"Metaphysical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... feared that these very simple truths are not always so well understood as they should be. There is a notion that salvation is something metaphysical, or legal, or sentimental; that it consists in the belief of certain propositions or the experience of certain emotions. But all this is delusive and puerile. If it is with the heart that man believeth, he "believeth ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden
... the end—he had to take it out in something—he took it out in writing a book about her. He propped up a mental portrait of her on his desk before him, and translated it into the character of Pauline. In that way he was able to spend long delightful hours alone with her every day, in a kind of metaphysical intimacy. He had never heard her voice—but now he heard it as often as Pauline opened her lips. He owned her—he possessed her—she lived under his roof—she was always waiting for him in his study. She is ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... idea, and only one, not comprehensible by the American mind. I say it feebly, but I say it fearlessly, there is an idea which does not present anything to the American mind but a blank. Every metaphysical dog has worried the life out of every abstraction but this. I strike my stick down, cross my hands, and rest my chin upon them, in support of my position. Let anybody attempt to controvert it! "I say, that in the American mind, ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... Scot is more excitable, more easily brought to a glow of passion, more apt to be eagerly absorbed in one thing at a time. He is also more fond of abstract intellectual effort. It is not merely that the taste for metaphysical theology is commoner in Scotland than in England, but that the Scotch have a stronger relish for general principles. They like to set out by ascertaining and defining such principles, and then to pursue a series of logical deductions from them. They are, therefore, somewhat bolder reasoners ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
... that the common ideal conception of "Immortality" is not only essentially wrong, but a physical and metaphysical impossibility. The idea, whether cherished by Theosophists or non-Theosophists, by Christians or Spiritualists, by Materialists or Idealists, is a chimerical illusion. But the actual prolongation of human life is possible for a time so long as to appear miraculous and incredible ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... our only test of truth. Furthermore, the sense of personality and the voice of conscience, analyzed to their sources, can only be explained by the assumption of an infinite personality and an absolute standard of right. Or, if to some all this appears but wire-drawn metaphysical subtlety, they are welcome to the definition of the realist, that the idea of God is the sum of those intelligent activities which the individual, reasoning from the analogy of his own actions, imagines to be behind and to bring about natural phenomena.[44-1] ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... The metaphysical Abbe proposed a scheme by far too delicately complicated for the tear and wear of human business and human passions. The absurdity, even of the parts which Napoleon consented to adopt, became apparent to all when the machine was set in motion. The two most prominent and peculiar devices—namely, ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... The profound metaphysical knowledge displayed throughout the System of Nature, and the doctrines which are therein advanced, warrants the conclusion, that it is at once the most decisive, boldest, and most extraordinary work, that the human understanding ever had the courage to produce. ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... thought by means of rational concepts). But the former notion, namely, that of perfection, may either be taken in a theoretic signification, and then it means nothing but the completeness of each thing in its own kind (transcendental), or that of a thing merely as a thing (metaphysical); and with that we are not concerned here. But the notion of perfection in a practical sense is the fitness or sufficiency of a thing for all sorts of purposes. This perfection, as a quality of man and consequently ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... had much to do with the strange feelings awakened in Godwin when he transferred to his mother's house the cabinets which had been Mr. Gunnery's pride for thirty or forty years. Joy of possession was subdued in him by the conflict of metaphysical questionings. ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... no part of my scheme to enter at present into metaphysical discussions which neither you nor I can understand, discussions which really lead nowhere. I have told you already that I do not wish to philosophise with you, but to help you to consult your own heart. If all the philosophers in the world should ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... ended had it continued on these lines I cannot say. The soul of Mr. McCunn was being assailed by moral and metaphysical adversaries with which he had not been trained to deal. But suddenly it leapt from negatives to positives. He saw the face of the girl in the shuttered House, so fair and young and yet so haggard. It seemed to be ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... who in conversation seems to have been a happy mixture of a German philosopher and an Italian improvvisatore. Here Hazlitt learned to utter the philosophic criticisms which he most passionately believed in; and Lloyd, whose intellect was one of peculiar refinement, discoursed modestly of metaphysical problems, analyzing to an extent that Talfourd says was positively painful. Here the social reformer Leigh Hunt came, and for the moment forgot that social reforms were needed. Here the Opium-Eater came, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... the poetry of Mr. Browning, which the dense, involved, and metaphysical treatment of "Sordello" first suggested to the public, are made to apply to all his subsequent writings. We concede that "Sordello" over-refines, and that, after reading it, "who would has heard Sordello's story told," but who would not and could not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... obtrusion of Clytie's excellences upon her, or whether she had an intuitive appreciation of the rites of certain other heathens, and, indulging in that "fetish" ceremony, imagined that the original of her wax model would pine away and finally die, is a metaphysical question I shall ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... Lovers' Quarrel we find a less metaphysical pair than those whom we have followed in their quest. This man has not taken her for granted, but neither has he frightened her with the mystery of her own and his elusiveness. No; these two have just had, very ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... see Sandoe's depth," Adrian replied. "Consider that phrase, 'Ophelia of the Ages'! Is not Brawnley, like a dozen other leading spirits—I think that's your term just the metaphysical Hamlet to drive her mad? She, poor maid! asks for marriage and smiling babes, while my lord lover stands questioning the Infinite, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... famous empires it once possessed. He used to say, "Europe is a mole-hill. There have never been great empires and revolutions except in the East, where there are 600,000,000 men." He considered that part of the world as the cradle of all religious, of all metaphysical extravagances. This subject was no less interesting than inexhaustible, and he daily introduced it when conversing with the generals with whom he was intimate, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... horse and replace the dissevered member. Many modern humbugs are of this description; they are real polipi; chop them into a thousand pieces, and each piece will start up as brisk and as lively as ever. Metaphysical humbugs are the most difficult kind to deal with. Contending with them is like wrestling with spectres; there is not substance enough ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... department of its history—its animal history; its vegetable history; its mineral history; its social history; its moral history; its political history; its scientific history; its literary history; its musical history; its artistical history; above all, its metaphysical history. She must begin with the Chinese dynasty and end with Japan. But first of all she must study geology, and especially the history of the extinct races of animals—their natures, their habits, their loves, their hates, their ...
