearance, inanimate. I bent down to see what it was, and, by the light of the moon, which now shone right upon ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... that in all humility, that the duties of mounting guard and the service of the king have caused me to neglect study a little. I should find myself, therefore, more at my ease, FACILUS NATANS, in a subject of my own choice, which would be to these hard theological questions what morals are to metaphysics in philosophy." ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... science, d'interroger les deux grandes ecoles rivales au profit de la verite.—COUSIN, Fragments Litteraires, 1843, 95, on Degerando. No branch of philosophical doctrine, indeed, can be fairly investigated or apprehended apart from its history. All our systems of politics, morals, and metaphysics would be different if we knew exactly how they grew up, and what transformations they have undergone; if we knew, in short, the true history of human ideas.—CLIFFE LESLIE, Essays in Political and Moral Philosophy, 1879, 149. The history of philosophy ...
— A Lecture on the Study of History • Lord Acton
... the subject of "Northern amalgamators." I called to me a pretty little boy with the faintest tinge of umber in his skin, and pointed him to the lank Virginian without a word. The lank Virginian understood the answer, and sat down to read Bledsoe on the Soul. Bledsoe, as a slave-labor growth in metaphysics, (indeed, the only Southern metaphysician, if we except Governor Wise,) is much coddled at the South. I believe, besides, that he proves the divine right of Slavery a priori. If he begins with the "Everlasting Me," he must be just ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... once the inspiration and the happiness of all good men—how madly he rested on the conviction that religion is an abstract matter, and has nothing more to do with life and conduct than any other abstruse branch of metaphysics. But in spite of this unsound state of things, the gentleman possessed all the showy surface-virtues that go so very far towards eliciting the favourable verdict of mankind. He prided himself upon a delicate, a surprising ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... the entire man, are of no importance whatever, would not be worthy even of mere mention if it were not for the fact that this form of delusion has of late become so common, under the deceptive names of metaphysics, Christian science, and mind-cure, when the theory is simply an attempt to get rid of science ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various
... seat of thought; sensorium^, sensory; head, headpiece; pate, noddle^, noggin, skull, scull, pericranium [Med.], cerebrum, cranium, brainpan^, sconce, upper story. [in computers] [Comp.] central processing unit, CPU; arithmetic and logical unit, ALU. [Science of mind] metaphysics; psychics, psychology; ideology; mental philosophy, moral philosophy; philosophy of the mind; pneumatology^, phrenology; craniology [Med.], cranioscopy [Med.]. ideality, idealism; transcendentalism, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... to enjoy the sardonic metaphysics of the case with Putney. He said gravely that he had been talking of the matter with Dr. Morrell, and he had no doubt that there was a taint of insanity in every wrong-doer; some day he believed the law would take cognizance of ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... can, indeed, be no right conception of Washington that does not accord him a great and extraordinary genius. I will not say he could have produced a play of Shakespeare, or a poem of Milton, handled with Kant the tangled skein of metaphysics, probed the secrecies of mind and matter with Bacon, constructed a railroad or an engine like Stephenson, wooed the electric spark from heaven to earth with Franklin, or walked with Newton the pathways of the spheres. But if his genius were of a ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... sacrament. He is dismissed. He preaches his "farewell sermon," like Wesley, like Emerson, like Newman, and many another still unborn. He removes to Stockbridge, then a hamlet in the wilderness, preaches to the Indians, and writes treatises on theology and metaphysics, among them the world famous "Freedom of the Will." In 1757, upon the death of his son-in-law, President Aaron Burr of Princeton, Edwards is called to the vacant Presidency. He is reluctant to go, for though he is only fifty-four, his health has never been robust, and he has his great ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... Latinist, and had a profound acquaintance with geometry, and the other branches of mathematical science. For knowledge of the various eastern tongues he was no unequal match for Lee, of Cambridge; while his acquirements in natural philosophy, political economy, and metaphysics, were such as would have fairly entitled him to prelect on these subjects in any university in Europe. Besides this, he had an exquisite poetical genius; and, in his very first contest, succeeded in carrying off ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 565 - Vol. 20, No. 565., Saturday, September 8, 1832 • Various
... 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 which he had seen, and which he styles "a beautiful ulcer." Now will any man pretend, ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... for further exercise. He lit a pipe and smoked quietly for a little. "Odd that you didn't know Hollond. You must have heard his name. I thought you amused yourself with metaphysics." ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... some times conciliatory, it always remained independent of faith. But while Greece thus freed herself from the fetters of a superannuated mythology, and openly and boldly constructed those systems of metaphysics by means of which she claimed to solve the enigmas of the universe, her religion lost its vitality and dried up because it lacked the strengthening nourishment of reflection. It became a thing devoid of sense, whose raison d'etre was no longer understood; it embodied dead ideas and an obsolete ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... of branches of learning come from the Greek. In fact, nearly all the terms of learning and art, from the alphabet to the highest peaks of metaphysics and theology, come directly from the Greek— philosophy, logic, anthropology, psychology, aesthetics, grammar, rhetoric, history, philology, mathematics, arithmetic, astronomy, anatomy, geography, stenography, physiology, architecture, and hundreds more in similar domains; the subdivisions ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... order designed by an all-wise and all-good Creator for the benefit of man, his highest product; while other thinkers regarded Spinozism as the only rational