— The Light Princess and Other Fairy Stories • George MacDonald
... many-sided mass of splendid manhood he was! What a complete combination of philosopher, theologian, preacher, scholar, and college president all rolled into one! During the twenty years of his brilliant career at Princeton he displayed much of Jonathan Edwards' metaphysical acumen, of John Witherspoon's wisdom, Samuel Davies' fervor and Dr. "Johnny" McLean's kindness of heart; the best qualities of his predecessors were combined in him. He came here a Scotchman at the age of fifty-seven, ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... in China is seven hundred times the amount of the New Testament," and, of course, this vast extent means that there is a correspondingly wide field for eclecticism. "The Hina-yana did not trouble itself with metaphysical speculation; that was reserved for the Maha-yana, and Kukai was the greatest Japanese teacher of the arcana of Buddhism. How much of his system he owed to studies conducted in China, how much to his own inspiration, research has not yet determined. An essentially esoteric system, it conceived a ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... veriest scribbler on earth, I should feel affronted. As I accept your compliments, it is but fair I should give equal or greater credit to your objections, the more so, as I believe them to be well founded. With regard to the political and metaphysical parts, I am afraid I can alter nothing; but I have high authority for my errors in that point, for even the AEneid was a political poem, and written for a political purpose; and as to my unlucky opinions on subjects ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... perfect philosophy of the natural kind, only staves off our IGNORANCE a little longer; as, perhaps, the most perfect philosophy of the moral or metaphysical kind, serves only to discover larger ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... poem than the Paradise Lost; and has produced and will produce a much more extensive impression on mankind. The reason is, that it is much fuller of event, is more varied, is more filled with images familiar to all mankind, and is less lost in metaphysical or philosophical abstractions. Homer, though the father of poets, was essentially dramatic; he was an incomparable painter; and it is his dramatic scenes, the moving panorama of his pictures, which fascinates the world. He often ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... been said to show that what we have here is only the absorption of even the profoundest religious meanings into the vortex of an all-dissolving metaphysical system. The most obvious meaning of the phrase 'Son of God,' its moral and spiritual, its real religious meaning, is dwelt on, here in Hegel, as little as Hegel claimed that the Nicene trinitarians had dwelt upon it. Nothing marks more clearly the distance ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... French mind, it is somewhat strange that the French psychologists should devote themselves chiefly to the study of the insane and hysterical. Philosophy, though it gives us soaring thoughts, grand speculations, and metaphysical schemes, from Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer, to Herbert Spencer, and Mr. Mallock, cannot give us any knowledge in which they mutually agree. Mr. Mallock sums up philosophy as a necessity to the mind. We ...
— Cobwebs of Thought • Arachne
... planet through the realms of sky; while his fair and weaker companion and attendant, the Spirit of the Moon, receives bliss from the annihilation of evil in the superior sphere." We are in a strange metaphysical region, an interstellar space of incredibly rarefied fire and light, the true home of Shelley's spirit, where the circling spheres sing to one another in wave upon wave of lyrical rapture, as inexpressible in prose as music, and culminating ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... numberless effusions of genius in which individual feeling is but the echo of the universal heart. But the poem on "The Ideal and Life" is highly mystical and obscure;— "it is a specimen," says the critic we have just quoted, "of those poems which were the immediate results of Schiller's metaphysical studies. Here the subject is purely supersensual, and does not descend to the earth at all. The very tendency of the poem is to recommend a life not in the actual world, but in the world of appearances [5]—that is, in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... logical deduction. It is not indispensable, but it is useful that it should borrow the language of the day. In the mediaeval epoch this language was religious. Beginning with the seventeenth century it was metaphysical. In our own time it is a scientific language ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... expansion of the first paragraph of Hume's famous essay on the Immortality of the Soul:—"By the mere light of reason it seems difficult to prove the immortality of the soul; the arguments for it are commonly derived either from metaphysical topics, or moral, or physical. But it is in reality the Gospel, and the Gospel alone, that has brought life and immortality to light." It is impossible to imagine that a man of Whately's tastes and acquirements had not read Hume or Hartley, ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... to high and solitary thinking. Here the roar of traffic is subdued to a murmur hardly greater than the stir of country woods on a warm spring morning—a murmur less obtrusive, because more monotonous. It is the place of all others for one absorbed in metaphysical speculation, or cultivating the gift of detachment. The very chimney-pots have a remote abstracted air; the slopes of the slates rise up around you, shutting you in on three sides, and throwing you so far back on yourself; while before you lies the vast, misty ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... source—therefore, when the water of its consciousness fails, cannot go back to the changeless, ever renewing life, and unite itself afresh with the self-existent, parent spring. A moment more and he began to tell Joan what he was thinking—gave her the whole metaphysical history of the development in him of the idea of life in connection with the torrent and its origin ever receding, like a decoy-hope that entices us to the truth, until at length he saw in God the one only origin, the fountain of fountains, ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... not the protracted agonies of a nation deserve the tribute of a tear? As Paine asked, were men to weep over the plumage and forget the dying bird? ... It was no idle abstraction, no metaphysical right of man for which the French cried, but only the practical right of being permitted, by their own toil, to save themselves and the little ones about their knees from hunger ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... published Protestancy proved Safer than Popery' (London, 1686). But the most noticeable of his productions is A Discourse of Wit (London, 1685), which contains some of the most characteristic and most definitely-put metaphysical opinions of the Scottish philosophy of common sense. It was followed by Academia Scientiarum (1687), and by A Moral Treatise of the Power. of Interest (1690), dedicated to Robert Boyle. A Short Account of Scots Divines, by him, was printed at ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... proper training. It is only in the simile of the mother that we can grasp the meaning and the responsibility of the true education of the people in respect to genius: its real origin is not to be found in such education; it has, so to speak, only a metaphysical source, a metaphysical home. But for the genius to make his appearance; for him to emerge from among the people; to portray the reflected picture, as it were, the dazzling brilliancy of the peculiar colours of this people; to depict ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... conception, that the universe was called into existence only to further its Creator's purpose toward man, became incredible (by the light of the new thought). What seems to careless observers a mere metaphysical dispute was in truth, and still is, the decisive quarter of the great battle between theology and a philosophy reconcilable ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener
... many a thorny thicket of inquiry; gathers evidence upon evidence; reasons upon the goodness of the men who wrote: they might be deceived, but they dared not invent; holds with himself a thousand arguments, historical, psychical, metaphysical—which for their setting-forth would require volumes; hears many an opposing, many a scoffing word from men "who surely know, else would they speak?" and finds himself much where he was before. But at least he is haunting the possible borders of discovery, while those who turn their ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... me-ness of the Me. {16} It often recurred to me in after years when studying Schelling and Fichte, or reading works by Mystics, Quietists, and the like. At a very early age I was indeed very much given to indulging in states of mind resembling metaphysical abstraction—a kind of vague marvelling what I was and what others were; whether they and everything were not spirits playing me tricks, or a delusion—a kind of psychology without material or thought, like ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... "Obscure ideas," "metaphysical jargon," "pretentious and empty language," "puerile and superannuated personifications." Mr. Darwin has many and hot opponents on this side of the Channel and in Germany, but we do not recollect to have found precisely these sins in the long catalogue of those ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... over ponderous tomes of transcendental philosophy, which reconciled him to the labour of studying them by their mystical jargon and necromantic imagery. In the congenial solitude of Nightmare Abbey, the distempered ideas of metaphysical romance and romantic metaphysics had ample time and space to germinate into a fertile crop of chimeras, which rapidly shot up into ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... little as they do to any other nation. But I cannot stand forward, and give praise or blame to anything which relates to human actions and human concerns on a simple view of the object, as it stands stripped of every relation, in all the nakedness and solitude of metaphysical abstraction. Circumstances (which with some gentlemen pass for nothing) give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing color and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... feathers, fen-down, thistle-down; sand, lime, gravel, unlawful or corrupt stuff, hair, or any other, upon pain of forfeiture,' &c. One would like to know what 'unlawful or corrupt stuff' is, and whether the corruptness be physical through putridity, or merely metaphysical and created, like the unlawfulness by statute. The act provides further, that after a certain day no person 'shall make (to the intent to sell, or offer, or put to sale) any quilt, mattress, or cushions, which shall be stuffed with any other stuff than ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... natural style, with an insight not less clear, than I at present possess. My judgment was stronger than were my powers of realizing its dictates; and the faults of my language, though indeed partly owing to a wrong choice of subjects, and the desire of giving a poetic colouring to abstract and metaphysical truths, in which a new world then seemed to open upon me, did yet, in part likewise, originate in unfeigned diffidence of my own comparative talent.—During several years of my youth and early manhood, I reverenced those who had re- introduced the manly simplicity ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... poetry and music. For the quality of their exquisite painting comes from the mere inventive and creative handling of line and colour, from a certain form and choice of beautiful workmanship, which, rejecting all literary reminiscence and all metaphysical idea, is in itself entirely satisfying to the aesthetic sense—is, as the Greeks would say, an end in itself; the effect of their work being like the effect given to us by music; for music is the art in which form and matter are always one—the ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... from his writings. In truth, his mind was not qualified to grapple with such questions. There is no sign in his writings that he ever tried his strength against them; that he ever cared to go below the surface into the hidden things of mind, and what mind deals with above and beyond sense—those metaphysical difficulties and depths, as we call them, which there is no escaping, and which are as hard to explore and as dangerous to mistake as the forces and combinations of external nature. But it does not follow, because he had not asked all the questions that others have asked, that he had not thought ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... at the risk of being considered metaphysical,—though we fear no metaphysician would indorse the charge,—let us define what we mean by individuality; for the word is commonly made to signify some peculiarity or eccentricity, some unreasonable twist, of mind ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... fault must lie with some scribe or other who counteracts its influence by propagating opinions, and recommending studies, of a different, and less tasteful, cast of character. I am fearful that there are too many politico-economical, metaphysical, and philosophical miasmata, floating in the atmosphere of Scotland's metropolis, to render the climate there just now favourable to the ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... exchanging glances; and we could hardly go to bed in comfort till we had exchanged notes and discussed the day's experience. We were then like a couple of anglers comparing a day's kill. But the fish we angled for were of a metaphysical species, and we angled as often as not in one another's baskets. Once, in the midst of a serious talk, each found there was a scrutinising eye upon himself; I own I paused in embarrassment at this double detection; but Jones, with a better civility, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Government, Sovereignty, Rights, Liberty, the most important of all ideas, were, at the close of the eighteenth century, curtailed and falsified; how, in most minds, simple verbal reasoning combined them together in dogmas and axioms; what an offspring these metaphysical simulacra gave birth to, how many lifeless and grotesque abortions, how many monstrous and destructive chimeras. There is no place for any of these fanciful dreams in the mind of Bonaparte; they cannot arise in it, nor find access to it; his aversion to the unsubstantial ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... after a somewhat desultory fashion, to the physical sciences. It was chiefly the wonder they woke that drew me. I was constantly seeing, and on the outlook to see, strange analogies, not only between the facts of different sciences of the same order, or between physical and metaphysical facts, but between physical hypotheses and suggestions glimmering out of the metaphysical dreams into which I was in the habit of falling. I was at the same time much given to a premature indulgence of the impulse to turn ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... especial behoof; calling upon him thereby to take notice that the requisition of small loans was another instance of the peculiarities of genius as developed in his friend Slyme; that he, Tigg, winked at the same, because of the strong metaphysical interest which these weaknesses possessed; and that in reference to his own personal advocacy of such small advances, he merely consulted the humour of his friend, without the least regard to ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... became increasingly difficult, by all who felt in science a menace to creeds which they associated with a spiritual outlook on life and the world. Bergson, under the name of "intuition," has raised instinct to the position of sole arbiter of metaphysical truth. But in fact the opposition of instinct and reason is mainly illusory. Instinct, intuition, or insight is what first leads to the beliefs which subsequent reason confirms or confutes; but the confirmation, where it is possible, consists, in the last analysis, of agreement with other beliefs ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... confirm it.[77] Even the Economists, who were practical men, dissolved their science into liquid history, affirming that it is not an auxiliary, but the actual subject-matter of their inquiry.[78] Philosophers claim that, as early as 1804, they began to bow the metaphysical neck beneath the historical yoke. They taught that philosophy is only the amended sum of all philosophies, that systems pass with the age whose impress they bear,[79] that the problem is to focus the rays of wandering but extant truth, and that history is the ...
— A Lecture on the Study of History • Lord Acton
... concrete, and his law of evolution is that every department of knowledge passes in the history of it through three successive stages, and only in the last of which it is entitled to the name of science—the Theological stage, in which everything is referred to the intervention of the gods; the Metaphysical, in which everything is referred to an abstract idea; and the Positive, which, discarding at once theology and philosophy, contents itself with the study of phenomena and their sequence, and regards that as ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... organisation of churches in the land, and an army of officials ordained to teach doctrines and tenets: let them take up the inculcation of creeds and rites, but don't let us perplex the school children with catechisms and metaphysical definitions. It is easy to make a distinction between morality and doctrine—a distinction which is alike clear and reasonable. Morality is an earthly and secular affair, and has to do with matters of elementary honesty such as every responsible ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... with the auld bitch next?' [Tradition ascribes this whimsical style of language to the ingenious and philosophical Lord Kaimes.] said an acute metaphysical judge, though somewhat coarse in his manners, aside to his brethren. 'This is a daft cause, Bladderskate—first, it drives the poor man mad that aught it—then your nevoy goes daft with fright, and flies the pit—then ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... anything, or to be heated up to indignation, or to have my conscience blasted out of its torpor, but to be soothed and caressed, to be lulled with sweet sounds, to be wooed into forgetfulness, to be tickled under the metaphysical chin. My favorite poem is Lizette Woodworth Reese's "Tears," which, as a statement of fact, seems to me to be as idiotic as the Book of Revelation. The poetry I regard least is such stuff as that of Robert Browning and Matthew Arnold, which argues ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... be uprooted. (3) Removal has become a fact of direct cognition by inhibitive trance. (4) The means of knowledge in the shape of a discrimination of puru@sa from prak@rti has been understood. The other three are not psychological but are rather metaphysical processes associated with the situation. They are as follows: (5) The double purpose of buddhi experience and emancipation (bhoga and apavarga) has been realized. (6) The strong gravitating tendency of the disintegrated gu@nas drives them into prak@rti like heavy stones dropped ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... eagerness, she plunged into the gulf of German speculation. Here she believed that she had indeed found the "true processes," and, with renewed zest, continued the work of questioning. At this stage of the conflict the pestilential scourge was laid upon the city, and she paused from her metaphysical toil to close glazed eyes and shroud soulless clay. In the awful hush of those hours of watching she looked calmly for some solution, and longed for the unquestioning faith of early years. But these influences ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... later that, having learnt something of the Thought Transference Theory at the Dunedin Circle or Metaphysical Club which he had attended, Mr Kitchener had attempted to make me see a vision at four A.M., but as he confessed he had been fast asleep when I did see (an hour and three quarters before his efforts started), it would take a very ingenious person to prove that the latter had anything to ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... subject of this and the preceding chapter, problems of very difficult solution present themselves, a full and comprehensive elucidation of which would involve questions of deep moral and metaphysical interest with regard to the structure, the cultivation and training, the associations and habits of the human mind. Upon the merits of those problems in their various ramifications the Author has no intention to venture; and probably few persons would pronounce unhesitatingly ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... the surplus for their own profit. In grotesque contrast with the disgraceful cupidity of his attendants is the exaggerated conception which James had formed for himself of the ideal importance of the royal authority, which at that time some persons attempted with metaphysical acuteness to lay down almost in the same terms as the attributes of the Deity. He had similar notions about his dignity and the unconditional obligation of his subjects. Even in his Parliamentary speeches he did not refrain from expressing ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... of all, of sentiment. It has been sometimes seen, in the history of the human mind, that when thus translated into terms of sentiment—of sentiment, as lying already half-way towards practice—the abstract ideas of metaphysics for the first time reveal their true significance. The metaphysical principle, in itself, as it were, without hands or feet, becomes impressive, fascinating, of effect, when translated into a precept as to how it were best to feel and act; in other words, under its sentimental or ethical equivalent. The leading idea of the great master ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... which was for generations a tradition among persons of business, and which is perhaps not quite extinct yet. For this opposition, as is well known, rather stimulates than checks, even in dutiful offspring, the noble rage. It was due partly, perhaps, to a metaphysical cause—the fact that until Scott was well past his twentieth year, the wind of the spirit was not yet blowing, that the new poetical and literary day had not yet dawned; and partly to a more commonplace reason or ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... of eternity except its name," at least, that "the difference between such a conception and that of the strictly infinite, if any, is not appreciable." But infinity belongs to metaphysics. Therefore, he concludes, Darwin supports his theory, not by scientific but by metaphysical evidence; his theory is "essentially and completely metaphysical in character, resting altogether upon that idea of the infinite' which the human mind can neither put aside nor comprehend."[III-17] And so a theory which will be generally ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... hands on what he found convenient to the purpose of the moment. Here the friends talked and read until late in the night. Their chief studies at this time were in Locke and Hume and the French essayists. Shelley's bias toward metaphysical speculation was beginning to assert itself. He read the School Logic with avidity, and practised himself without intermission in dialectical discussion. Hogg observes, what is confirmed by other testimony, that in reasoning Shelley never lost sight ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... who was always longing for violence of sentiment and sudden changes of emotion, found herself condemned to a dull, level life. Desborough would talk to her about poetry, but their tastes did not agree. He would even tease her with futile metaphysical talk until she scarcely knew whether to laugh or ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... you grow metaphysical and analytical," he said, leaning his face upon his hand. "Go a little further in your analysis; say, 'I love you with the right ventricle of my heart, but not the left, and with the left auricle of my heart, but not the right; and, this being the case, my affection for you is not ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... likely to go better, I thought, as I saw the great writer,—kindest as well as wisest