system, indeed as the last word of all speculative metaphysics; for them logical thought necessarily led to pantheism and determinism. In France, after reaching its climax in Voltaire, it ended in materialism, atheism, and fatalism; and in England, where it had developed the ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... The conditions of our lot, and the weakness of our intelligence, make it impossible for us to tell what is the real principle of unity in the world, or even whether such a principle exists. The attempts to discover it, made by Theology and Metaphysics, have been nothing more than elaborate anthropomorphisms, in which men gave to the unknown and unknowable reality, a form which was borrowed from their own. They saw in the clouds about them an exaggerated and distorted reflection of themselves, and regarded this Brocken spectre as the controlling ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... of attempting to fasten on Emerson any particular doctrine, philosophic, or religious theory. Emerson wrings the neck of any law, that would become exclusive and arrogant, whether a definite one of metaphysics or an indefinite one of mechanics. He hacks his way up and down, as near as he can to the absolute, the oneness of all nature both human and spiritual, and to God's benevolence. To him the ultimate of a conception is its vastness, and it is probably this, rather ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... upon a little shelf, with an old Bible among them; the cosey rocking-chair that always stood by the fire, and a plant or two in the south window. He came in, stamping off the snow; Muff crawled behind the stove, and gave himself up to a fit of metaphysics. ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... 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 ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... influential audiences. The first two of the series dealt with aviation and music respectively. We understand that the titles of the remainder of the series will include "Physical Culture," "The Limitations of Radium," "The Place of Theosophy in Metaphysics," and "The ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various
... some point of view, it will be found that, in Chapters III to XI, a doctrine is presented. It is the same as that presented much more in detail, and with a greater wealth of reference, in my "System of Metaphysics," which was published a short time ago. In the Notes in the back of this volume, the reader will find references to those parts of the larger work which treat of the subjects more briefly discussed here. It will be helpful to the teacher to keep the larger work on hand, and to use more or less ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... no communion where there is no distinction. But we shall be in an abyss of metaphysics presently, if we don't look out; and besides, we must not be too grand, to-day, for the younger children. We'll be grand, some day, by ourselves, if we must. (The younger children are not pleased, and prepare to remonstrate; but, knowing by experience, that all conversations ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... dream, remember, argue with themselves, devise, plan, and reason. What is the intellect and intelligence of the man but the intellect of the animal in a higher degree or larger quantity?" In the real explanation of a single thought of a dog, all metaphysics will be condensed. ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... Metaphysics the Noblest of the Sciences: "When a mon wha' kens naething aboot ony subject, takes a subject that nae mon kens onything aboot and explains it to anither mon still more ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... man to discover and study mechanisms. But he must remember that mechanism does not produce force, it only transmits it. If he maintains that he has nothing to do with anything outside of mechanism, that the invisible and imponderable force lies outside of his domain, he has handed over to metaphysics the fairest and richest portion of his realm. In our fear of being metaphysical we have swung to another extreme, and have lost sight of valuable truth which lay at the bottom of the old vitalistic theories. Cells, tissues, and organs are but channels ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... this very moment riding on a poker 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 both attain very ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... satisfied to find in me a gratified listener. He talked well and fluently, with little regard to logical sequence, and with something of the dogmatism natural to one whose opinions had seldom been subjected to scrutiny. He seemed equally at home in the most abstruse questions of theology and metaphysics, and in the more practical matters of mackerel-fishing, corn-growing, and cattle-raising. It was manifest that to his book lore he had added that patient and close observation of the processes of ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... peasant farmer are not the same that fill the mind of the university don, but if the respective environments of the two types had been reversed the professor might have thought about manure and the farmer about metaphysics. And this holds good also of nations and races. Consider, for instance, the German people who before the rise of Bismarck were looked upon as a nation of peaceful peasants and Gelerhten, "ces bons Allemands," in contemporary French parlance, and how they became within ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... became the 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, all these ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... said the missionary, quietly. Then Bruce joyfully took him up and led him on into a discussion of evidences, and from evidences into metaphysics, the origin of evil and the freedom of the will, till the missionary, as Bill said, "was rattled worse nor a rooster in the dark." Poor little Mrs. Muir was much scandalized and looked anxiously at her husband, wishing him to take her out. But help came from an unexpected quarter, and ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... with disquisition and gossip and anecdote. He was a shade too sentimental for my own sympathies, and I fancied he was rather too fond of superfine discriminations and of discovering subtle intentions in shallow places. At moments, too, he plunged into the sea of metaphysics, and floundered a while in waters too deep for intellectual security. But his abounding knowledge and happy judgment told a touching story of long attentive hours in this worshipful company; there was a reproach to my wasteful saunterings in so devoted a culture of opportunity. ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James |