of men, but not very patient under sentimental philosophies,—seated next the good Mr. Tagart, who soon was heard launching at him various metaphysical questions in regard to heaven and such like; and the relief was great when Thackeray introduced, with quaint whimsicality, a story which he and I had heard Macready relate in talking to us about his boyish days, of a ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... sufficiently thank your Royal Highness for the gift of that little Book about Monsieur Wolf. I respect Metaphysical ideas; rays of lightning they are in the midst of deep night. More, I think, is not to be hoped from Metaphysics. It does not seem likely that the First-principles of things will ever be known. The mice that nestle in some little ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... rank, for undoubtedly he was one of the ablest writers in our literature. Who can have read without delight his manly, vigorous language, soaring sometimes into the highest eloquence, anon plunging into the depths of metaphysical argument, or grappling with the dry technicalities of science, yet ever rolling along with the same easy, onward flow? His style has all the charm of Goldsmith's sweetness, with the infusion of a rich vigor that gives it an air of great originality. He is one of the few writers ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... had too much purpose in their talk to be artists about it. The endless eloquence of the Highgate days, to say nothing about the greater days before Highgate, was a powerful element in that revival of a spiritual or metaphysical, as opposed to a merely sensational, philosophy which has been going on ever since. No such results can be attributed to Johnson's talk. But talk is one thing and preaching another: and the final criticism on Coleridge as a talker was given once for all in Charles ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... be, I believe, to the last unable, to unravel, even to touch? A wonder which can be explained by no theories of vibratory atoms, vital forces, plastic powers of nature, or other such phrases, which are but metaphysical abstractions, having no counterpart in fact, and only hiding from us our ignorance of the vast and venerable unknown. The physiologist, when he considers the manifold combination of innumerable microscopic circumstances which are required to bring any one creature into the world with a perfectly ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... When he announced a metaphysical discovery he showed his understanding of the principle by making his exposition—strange as the proceeding appears to us—as short and as clear as the most admirable literary skill could contrive. ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... perfectly certain that India never saw a more learned Sanskrit scholar, a deeper metaphysician, a more wonderful orator, and a more fearless denunciator of every evil, than Dayanand, since the time of Sankharacharya, the celebrated founder of the Vedanta philosophy, the most metaphysical of Indian systems, in fact, the crown of pantheistic teaching. Then, Dayanand's personal appearance is striking. He is immensely tall, his complexion is pale, rather European than Indian, his eyes are large and bright, and his greyish hair is long. The Yogis and Dikshatas (initiated) ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... disappointment, of thinking that I was misunderstood, i.e. of entertaining what is now called "an inferiority complex." I never gave way to any form of childish melancholy. I did not even have alarming, or mysterious, or metaphysical dreams! What makes this more curious is the fact that I very much outgrew my strength, about the age of nine or ten. I was not allowed to play active games, or run about, or do any of the things in ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... German, Alicia, if you love me. The picture is—the picture: and my lady is—my lady. That's my way of taking things, and I'm not metaphysical; don't ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... but beyond the seclusion of the girl lay the seclusion of the father. If her social condition was twilight, his was darkness. Yet he enjoyed his darkness, while her twilight oppressed her. Dr. Grove had been a professional man whose taste for lonely meditation over metaphysical questions had diminished his practice till it no longer paid him to keep it going; after which he had relinquished it and hired at a nominal rent the small, dilapidated, half farm half manor-house of this obscure inland nook, to make a sufficiency of an ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... men and women are in function flowers and in image gods that they are so fascinating, even enwrapped in the rags, physical and metaphysical, which sometimes serve but to express ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... amused themselves with various pastimes, in which the joys of the shell, as Ossian has it, were not forgotten. 'Others apart sate on a hill retired,' probably as deeply engaged in the discussion of politics and news as Milton's spirits in metaphysical disquisition. At length signals of the approach of the game were descried and heard. Distant shouts resounded from valley to valley, as the various parties of Highlanders, climbing rocks, struggling through copses, wading brooks, and traversing thickets, approached more and more near ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... Pound on Pleading; Puterbaugh on Pleading; Phillips on Pleading; Pomeroy on Pleading. The number of court decisions in which this branch of the proceeding has been reverently and gravely dealt with reads like a metaphysical discussion in the dark ages. The names formerly used were superb. Complaint, demurrer, confession and avoidance, traverse, replication, dilatory pleas, peremptory pleas, ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... fascinated by word-lore. The Greeks and Romans played with etymology in a somewhat metaphysical fashion, a famous example of which is the derivation of lucus a non lucendo. Medieval writers delight in giving amazing information as to the origin of the words they use. Their method, which may be called learned folk-etymology, consists in attempting ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... publication of a monthly periodical. The latter, entitled The Rural Echo, was almost wholly occupied with the ingenious projector's own compositions, both in prose and poetry, and commanded a wide circulation. Devoted to metaphysical inquiries, Mr Wilson has latterly turned his attention to that department of study. He has likewise been ardent in the pursuit of physical science. An ingenious treatise from his pen on the nature of light, published in 1855, attracted ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... called poetry. Many of the early divines of New England relieved their pens, in the intervals of sermon-writing, of epigrams, elegies, eulogistic verses, and similar grave trifles distinguished by the crabbed wit of the so-called "metaphysical poets," whose manner was in fashion when the Puritans left England; the manner of Donne and Cowley, and those darlings of the New-English muse, the Emblems of Quarles and the Divine Week of Du Bartas, as translated by Sylvester. The Magnalia contains a number ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... inability to explain the principle supposed to underlie the sequence between the omen and its fulfilment. It is the irrationality of the belief that constitutes its superstitious character, the contented acquiescence in some inconceivable and impossible law, whether physical or metaphysical, in virtue of which the predicted event is expected to follow the wholly unrelated augury. The other sort of superstition is that of which, as we have seen, Aunt Charlotte was an exemplification. Here, again, there ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... Dr. Johnson, my friend Sir Joshua Reynolds denies all original genius, any natural propensity of the mind to one art or science rather than another. Without engaging in a metaphysical or rather verbal dispute, I know, by experience, that from my early youth I aspired to the character of an historian. While I served in the militia, before and after the publication of my essay, this idea ripened in my mind; ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... view, the metaphysical and the ethical, the Greeks were brought by their religion into harmony with the world. Neither the perplexities of the intellect nor the scruples of the conscience intervened to hamper their free activity. Their life was simple, straightforward and clear; ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... Were the men who have best comprehended God—Cakya-Mouni, Plato, St. Paul, St. Francis d'Assisi, and St. Augustine (at some periods of his fluctuating life)—Deists or Pantheists? Such a question has no meaning. The physical and metaphysical proofs of the existence of God were quite indifferent to them. They felt the Divine within themselves. We must place Jesus in the first rank of this great family of the true sons of God. Jesus had no visions; God did not speak to him as to one outside of Himself; ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... efficacious that can be imagined in order to materialise religion, and to subjugate it entirely to the senses? Is it not infinitely more easy and shorter, especially for rude and illiterate men, to believe in what they actually see, than in any metaphysical notions, far above the reach of their understanding, like those of a spiritual kind? From very ancient times it has been thought that the impressions which the mind receives through the medium of sight, are more striking and efficacious than ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... hour or two by his side and dismiss all thought and care of the children during the interval, made her happy. A sort of halo, an occidental glow, came over life then. Troubles and other realities took on themselves a metaphysical impalpability, sinking to mere mental phenomena for serene contemplation, and no longer stood as pressing concretions which chafed body and soul. The youngsters, not immediately within sight, seemed ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... he says himself, "at once the child of Allah and of Rm." That Supreme Spirit Whom he knew and adored, and to Whose joyous friendship he sought to induct the souls of other men, transcended whilst He included all metaphysical categories, all credal definitions; yet each contributed something to the description of that Infinite and Simple Totality Who revealed Himself, according to their measure, to the faithful lovers of ...
— Songs of Kabir • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... set of facts or collection of facts, or the qualities or demeanor of persons, reciprocally influence each other; and by this course of juridical discipline they add to the readiness and sagacity of those who are called to plead or to judge. But as human affairs and human actions are not of a metaphysical nature, but the subject is concrete, complex, and moral, they cannot be subjected (without exceptions which reduce it almost to nothing) to any certain rule. Their rules with regard to competence were many ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... we must put the emphasis of our preaching to-day where it belongs, where Christ puts it, on the doctrines that are most important to human life and happiness. We can afford to let the fine metaphysical distinctions of theology rest for a while, and throw all our force on the central, fundamental truths which give steadiness and courage and cheer to the heart of man. I will not admit that it makes no difference to a man of this age whether or not he believes in the personal God and the ...
— Joy & Power • Henry van Dyke
... a luxurious study chair, where thought [Endnote: 3] upon. To say the truth, there was not, in this retired and thoughtful nook, anything that indicated to Redclyffe that the Warden had been recently engaged in consultation of learned authorities,—or in abstract labor, whether moral, metaphysical or historic; there was a volume of translations of Mother Goose's Melodies into Greek and Latin, printed for private circulation, and with the Warden's name on the title-page; a London newspaper of the preceding day; Lillebullero, ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... persons of quality, devoid of wit, but it never could have pointed the satire of Pope. In the mechanic arts it may contrive a balloon, but never could invent a steam-boat. In religion, it stumbles at a thousand knotty points in metaphysical theology, but it never led the soul to intercourse with heaven, or to the contemplation of ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... duty had passed into full scholarly enjoyment. The individuality and originality of his mind had begun to awaken, and influenced probably by the German atmosphere of thought in which he was working, were giving him that strong metaphysical bent which characterised his tone through life, and became apparent in his sermons when he ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... have been the belief in magical agencies as healing factors, the most eminent early practitioners were ever ready to avail themselves of material remedies. For they maintained that the actions of the physician should not be hampered by metaphysical considerations.[56:1] Not only did the magicians employ precious stones and metals as remedies, on account of their intrinsic value and the popular belief in their virtues, but they also prescribed the ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... peculiarly zealous for the Anglican polity and the Anglican ritual has always leaned strongly towards Arminianism, and has therefore never been much attached to a confession of faith framed by reformers who, on questions of metaphysical divinity, generally agreed with Calvin. One of the characteristic marks of that party is the disposition which it has always shown to appeal, on points of dogmatic theology, rather to the Liturgy, which was derived ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... some time after it is sent, when it finds him in Radnorshire, Wales, too poor to pay it. With an innocency worthy of the days of Adam and Eve, he, after promising to pay as soon as he can, offers Stockdale the manuscript of some metaphysical and moral essays—the result of "some serious studies"—"in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... we intend that at this hour the Mystic shall be at home, less metaphysical and scientific than is his wont, but more really himself. It is customary at this hour, before the lamps are brought in, to give way a little and dream, letting all the tender fancies day suppresses rise up in out minds. Wherever ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... the long run it will work a detriment, for he left no sons to carry on his labours, and the remaining Englishmen of his time were unable to supply the lack. His celibacy, indeed, made English philosophy co-extensive with his life; since his death the whole body of metaphysical speculation produced in England has been of little more, practical value to the world than a drove of bogs. In precisely the same way the celibacy of Schopenhauer, Kant and Nietzsche has ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... I'm rather dense this afternoon," he said with hasty apology, "I think your first act is beautifully written—the lines are full of music; nobody with an ear for euphony could doubt that; but I—forgive me, I fancy you are sometimes a shade too metaphysical—and those scientific terms which you occasionally employ, I fear will be a little over the heads ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... Neoplatonism concentrated within itself whatever remains of faith and piety lingered in the creeds and philosophies of paganism;[611] as in the Middle Ages devout men, wearied with forms and controversies, and scholastic reasoners seeking refuge from the logical and metaphysical problems with which they had perplexed theology, sought more direct communion with God in the mystic devotion of Anselm and Bernard, of Hugo and Bonaventura;[612] as Bertholdt and Nicolas, Eckhart and Tauler,[613] organised ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... a forced smile, and took up the spare gun with an expression of countenance which a metaphysical rook, impressed with a foreboding of his approaching death by violence, may be supposed to assume. It might have been keenness, but it looked remarkably like misery. The old gentleman nodded; and ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... of Mr. John Stuart Mill, whom in many respects he resembled, were not distinguished by proofs of extraordinary intelligence. He rather promptly, however, showed signs of a sceptical character. Like other sharp children, Why-Why was always asking metaphysical conundrums. Who made men? Who made the sun? Why has the cave-bear such a hoarse voice? Why don't lobsters grow on trees?—he would incessantly demand. In answer to these and similar questions, the mother ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... Ethics. We, at any rate, can no longer answer such problems by any traditional dogmatism. They—and many other questions which I need not specify—have been asked, and have yet to be answered. They will probably not be answered by a simple yes or no, nor by any isolated solution of a metaphysical puzzle. Undoubtedly, a vast mass of people will insist upon being consulted, and will adopt methods which cannot be regarded as philosophical. Therefore, it is a matter of pressing importance that all people who can think at all should use their own minds, and should do their ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... America but in the leading nations of Europe, has passed more and more from the clergy to the laity. Not only are the presidents of the larger universities in the United States, with but one or two exceptions, laymen, but the same thing is seen in the old European strongholds of metaphysical theology. At my first visit to Oxford and Cambridge, forty years ago, they were entirely under ecclesiastical control. Now, all this is changed. An eminent member of the present British Government has recently ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... endeavour to make others so. This is, at least, the case with all those whose finer sensibilities have not been blunted, or, more properly speaking, have been rightly cultivated. But it will do no good to enter into a metaphysical discussion of the subject. The course proper to be pursued by a woman, whose husband's income is rather limited, ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... would diminish the interest of the reader in the development of the plot, and moreover pertains properly to the critics, to whom 'The Undivine Comedy' is especially commended. It is so full of original and subtile thoughts, of profound truths, of metaphysical deductions and psychological divinations, that it cannot fail to repay any consideration they may bestow upon it. A few general remarks, however, seem necessary to introduce it, in its proper light, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... when he was eighty-two years old, on his birthday. He was a pupil of Socrates, the first and purest of moral philosophers. By the rare union of a brilliant imagination with a fondness for severe mathematical studies and profound metaphysical investigations; by extensive foreign travel; by familiar intercourse with the most enlightened men of his time, particularly Socrates, whose instructive conversations he attended for eight years, as well as by the correspondence which he maintained with the Pythagoreans of Magna Graecia, this great ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... pantheists,—without a personal God, without immortality, without an individuality of man, without historical faith,—it may be a very subtle philosophy, but it is no Christianity at all. Again and again have I said that I know not what to do with a metaphysical God, and that I will have no other but the God of the Bible, who is ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... the blasphemies of "La Villanelle du Diable," and the sundown fires that beat through the close of "Hora mystica" are curiously bloodless and ghostly and unsubstantial. Pages of sustained music occur rarely enough in his music. The lofty, almost metaphysical, first few periods, the severe and pathetic second movement of the "Music for Four Stringed Instruments"; certain songs like "Le Son du cor," that have atmosphere and a delicate poetry, are distinctly exceptional in this body of work. What chiefly lives in it are certain ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... f. Doctoral f. Consistorian f. Monachal f. Conclavist f. Fiscal f. Bullist f. Extravagant f. Synodal f. Writhed f. Doting and raving f. Canonical f. Singular and surpassing f. Such another f. Special and excelling f. Graduated f. Metaphysical f. Commensal f. Scatical f. Primolicentiated f. Predicamental and categoric f. Train-bearing f. Predicable and enunciatory f. Supererogating f. Decumane and superlative f. Collateral f. Dutiful and officious f. Haunch and side f. Optical and perspective f. Nestling, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... enunciation, which at first seemed imperfect and embarrassed, became, as the preacher warmed in his progress, animated and distinct; and although the discourse could not be quoted as a correct specimen of pulpit eloquence, yet Mannering had seldom heard so much learning, metaphysical acuteness, and energy of argument brought into the ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Cowley seems to have availed himself of the chief thought here embodied, in his pointed epigram on the chair formed from the planks of Drake's vessel, and presented to the university of Oxford. His metaphysical genius, however, has refined the point with no small dexterity—the four last lines, more especially, displaying no small elegance. The reader ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... a metaphysical view of the case; and, believing that Providence had not entirely dispensed with miracles in dealing with the things of this world, came to the conclusion that it was no earthly visitor they had to deal with; and he even went so far as to hint that prayer was a more ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... and who was possessed, in a certain sense, of an excellent education. One day, after having flatteringly informed me that I really had a "soul above buttons" and the nursery, she gravely proposed that I should improve my mind by poring six hours a day over the metaphysical subtleties of Kant, Cousin, etc., and I remember that she called me a "piece of fashionable insipidity," and taunted me with not daring to go out of the beaten track, because I truly thought (for in those days I was an humble little thing enough, and sincerely desirous of walking in the right ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... element of the ancient astrolatry, as incorporated into the Christian creed, underwent no material change until the inauguration of the dark ages, when the bishops of the several churches, in the delirium of metaphysical speculation, concocted the previously unheard of doctrine of pre-existence of spirit, in conformity to which God was declared to be purely a spiritual deity, who, existing before matter, created the universe of ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill
... learned friend, to agree to a compromise between right and expediency, and to commit an injustice for the public convenience. But I must say, that his theory soars far beyond the reach of my faculties. It is not necessary to go, on the present occasion, into a metaphysical inquiry about the origin of the right of property; and certainly nothing but the strongest necessity would lead me to discuss a subject so likely to be distasteful to the House. I agree, I own, with Paley in thinking that property is the creature of the law, and that the law which creates ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... climbing perilous peaks in pursuit of somebody's misinterpretations of somebody else's books, or fighting bloodily because somebody asserted or denied that a nation was the chosen one, or invading new continents, physical or metaphysical, because of legendary gold to be found therein, or in fact committing all its follies under the inspiration of myths—as in fact it has done. The Middle Ages are to Chesterton what King Alfred was ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... intention has been a little wider and deeper, in that I have tried to present not simply an ideal, but an ideal in reaction with two personalities. Moreover, since this may be the last book of the kind I shall ever publish, I have written into it as well as I can the heretical metaphysical scepticism upon which all my thinking rests, and I have inserted certain sections reflecting upon the established methods ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... the Highlands with the Macdonalds, and every winter the Macdonalds spent a similar period with the Sudberrys. On the former of these occasions Fred renewed his intercourse with Mr McAllister, and these two became so profoundly, inconceivably, deep and metaphysical, besides theological, in their converse, that they were utterly incomprehensible to ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... be noticed that these three interpretations, the spiritualistic, the experimental, and the metaphysical, are in formal opposition with that which I have set forth earlier in these pages. They deny the supposition that the nervous system serves us as an intermediary with nature, and that it transforms nature before bringing it to our consciousness. And it might ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... a solemn day for me to pass from the humble tenement where Coleridge lived, at Nether Stowey, before the cloud of sad habit had darkened his horizon, and turned him away from the wells of poetry into the deserts of metaphysical speculation, to find, if he could, some medicine for his tortured spirit. I walked with a holy awe along the leafy lanes to Alfoxden, where the beautiful house nestles in the green combe among its oaks, thinking how here, and here, Wordsworth and Coleridge had walked together ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... to reveal itself to him with all the stages so inviting to a mind conscious of power and longing for cultivation. The books, the learned atmosphere, the infinite possibilities, were delightful to him, and opened a more delightful future. His metaphysical Scottish mind delighted in the scholastic arguments that were now first set before him, and his readiness, appreciation, and eager power of acquiring surprised his teachers, and made him the ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... have like to preface my disquisitions with something from the old Japanese literature,—something emotional or metaphysical. But all that my Japanese friends were able to find for me on the subject,—excepting some verses of little worth,—was Chinese. This Chinese material consisted chiefly of strange stories; and one of them seems to me worth ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn
... Nottinghamshire, England, April 22nd, 1816. Educated at the public schools of Nottingham, and at Glasgow University, he studied law, and at nineteen entered Lincoln's Inn. In 1840 he was admitted to the bar. But his vocation in life appears to have been metaphysical ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... peripatetic Philosophy, and disfigured with romantic Legends, and Gothic Jingle! But, at the Doctor's Appearance, Entities, Quiddities, Sympathies, Antipathies, occult Qualities, substantial Forms, metaphysical Degrees, Categories, and all this unideal wordy Stuff, vanished; and were succeeded by a clear, concise Method of Reasoning, and sound, useful, and experimental Philosophy. Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, Chaldaic, and Arabic, were ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... heat produced under certain circumstances with the quantity of work expended in producing it; and results and deductions (some of them very remarkable) were given by Sguin (1839), Mayer (1842), Colding (1843), founded partly on experiment, and partly on a kind of metaphysical reasoning. It was Joule, however, who first definitely proposed the problem of determining the relation between heat produced and work done in any mechanical action, and solved ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various
... find excitable minds to welcome it, when new and grotesque forms of faith can spread among the people, when the ultimate impotence of science is the theme of every cheap philosopher, when constructive philology is reefing its sails, when the judicious grieve at the portentous metaphysical shams of yesterday and smile at those of to-day—such a moment is rather ill chosen for prophesying the extinction of a deep-rooted system of religion because your own studies make it seem to you incredible; especially ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... no life at all. There is hardly anything to be said in its favour, except that its vogue, as has been observed, testified to the craving for prose fiction, and kept at least a simulacrum of that fiction before the public. How far there may be any real, though metaphysical, connection between the great dramatic output of this seventeenth century in England and its small production in novel is a question not to be discussed here. But undoubtedly the fact of the contrast is a "document in the case," and one of the most important in its own direction; completing ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... while returning sovereignty lies so on the surface that it is hardly irony. China might as well be offered Kant's Critique of Pure Reason on a silver platter as be offered sovereignty under such conditions. The latter is equally metaphysical. ...
— China, Japan and the U.S.A. - Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing - on the Washington Conference • John Dewey
... he was of metaphysical analysis, he did not fall into the extremes into which other writers carried it, Paracelsus is, indeed, entirely concerned with the inner history of a soul, but Sordello combines with a similar history a tale of political and warlike action in which men and women, like Salinguerra and ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... De Morgan. The highly poetical temperament of Hamilton was remarkably contrasted with the practical realism of De Morgan. Hamilton sends sonnets to his friend, who replies by giving the poet advice about making his will. The metaphysical subtleties, with which Hamilton often filled his sheets, did not seem to have the same attraction for De Morgan that he found in battles about the quantification of the Predicate. De Morgan was exquisitely ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball |
