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Rationalism   Listen
noun
Rationalism  n.  
1.
(Theol.) The doctrine or system of those who deduce their religious opinions from reason or the understanding, as distinct from, or opposed to, revelation.
2.
(Philos.) The system that makes rational power the ultimate test of truth; opposed to sensualism, or sensationalism, and empiricism.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Rationalism" Quotes from Famous Books



... Scripture that is divinely inspired is also profitable, etc.," he would virtually have said, "There is some Scripture, some part of the Bible, that is not profitable, etc., and therefore is not inspired." This is what the spirit of rationalism wants, namely, to make human reason the test and judge and measure of what is inspired and what is not. One man says such and such a verse is not profitable to him, another says such and such a verse is not profitable to him; a third says such and such is not profitable to him. The ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans

... Protestantism has been a great mistake; and that, at this moment, there is no unity among the opposers of Catholicism, who are split into a thousand sects, wrangling for superiority, like wolves over offal; and that their churches are gradually converging toward Rationalism on the one hand, and Catholic Sacerdotalism on the other; in regard to which last, the Historical Roman Church—the only Christian body which presents a solid phalanx—one must not be too iconoclastic, ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran

... Scepticism. Rationalism of Cotton Mather, and its cause Blaise de Vigenere Erastus Bekker, Lubienitzky, Pierre Petit Bayle Fontenelle The scientific movement ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... as commonly understood, by aesthetic. The loveliness of the Christian legend—from that he started. He dealt with the New Testament very much as he had formerly dealt with the Elizabethan poets. He would have no appeal to the vulgar by aggressive rationalists. Let rationalism filter down in the course of time; the vulgar were not prepared for it as yet. It was bad that they should be superstitious, but worse, far worse, that they should be brutally irreverent, and brutal irreverence ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing

... politicians were designated 'Liberals.' Both vindicated the supreme right of freedom in everything: free criticism, free research, free thought, free speech. The reign of pure intellectualism became supreme; every emotion, every sentiment was dissected, measured by the measure of inexorable logic; and rationalism, later doomed to bankruptcy, was ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough

... the examination is one in "religious knowledge," the burden of preparing for it falls wholly on the faculty of memory. To appeal to the reasoning powers of the scholars might conceivably provoke them to ask inconvenient questions, and might even give rise to a spirit of rationalism in the school,—the spirit which "orthodoxy" has always regarded as the very ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes

... successive conceptions: first, that the human reason was sufficient for the whole foundations of human life—that there were no mysteries: next, the opposite extravagance that the human reason had no authority even in its own sphere. And these two, though contradictory, had one root. The rationalism of the eighteenth century carried on through the materialism of the nineteenth, the irrational doubts of Kant (which included much emotional rubbish) carried on to the sheer chaos of the later metaphysicians, with their denial of contradictions, and even of being. Both sprang from this ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc

... pointed out very clearly that "the mechanical theory of life is incompatible with morality," and that it is impossible to feel "morally" towards other individuals if one knows that they are machines and nothing more. Again, Professor Henslow (in Present Day Rationalism Critically Examined, p. 253) very pertinently asks those who discard all religious considerations and claim to rely for guidance on the lessons of Nature, "If you have no taste for virtue, why be virtuous ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle

... interested in the human soul, and unwilling to sacrifice it to the demands of a rationalistic science or metaphysics. In seeking to rescue it, the great criticist, piloted by the moral law, steered his course between the rocks of rationalism, sentimentalism, and scepticism. It was his solution of the controversy between the head and the heart that influenced Fichte, Schelling, and Schleiermacher. They differed from Kant and among themselves in many respects, but they all glorified ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... temple of science. Even from its lofty minarets the philosopher may summon the faithful to prayer, and the priest and the sage may exchange altars without the compromise of faith or of knowledge.' Infidelity has shifted the battlefield from metaphysics to physics, from idealism and rationalism to positivism or rank materialism; and in order to combat it successfully, in order to build up an imperishable system of Christian teleology, it is necessary that you should thoroughly acquaint yourself with the 'natural sciences,' with dynamics, and all ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... disregard of the results of each experiment that is made, when it does so conflict with hypothesis. And it is these two superstructures of ignorance, inhibiting and insisting by turns, which add the glamour of irrationality to so much of the behaviour of mankind, and disguise its native rationalism and its morality too. Beset by fear and pride, craftsman and cultivator and explorer and reformer alike are in the same predicament. 'I could do this or that and do it thus, but may I?' and if such ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various

... the gradual approach of rationalism that is the subject of this lecture. For years after the death of Flaminius we have no trace of it: that was no time for speculating, and it would have been dangerous. The religious history of the time, as recorded by Livy, shows on the contrary that religio in the ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler

... for reform; the theories of repentance, of damnation, of the remission of sin, and of grace contained, if I may venture to say so, in a latent state, the entire system of humanity's education; these theories needed to be developed and grown into rationalism; Luther knew nothing but their destruction. Auricular confession was a degradation of repentance, an equivocal demonstration substituted for a great act of humility; Luther surpassed papist hypocrisy by reducing ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... moreover, received a strange letter from the parish priest of Jenne. This priest, a good man, but timid, had written that Benedetto was, to his mind, a most pious Christian, but that he talked too much of religion to the people, and that his discourses sometimes had a flavour of quietism and of rationalism, that there were those who accused him of employing a demoniacal power for the furtherance of his not over-orthodox views, that this accusation was certainly false, but that, nevertheless, prudence forbade the writer to keep Benedetto with him any longer. Perhaps the wisest ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro

... the domain of literature, and belongs rather to the history of political thought. It is enough to say that here all Montesquieu's qualities—his power of generalization, his freedom from prejudice, his rationalism, his love of liberty and hatred of fanaticism, his pointed, epigrammatic style—appear in their most characteristic form. Perhaps the chief fault of the book is that it is too brilliant. When Madame du Deffand said that its ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey

... path—which means that in matters of morality, instinct (or as Christians call it, "Faith," or as I call it, "the herd") has hitherto triumphed. Unless one should make an exception in the case of Descartes, the father of rationalism (and consequently the grandfather of the Revolution), who recognized only the authority of reason: but reason is only a tool, ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche

... vague grounds, to give hard outlines to these doctrines and to put a harsh construction on Christianity: the result of which is that his views offend us, and just as in his day Pelagianism arose to combat them, so now in our day Rationalism does the same. Take, for example, the case as he states it generally in the De Civitate Dei, Bk. xii. ch. 21. It comes to this: God creates a being out of nothing, forbids him some things, and enjoins ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer

... Meriting Heaven Dust to Dust Human Countenance Lie useful to Truth Science in Roman Catholic States Voluntary Belief Amanda Hymen's Torch Youth and Age December Morning Archbishop Leighton Christian Honesty Inscription on a Clock in Cheapside Rationalism is not Reason Inconsistency Hope in Humanity Self-love in Religion Limitation of Love of Poetry Humility of the Amiable Temper in Argument Patriarchal Government Callous self-conceit A Librarian Trimming Death Love an Act of the Will ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge

... of its ancient evils. And do not be troubled if at the outset this book seems to be entirely "destructive". I assure you that I am no crude materialist, I am not so shallow as to imagine that our race will be satisfied with a barren rationalism. I know that the old symbols came out of the heart of man because they corresponded to certain needs of the heart of man. I know that new symbols will be found, corresponding more exactly to the needs of our time. If here ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair

... various articles in 'Fraser' attacking Manning, and criticising among other writings Mr. Lecky's 'Rationalism' (very favourably), and Professor Seeley's then anonymous 'Ecce Homo.' He thinks that the author is a 'sheep in wolf's clothing,' and that his views dissolve into mist when closely examined. I need ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... Revolution. Its failure was not due to any lack of fervour or even ferocity in those who would have brought it about: from the time when the first shout went up for Wilkes to the time when the last Luddite fires were quenched in a cold rain of rationalism, the spirit of Cobbett, of rural republicanism, of English and patriotic democracy, burned like a beacon. The revolution failed because it was foiled by another revolution; an aristocratic revolution, a victory of the rich over the poor. It was about this time that the common lands were ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton

... Psalm-tunes—an instrument designed For the New England tour—refined From secular drosses, and inclined To an unworldly turn, (combined With no sectarian bias;) Then, travelling by stages slow, Under the style of Knott & Co., I would accompany the show As moral lecturer, the foe 590 Of Rationalism; while you could throw The rappings in, and make them go Strict Puritan principles, you know, (How do you make 'em? with your toe?) And the receipts which thence might flow, We could divide between us; Still more attractions to combine, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... be established nor overthrown by cogent proofs. It is not only optimism and pessimism, determinism and indeterminism, that have their ultimate roots in the affective side of our nature, but pantheism and individualism, also idealism and materialism, even rationalism and sensationalism. Even though they operate with the instruments of thought, they remain in the last analysis matters of faith, of feeling, and of resolution. The aesthetic view of the world held by the Greeks, the transcendental-religious view of Christianity, the intellectual view of Leibnitz ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... prophecies, or mysteries, of the effort, the tragedy, and the consolations of human life. Such a moral fable is what Christianity is in fact; but it is far from what it is in intention. The modernist view, the view of a sympathetic rationalism, revokes the whole Jewish tradition on which Christianity is grafted; it takes the seriousness out of religion; it sweetens the pang of sin, which becomes misfortune; it removes the urgency of salvation; it steals empirical reality ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana

... Mari devoted himself to the study of theology and philosophy, and made himself acquainted with the writing of Moses Maimonides and Nachmanides as well as with the Talmud. In Montpellier, where he lived from 1303 to 1306, he was much distressed by the prevalence of Aristotelian rationalism, which, through the medium of the works of Maimonides, threatened the authority of the Old Testament, obedience to the law, and the belief in miracles and revelation. He, therefore, in a series of letters (afterwards collected under the title Minhat Kenaot, i.e. "Jealousy ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... it had become a compromise with the Christian view. And so Father Uriel, who never wanted to be behind the times, became a rationalistic Christian, who was given the thankless task of combating Rationalism and himself. (Pause.) I'll shorten the whole sad history for Father Uriel's sake. In 1850 he again became a materialist and an enemy of Christianity. In 1870 he became a hypnotist, in 1880 a theosophist, and 1890 he wanted to shoot himself! I met him just at that ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg

... worked in the same spirit and must be ranked in the same school, there were differences produced by the action of the so different social and intellectual influences under which he grew up. His nature was intensely imaginative, and so was preserved from the dwarfing effect of French rationalism and materialism: their clay could not hide his light or close his eyes, for imagination sees at all points and through all disguises, and so his spiritual and intellectual nature was kept alive when all Art around him was sinking into mere ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various

... not proposed to enter into the Rationalism of the last century, therefore; or to inquire into the causes of the barren lifeless shape into which Theology then, for the most part, threw itself. I have never made that department of Ecclesiastical History ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... born in 1770 at Stuttgart. He held chairs successively at the Universities of Jena, Heidelberg and Berlin. His works reached an aggregate of eighteen volumes. As a philosopher he was one of the most brilliant exponents of modern rationalism. He reached this standpoint by pushing to their extreme logical conclusions the philosophical doctrines enunciated by Kant. Hegel's most lasting works proved to be his "Phenomenology of the Mind," "History ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson

... unbeliever gave him a keener sympathy with those who were in that distressing condition than could be felt by any one who had not so suffered, and fitted him, perhaps, more than any one who has yet lived to be the interpreter of Christianity to the Rationalist, and of Rationalism to the Christian. This, accordingly, was the task to which he set himself, having been singularly adapted for it by Nature, and as ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler

... obedience, but with the interior assent of mind and will. But there are other results of the council on which we may speculate; and which, I believe, it will certainly accomplish: first, it will show in a manner that cannot be mistaken that there is only one alternative for the human intellect: Rationalism or Faith; and, secondly, it will exhibit to the Christian powers the inevitable future they are now ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli

... Raskolniks have allegorized the histories of the Old and New Testaments, and changed the gospel records into parables. Some have gone so far as to see in the greatest of the gospel miracles nothing but types.[005] Such a system of exegesis easily leads to a kind of mystic rationalism: the forms of religion tend to gain more consistency than the essence, and public worship to be placed above doctrine. Some of the extreme sects of the Raskol have actually reached this point. A perfect carnival of wild ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various

... Mysticism and rationalism have much in common. They both are elements in the mental composition of almost every serious thinker. The sterility of logic often drives him to seek a higher and surer instrument of knowledge. So there is no inconsistency in further ...
— Monophysitism Past and Present - A Study in Christology • A. A. Luce

... cow being driven to the slaughter-house, with much shouting and beating with sticks and barking of dogs. The explanation of this event which he puts in Fazio's mouth is entirely conceived in the spirit of rationalism. What was there to wonder at? There was a butcher's shop in the street, and animals going to slaughter would naturally be met there. Why should a man fear to meet a cow? If it had been a bull there ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters

... well! we shall better see that presently; only I have to remind you, for the glory of your Rationalism, that other Rationalists make the errors extend even to the 'moral element'; but it is all one to me. You say, that, as far as regards every thing else, it is very possible that these 'inspired' men might err ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers

... provided laws against such persons, which is an argument of their confidence of such a crime." Sir Thomas Browne, who was a great physician as well as a great writer, was called as a witness, and swore "that he was clearly of opinion that the persons were bewitched."—Lecky's History of Rationalism, vol. ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... knowledge. For rationalistic clarity and breadth of view no counterpart to the religio-philosophic doctrine which he formulated can be found in the whole extent of medieval literature. The main feature of the philosophy of Maimonides and of the systems based upon it is rationalism, not a dry, scholastic, abstract rationalism, but a living rationalism, embracing the whole field of the most exalted psychic phenomena. It is not philosophy pure and simple, but religious philosophy, an harmonization, more or less felicitous, of the postulates of reason with the ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow

... art, through the life, conflicts of religious creeds, strifes between Protestantism and Catholicism, between Platonism, Mysticism, and Rationalism. In dealing with such delicate and serious topics I have avoided all controversy, and have ventured only on the simplest and briefest exposition. My effort has been to state the case fairly all round, to maintain an even balance, and, above all, to place the reader, whatever ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson

... nefarious purposes. One advantage of explaining the ancient Celtic sacrifices in this way is that it introduces, as it were, a harmony and consistency into the treatment which Europe has meted out to witches from the earliest times down to about two centuries ago, when the growing influence of rationalism discredited the belief in witchcraft and put a stop to the custom of burning witches. Be that as it may, we can now perhaps understand why the Druids believed that the more persons they sentenced to death, the greater would be the fertility of the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... the positiveness, the rationalism of youth, it seemed that the strikes and lockouts, the overproduction and misery could not possibly result simply from ignorance and want of thought and feeling. We needed more dramatic factors than these mental fogs, these mere atmospheric devils. We fled therefore to ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells

... a short one this time at any rate; and that's a blessing!" said the old gentleman rather irritably. "Rationalism—eh? I understand that ism, I rather suspect, better than the other. It means in plain English, that you think I'm wrong in only wanting to give religious instruction the same chance with Zack which you let all other kinds of instruction ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins

... she had the autumn foliage, and she managed to say a new thing about it: it is "color taking its fond and bright farewell of form—like the imagination giving a deeper, richer, and warmer glow to old familiar truths before the winter of rationalism comes and places trunk and branches in naked outline ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach

... Burton, a Scottish author, educated as a lawyer, composed vigorously written histories of Scotland and of the reign of Queen Anne. Lecky wrote in a pleasing style a History of England in the Eighteenth Century, besides a History of Rationalism in Europe, and a History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne. In ecclesiastical history, Milman, whose leading work is the History of Latin Christianity, Dean Stanley, and Bishop Creighton have been ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... itself out in a maze of words. We have no dread of it at all; we only fear what it may lead to. It does not stand on intrenched ground, or make any pretence to a position; it does but occupy the space between contending powers, Catholic Truth and Rationalism. Then indeed will be the stern encounter, when two real and living principles, simple, entire, and consistent, one in the Church, the other out of it, at length rush upon each other, contending not for names and ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... their way down through all the rationalism and scepticism of the nineteenth century, of course the theories of the schools, supported by great names, adopted into the popular belief and incorporated with the general mass of misapprehension with reference to disease, must be expected ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... human, but in things Divine it is the subtle English form of rationalism. This is no time to explain, Phoebe; but human sense and intellect are made the test, and what surpasses them is only admired as long as its stringent rules do not ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... only, he was a spirit of development. Privilege and narrowness in every form he hated; he demanded unlimited freedom for the intelligence. The narrow circle of legends, the conventional unified drama, state religion, a pseudo-democracy based on slavery he fearlessly criticised. Rationalism, humanism, free speculation were his watchwords; he was always trying new experiments in his art, introducing politics, philosophy, melodrama and trying to get rid of the chorus wherever he could. He was a living and a contemporary Proteus, pleading like an advocate in a lawsuit, discussing ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb

... subject of discussion for a century in Germany, Holland, and France; while even in the desolate villages in the heart of Spain the priests find it necessary to placard the church walls with cautions against rationalism, England hitherto has escaped the trial; and it is only within a very few years that the note of speculation has compelled our deaf ears to listen. That it has come at last is less a matter of surprise than that it should have been so long delayed; and though slow to move, it is likely that ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... occasionally corresponded. I ought to have met Dr. Martineau. I should have visited the Reverend Stopford Brooke, who could have told me much that I should have liked to hear of dear friends of mine, of whom he saw a great deal in their hours of trial. The Reverend Mr. Voysey, whose fearless rationalism can hardly give him popularity among the conservative people I saw most of, paid me the compliment of calling, as he had often done of sending me his published papers. Now and then some less known correspondent would reveal himself or herself ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... into the sear, the yellow leaf." Poetry drooped under the icy breath of rationalism, and vanished into the abyss of the Kabbala. At most we occasionally hear of a polemic poem, a keen-edged epigram. For the rest, there was only a monotonous succession of religious poems, repeating the old formulas, dry bones of ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles

... which we in these times can but feebly realize; and the Germans were doubtless the most earnest and religious people in Europe. In those days there was neither religious indifference nor scepticism nor rationalism. The faith of the people was simple, and they were resolved to maintain it at any cost. But there were religious parties and asperities, even among the Protestants. The Lutherans would not unite with the Calvinists, and the Calvinists ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord

... Yet we cannot take the naked ground that a given book is inspired because its contents are of a given character. This would be virtually to set up our own reason as the supreme arbiter of divine truth, which is the very position of rationalism. Nor can we receive a book as inspired on the so-called authority of the church, whether this mean the authority of a man who claims to be its infallible head, or the authority of a general council of the churches. Admitting for a moment the Romish doctrine of the infallibility of the church, we ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows

... said nothing further. But Dr. Knott's expression was curiously intent and compelling, as he sat fingering the stem of his wine-glass. All the ideality of Julius's nature rose in protest against the half-sneering rationalism he seemed to read in that expression. Mrs. Ormiston, who had an hereditary racial appreciation of anything approaching a fight, turned her round eyes first on one speaker and then on the other provokingly, inciting ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... of Christ Church, and as he had been for some years the close friend of Frank Newman's brothers, it was inevitable that the former should see a great deal of him at that time. He was delighted with Pusey's first books; but it was for the "pietism and rationalism" which he found in them, more than for any hint of the spirit of Churchmanship which distinguished his other works so much. J. H. Newman had been a tutor at Oriel College since 1826. Oriel College, Rev. Thomas Mozley tells us, was ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking

... comparatively short time after his death, regarded as a prophet and his works as in some sense oracular. The Sortes Vergilianae, if we may believe the confused gossip of the Augustan History, were almost a State institution, while rationalism was still the State creed in ordinary matters. Thus, while, in a way, he represented and, as it were, gave voice to the Rome of Augustus, he did so in a transcendental manner; the Rome which he represents, whether as city or empire, being less a fact than ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail

... make several excursions into the general region of philosophical and political disputation. His main purpose is to relate the history of a creed propagated by a group of remarkable men, who took hold of some prominent theories and doctrines generated by the rationalism of the preceding century, and endeavoured to make them the basis and framework of a system for improving the condition of the English people. Their immediate object was to abolish intolerable abuses of power by the governing ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... they said temptation, but we must not permit these differences of language to make us overlook or tax with trickery a part of their spiritual life, bringing us thus to the conclusions of a narrow and ignorant rationalism. ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier

... solution was conclusively shown by the correspondence which appeared in the Times in May 1903, occasioned by some remarks made at University College by Lord Kelvin in moving a vote of thanks to Professor Henslow after his lecture on "Present Day Rationalism." Lord Kelvin's claim for a recognition of the fact that in organic nature scientific thought is compelled to accept the idea of some kind of directive power, and his statement that biologists are coming once more to a firm acceptance of a vital principle, drew from several distinguished men of science ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler

... ethics which have shaped and guided right conduct through all these centuries are Christian ethics. Think as we will about dogma, few will feel competent to contest Lecky's verdict, when the historian of Rationalism and of European Morals declares that Christianity "has been the main source of moral development in Europe"; we know what this religion has done, because its actual record is open to inspection. ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer

... the fast men less constrained. Solemnity, even in dissipation, is the order of the day; and they go to the devil with a perverse seriousness, a systematic rationalism of wickedness that would have surprised the simpler sinners of old. Some of these men whom we see gravely conversing on the steps have but a slender acquaintance with each other. Their intercourse consists principally of mutual bulletins of depravity; ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson

... sacrament, then it should be performed on all, and a proselyte should not be admitted without being circumcised, and, if a hygienic measure only, the same rule holds. These Jews evidently ignore the rationalism that governed the promulgation of the Mosaic law, and its recognition of the inseparability of the moral from the physical nature ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... Balguy's Sermons, delivered in 1748, containing on the fly-leaf an autograph remark by Bishop Bloomfield. It is in these words, "No Christianity here." It is said of that period of time, by a noted minister of the Church of England, that a dry rationalism had taken possession of the church, and that all the powers of her best intellects were engaged in hot contests with Deists and Unitarians; that an equally dry morality and stoical praise of "Virtue" formed the ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, - Volume I, No. 9. September, 1880 • Various

... materialism that bound it. Italy had turned its back upon mysticism in religion, and upon chivalry in love; its literature was the negation of what the northern peoples understand by romance. Yet it needed some relief from the very saneness of its rationalism, and it found the antidote to its vicious court life in the crystal springs of Castaly. What the pietism of Perugino's saints is to the feuds of the Baglioni, such is the Arcadian dream to the intellectual cynicism of ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... your questions, no short and easy method with modern scepticism. Inquiry must have its course in theology as in everything else. It is fatal to intelligence to talk of an infallible Church, and of all free thought in reference to religion as deadly rationalism to be shunned. Not to be rational in religion as in everything else is simply to be foolish, and to throw yourself into the arms of the first authority that is able to hold you. In this as in other respects you must "work out your own salvation with ...
— Religion and Theology: A Sermon for the Times • John Tulloch

... the relation between an object and the idea that truly knows it, is held by rationalists to be nothing of this describable sort, but to stand outside of all possible temporal experience; and on the relation, so interpreted, rationalism is wonted to make its ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James

... to accept the four principles, as given in the National Reformer of June 14th. This any person may do without being required to avow himself an Atheist. Candidly, we can see no logical resting-place between the entire acceptance of authority, as in the Roman Catholic Church, and the most extreme Rationalism. If, on again looking to the Principles of the Society, you can accept them, we repeat to ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant

... of mysticism, or theosophy, made comparatively little impression on Jewish writers. But at the beginning of the thirteenth century a great development took place in the "secret" science of the Kabbala. The very period which produced the rationalism of Maimonides gave birth to the emotionalism of the Kabbala. The Kabbala was at first a protest against too much intellectualism and rigidity in religion. It reclaimed religion for the heart. A number ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams

... not wantonly come into conflict with some of the legal formulae laid down in a previous generation. The actual teaching showed the effects of the system. It had been easy to introduce a considerable leaven of the rationalism which suited the lay mind; to explain away the mysterious doctrines upon which an independent church had insisted as manifestations of its spiritual privileges, but which were regarded with indifference or contempt by the educated ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen

... bitterness and wrath, sprinkled over, nay, permeated, with fear; for, with all his professed rationalism, Jonas entertained some ancestral superstitions—and belief in the efficacy of the spirits that haunted Thor's ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould

... the ablest evolutionists today is Professor Henslow, formerly President of the British Association. In his book, "Modern Rationalism Critically Examined," he shows that Darwinian natural selection is absolutely inadequate to account for ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner

... died out, in such cases, for example, as that of Khai-muh, where foreign compulsion is improbable. We may surmise that some parents, under the selfish influence of parental affection, were led to doubt whether the sun would really be angry if the eldest child were allowed to live. Such rationalism would be regarded as very dangerous, since it was calculated to damage the harvest. For generations the opinion would be cherished in secret by a handful of cranks, who would not be able to act upon it. At last, by concealment or flight, ...
— Political Ideals • Bertrand Russell

... without adding that I am conscious that the deepest problem it discusses is but barely touched upon. This has obtruded itself upon the pattern in the weaving. It was intended for a single thread; but it has given color and character to all the rest. How shall Christian faith meet the current rationalism of the day? Not by argument; this is the thought I hope may be taught, or at least suggested, by the story of Mr. Gear's experience,—and it is a true not a fictitious story, except as all here is ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott

... Burke's book marks a turning-point in literary history, because it was the signal for that reaction over the whole field of thought, into which the Revolution drove many of the finest minds of the next generation, by showing the supposed consequences of pure individualistic rationalism." ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... Sorel then as an empty paradoxer. The myth is not one of the outgrown crudities of our pagan ancestors. We, in the midst of our science and our rationalism, are still making myths, and their force is felt in the actual affairs of life. They convey an impulse, not a program, nor a plan of reconstruction. Their practical value cannot be ignored, for they embody the motor currents ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann

... Socinus as founder, following Abbe Lefranc in his "Veil raised for the Curious." A mystic and diabolic aspect of the Fraternity is so remote from his mind that in his "Secret of Freemasonry" the Bishop of Grenoble affirms that its sole project is to replace Christianity by rationalism. ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite

... Rouge party, led by the member for Montreal, which is principally composed of very versatile and enthusiastic Frenchmen of rather indefinite opinions and aims, professing a creed which appears a curious compound of Republicanism and Rationalism. The word Latitudinarianism defines it best. There are 130 members, divided into numerous "ists" and "ites." Most of the members for Lower Canada are French, and, consequently, the Romish party is a very powerful one in the House. Taken as a whole, the members are loyal, and have proved their attachment ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird

... the consideration of preliminary matters, such as Method, or the principles which should guide the student of Theology, and the different theories as to the source and standard of our knowledge of divine things, Rationalism, Mysticism, the Roman Catholic doctrine of the Rule of Faith, and the Protestant doctrine on ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge

... and a watchfully hostile critic of all divorce legislation in America afterward. Some of his friends traced to the same cause his low estimate of German literature and even his political aversion to the German Empire. He could not forget that Germany had been the fountain of rationalism, while German Evangelical Protestantism was more schismatic and further removed from the medieval church than it pleased him to deem the Church of England to be. He had an exceedingly high sense of the duty of purity of life and of the sanctity of domestic ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce

... rather than an institution, and had to fit itself with armour of its own providing.' Such expressions sound very like the arguments of the Modernists; but Newman assuredly never contemplated that they would be turned against the policy of his own Church, in the interests of the critical rationalism which he abhorred. His attitude towards dogma is after all not very different from that of the older school. 'Time was needed' (he says) 'for the elucidation of doctrines communicated once for all through inspired persons'; his examples are purgatory and the papal supremacy. ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge

... all matters requiring a laborious and accurate investigation of details were alien from the bent and habits of his mind; and his exegetical studies, such as they were, took place at a period when he had little better than the meagre Rationalism of Eichhorn and Bertholdt to help him. Of the opinions which he imbibed from them, some abode with him through life. These however, along with everything else that can justly be objected to in the 'Remains,' do not form a twentieth part of ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... spiritually and intellectually was probably his superior, and to whom even Confucius paid extraordinary deference. This man was called Lao-tse, a recluse and philosopher, who was already an old man when Confucius began his travels. He was the founder of Tao-tze, a kind of rationalism, which at present has millions of adherents in China. This old philosopher did not receive Confucius very graciously, since the younger man declared nothing new, only wishing to revive the teachings of ancient sages, while he himself was a great awakener of thought. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord

... from all quarters. They encamped around him like an army and listened to him with such eagerness that the jealousy of some and the honest apprehension of others were excited by the boldness with which he handled religious subjects. He has been called the originator of modern rationalism, and though he was apparently worsted in his contest with his great rival, St. Bernard, he remains the most real and living personality among the great pulpit orators of the Middle Ages. This is due in large part, no doubt, to his connection with the ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... manifested itself more remarkably among Puritans than in other classes of Protestant Christians. The last and most pretentious form of this dogma is, that the sense of the miraculous fades away in the progress of what arrogates to itself the name of Rationalism. This is one of the delusive results of introducing generalization into historical disquisitions. History deals with man. Man is always the same. The race consists, not of an aggregation, but of individuals, ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... show to serve the purpose of unbelief? Or is it merely an instance of the awakening of the spirit of inquiry, the free criticism exercised by nominalism, the desire to prove all dogmas by reason? In other words, was the freethinking of Abelard rationalism, or was it merely Protestantism and ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar

... and Englishmen took their full share both in building up and in destroying. Two Englishmen of the next generation mark in different ways the reaction against the moderate Aristotelianism and orthodox rationalism which their countryman Hales first brought into vogue. These were the Franciscan friars, Roger Bacon and Duns Scotus. Bacon, though he studied at Paris as well as at Oxford, is much more closely identified ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout

... at any rate, of thought and of speech. It is only when peace and freedom have been established that discussion is practicable or possible. A number of histories have been written in recent years describing the rise of rationalism, as it is called, and the role of discussion and agitation in social life. Draper's History of the Intellectual Development of Europe and Lecky's History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... had consented to deliver an address at the Hall of Science, and that the chair was to be taken by the President of the Society, who was one of the most eloquent and uncompromising exponents of free-thought and rationalism in the world. ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith

... part so ignorantly applied, that the Genius of Architecture might almost be frightened from our shores by the spectacles reared here to vex and astonish the next ages. To bring about a reform, to lead the way for rationalism, in the noblest of the practical arts, Mr. Ruskin has approved himself worthy by his previous works. The Stones of Venice will increase the fame won by his "Modern ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... naturally threw himself into the arms of the opposite, or New Light party, who were more easy in their life and in their doctrine. This large and growing section of ministers were deeply imbued with rationalism, or, as they then called it, "common-sense," in the light of which they pared away from religion all that was mysterious and supernatural. Some of them were said to be Socinians or even pure Deists, most of them shone less in the pulpit, than at the festive board. (p. 019) With such men a person ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp

... Bernard at their head, were not slow to descry, in these interpretations and comments based upon science, danger to the simple and pure faith of the Christian; they saw the apparition of dawning rationalism confronting orthodoxy. They were, as all their contemporaries were, wholly strangers to the bare notion of freedom of thought and conscience, and they began a zealous struggle against the new teachers; but they ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... perhaps, from a Christian point of view, made the less disproportionate by another condition attaching to it,—the condition that not till years of individual judgment have been reached is one eligible for the sacred rite. With that rationalism which religious sects are so skilful in applying to some unimportant point of ritual, and so careful not to apply to vital questions of dogma, the Baptists reasonably argue that to baptise an unthinking infant, and, by an external rite which has no significance except as the symbol of an internal ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne

... religion that He widened and unintentionally overthrew. The supernatural personality of Jesus did not seem credible to me. The demand made by faith, namely, that reason should be fettered, awakened a latent rebellious opposition, and this opposition was fostered by my mother's steady rationalism, her unconditional rejection of every miracle. When the time came for me to be confirmed, in accordance with the law, I had advanced so far that I looked down on what lay before me as a mere burdensome ceremony. The person of the Rabbi only ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes

... way the Church cut off the extremities and one-sidedness in empiricism and supernaturalism, in rationalism and mysticism, in optimism and pessimism. All these systems represented the human effort to solve the riddle of our life without taking any notice of the Church and her wisdom. And all failed to become the universally accepted truth, ...
— The Agony of the Church (1917) • Nikolaj Velimirovic

... blood! Friends of progress! be not discouraged; for the FINAL CRISIS must come; then the strange interregnum," Ib. p. 217. "Protestantism as now constructed will first decay; because it is to be divided into two,—the smallest party will go back into Catholicism; the other will go forward into Rationalism. And then, after a succession of eventful years, a political revolution will hurl the Catholic superstructure to the earth, and the prismatic bow of promise will span the heavens. The children of earth will then be comparatively ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss

... entered Harvard as a member of the Baptist Church; but the transcendentalism and rationalism of the place quite swept him from his spiritual moorings. In a recent address before a literary society in Washington, D. C., he is represented to have maintained that Mohammedanism was better for the indigenous races of Africa than Christianity. Dr. John William ...
— 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

... for the great War for this kind of a difficulty! A certain rough earnestness lies beneath this rather crude presentment of a world-old problem. But I wonder how much of the honest patriotism which fills the book would survive a rationalism as perverse and shallow as Mr. SWIFT applies to traditional faiths. Does he imagine they have no better defences than those which he puts into the weak mouth of silly Mr. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 18, 1917 • Various

... system, was a peculiarly easy one. It was the most natural thing in the world that a young man of Elsmere's temperament should rally to the Church. The place was passing through one of those periodical crises of reaction against an overdriven rationalism, which show themselves with tolerable regularity in any great centre of intellectual activity. It had begun to be recognised with a great burst of enthusiasm and astonishment, that, after all, Mill and Herbert Spencer had not said the last word on all things in heaven and earth. And now there was ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... is a word that we are almost bound to use in several senses. Sometimes we speak of "poetry" in contradistinction to prose: sometimes in contradistinction to bad poetry. Similarly, "religion" would in one sense include the Abode of Love as opposed to rationalism, and in another sense would exclude the Abode of Love as opposed to the religion of St. James. In a common-sense classification, it seems to me, poetry includes every kind of literature written in verse or in rhythms akin to verse. Sir Thomas Browne may have ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd

... sake of argument Y; they are content that a thousand awful and mysterious disappearances from the visible universe should be summed up as the mortality of a district, or that ten thousand intoxications of the soul should bear the general name of the instinct of sex. Rationalism can live upon air and signs and numbers. But sentiment must have reality; emotion demands the real fields, the real widows' homes, the real corpse, and the real woman. And therefore Browning's love poetry is the finest love poetry in the world, because it does not talk about raptures and ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton

... tones of the sanctuary: it is prose for worshippers. To such an extent is this so that many who do not realize that Mr. Yeats is a great artist cannot read much of his prose without convincing themselves that he is a great humbug. It is easy to understand how readers accustomed to the rationalism of the end of the century refused to take seriously a poet who wrote "spooky" explanations of his poems, such as Mr. Yeats wrote in his notes to The Wind Among the Reeds, the most entirely good of his books. Consider, for example, the note which he wrote on that charming if somewhat ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd

... Arising, like all other kinds of knowledge, and out of the action and interaction of man's mind, with that which is not man's mind, it has taken the intellectual coverings of Fetishism or Polytheism; of Theism or Atheism; of Superstition or Rationalism. With these, and their relative merits and demerits, I have nothing to do; but this it is needful for my purpose to say, that if the religion of the present differs from that of the past, it is because the theology of the present has become more scientific than that of the past; because it has ...
— On the Advisableness of Improving Natural Knowledge • Thomas H. Huxley

... was empirical and based upon first-hand observation; it was concerned more with the facts than with the theories of development. This empiricism existed in competition with a declining, richly vitalistic Aristotelian rationalism which had virtually eliminated empiricism during the scholastic period. However, the decline of this vitalistic rationalism coincided with the rise of a mechanistic rationalism which had its roots in ancient Greek atomistic ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer

... slow, painful character of the evolution of medicine from the fearsome, superstitious mental complex of primitive man, with his amulets, healing gods and disease demons, to the ideal of a clear-eyed rationalism is traced with faith and a serene sense of continuity. The author saw clearly and felt deeply that the men who have made an idea or discovery viable and valuable to humanity are the deserving men; he has made the great names shine out, without any depreciation ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler

... little knowledge; they deny so impudently facts which embarrass them, in order to protect the opinions which they champion,—that I distrust strong minds equally with superstitious ones. Yes, I am convinced of it; our gross rationalism is the inauguration of a period which, thanks to science, will become truly PRODIGIOUS; the universe, to my eyes, is only a laboratory of magic, from which anything may be expected. . . . This said, ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... of humanistic interests and perceptions. In making his division of reason into the theoretical and the practical, it is to the latter realm that he assigns morality and religion. Clearly this is genuine rationalism. I am not forgetting Kant's great religious contribution. He was the son of devout German pietists and saturated in the literature of the Old Testament. It is to Amos, who may justly be called his spiritual father, that he owes the moral absoluteness of his categorical ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch

... facts, however grotesque, be recognised among thinkers, our reigning philosophy will modify itself; scientific men will conceive differently from Humboldt (for instance) of the mystery of life; the materialism which stifles the higher instincts of men will be dislodged, and the rationalism which divides Oxford with Romanism (nothing between, we ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning

... mind of Bogrov, only two ways promised an escape from this hell: the way of cosmopolitanism and rationalism, opening up into humanity at large, or the way leading into the midst of the Russian nation. Bogrov himself stood irresolute on this fateful border-line. In 1878 he wrote to Levanda that as "an emancipated cosmopolitan ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow

... and sin is banded together to oppose the kingdom of Christ, the world needs the witness of a united Church. Men must hear again the voice which peals through the lapse of centuries bearing witness to the "faith once delivered to the saints," or else for many souls there will be only rationalism and unbelief—while this sad, weary world, so full of sin and sorrow, is pleading for help, it is a wrong to Christ and to the souls for whom He died that His children should be separated in rival folds. As baptised into Christ ...
— Five Sermons • H.B. Whipple

... the inception of Protestantism. By the very force of its dissolving power the primary elements of a supernatural religion have fast disappeared from the various creeds. One by one the different Churches have drifted away from their Christian moorings and taken to the high seas of Rationalism. Assailed by the storms of unbelief they are breaking on the rocks of religious indifference. Empty churches are the natural outcome of empty creeds. "The dominant tendencies are indeed increasingly identified with those currents of thought which are making way from the definiteness of the ancient ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly

... points of conflict between Established Theology on the one hand and what is known as Rationalism, the Higher Criticism, and Comparative Mythology, on the other hand, is what is known as "the Virgin Birth" of Jesus. Perhaps we may show the points of difference more clearly by simply stating the opposing views and, afterwards, giving the traditions of the Occult Brotherhoods ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka

... and sympathetic student of the propagandist literature of rationalism. I have the greatest admiration for the moral and social idealism which is advocated. I agree that the atheological moral idea is superior to the mere performance of religious ceremonial. But I cannot admire the reasoning or ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby

... ago he had bounded forth to welcome Mr Hawke's sermon; since then he had bounded after a College of Spiritual Pathology; now he was in full cry after rationalism pure and simple; how could he be sure that his present state of mind would be more lasting than his previous ones? He could not be certain, but he felt as though he were now on firmer ground than he had ever been before, and no matter ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler

... disjxeti. Rash hazarda. Rashness hazardeco. Rasp raspi. Rasp (a tool) raspilo. Raspberry frambo. Rat rato. Rate procento. Rate of, at the po. Rate (estimate) taksi. Rather plivole. Ratify aprobi. Ratio proporcio. Ration porcio. Rational racionala. Rationalism racionalismo. Rationalist racionalisto. Rattle (a toy) kraketilo. Rattlesnake sonserpento. Raucous rauxka. Ravage (lay waste) ruinigi. Rave deliri, paroli sensence. Ravel maltordi. Raven korvo. Ravenous englutema. Ravine intermontajxo. Ravishing ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... in the noble Ode which Ruskin loved he seems to find it in Necessity or Fortune (Od. I, xxxv); and once, when scared by thunder resounding in a cloudless sky, recants what he calls his "irrational rationalism," and admits that God may, if He will, put down the mighty and exalt the low (I, xxxiv). So again in his hymn for the dedication of Apollo's Temple on the Palatine (I, xxxi) a serious note is struck. He will not ask the God for rich cornfields and fat meadow ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell

... motion, and the desire of the soul is for the motionless rest which belongs to the One. The union with transcendent deity is not so much knowledge or vision as ecstasy, coalescence, contact." Neo-Platonism is thus "first of all a system of complete rationalism; it is assumed, in other words, that reason is capable of mapping out the whole system of things. But, inasmuch as a God is affirmed beyond reason, the mysticism becomes in a sense the necessary complement of the ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant

... in the garden of which he might not freely eat, and that was the productions of modern rationalism. A story has come down which, though not mentioned by Dugald Stewart, is stated by M'Culloch to rest on the best authority, and by Dr. Strang of Glasgow to have been often told by Smith himself, to the effect that he was one day detected reading Hume's Treatise of Human Nature—probably ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae

... the Malayan region: "Linn. Soc. Trans." XXV., 1866.) at present will be rather beyond my strength, for though somewhat better, I can as yet do hardly anything but lie on the sofa and be read aloud to. By the way, have you read Tylor and Lecky? (187/3. Tylor, "Early History of Mankind;" Lecky's "Rationalism.") Both these books have interested me much. I suppose you have read Lubbock. (187/4. Lubbock, "Prehistoric Times," page 479: "...the theory of Natural Selection, which with characteristic unselfishness he ascribes unreservedly to Mr. Darwin.") In the ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... mysterious workings of a particular Providence, making characterization and action consistent, and giving his play a precise theological significance. In Moore's day, however, under the impact of deism and the developing rationalism, the concept of a particular Providence in orthodox theology had become so subtilized that the older idea of direct and striking intervention in human affairs all but disappeared. By mid-eighteenth century, deity, as Leslie Stephen points out, "appears under the colourless shape of Providence—a ...
— The Gamester (1753) • Edward Moore

... statesmanship. Even those people who now think that they are fighting in the name of civilization against us barbarians, will shortly discover their mistake, and recognize the German miracle which has come to save the world from the spirit of calculating rationalism.—O.A.H. SCHMITZ, D.W.D., ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various

... lose the "witness of the Spirit," because you can still believe in God, and presently the witness is there again, but when you begin to read books that curtail the divinity of Jesus Christ and make your Heavenly Father just a natural force in the Universe, when you bud and blossom into rationalism, there is a good deal of mischief to pay. I do not say that Pendleton went this far, but the books he read and loaned to William did, and they unconsciously had a profounder effect upon William than they had on Pendleton, because ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris

... Berlin school,—sense in external matters and a remarkable degree of uncertainty and embarrassment in the discussion of great problems. At the Borckes', and also at the homes in Morgnitz and Dabergotz, she had been declared "infected with rationalism," but at the Grasenabbs' she was pronounced point-blank an "atheist." To be sure, the elderly Mrs. Grasenabb, nee Stiefel, of Stiefelstein in South Germany, had made a weak attempt to save Effi at least for deism. But Sidonie von Grasenabb, an old maid of forty-three, had gruffly ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various

... both humanism and rationalism have brought antiquity into the field as an ally; and it is therefore quite comprehensible that the opponents of humanism should direct their attacks against antiquity also. Antiquity, however, has been misunderstood ...
— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche

... of thought. The seventeenth century had, for the most part, been interested in theology and government; and its preoccupation, in both domains, with supernatural sanctions, made its conclusions unfitted for a period dominated by rationalism. Locke regarded his Human Understanding as the preliminary to an ethical enquiry; and Hume seems to have considered his Principles of Morals the most vital of his works. It may be true, as the mordant insight of Mark Pattison suggested, that "those periods in which morals ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski

... has a philosophy. Temperament is a factor in all philosophizing. Rationalists and empiricists. The tender-minded and the tough-minded. Most men wish both facts and religion. Empiricism gives facts without religion. Rationalism gives religion without facts. The layman's dilemma. The unreality in rationalistic systems. Leibnitz on the damned, as an example. M. I. Swift on the optimism of idealists. Pragmatism as a mediating system. An objection. Reply: philosophies ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James

... years of study was my 'History of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe,' which appeared in the early part of 1865. With many defects, it had at least the merit of describing with great sincerity the process by which the opinions of its author had been formed, and to this sincerity it probably owed no small part ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... rationalism are mutually exclusive in the spiritual realm. Rationalizing and doubting are first cousins when the Word of ...
— The Church, the Schools and Evolution • J. E. (Judson Eber) Conant

... of rationalism and unbelief, men's thoughts were turned toward God, and human helplessness and ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer

... of him drifting into infidelity. I think on the contrary he will be far more devout. He will be let into such views of the wisdom, love and power of God as will more than offset any tendency to rationalism. ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio

... line, prolonged across the plain, find fitting it exactly beyond that plain this vale of the Elsa, itself leading up directly towards Rome? I say, nowhere in the world is such a coincidence observable, and they that will not take it for a portent may go back to their rationalism and consort with microbes and make their meals off logarithms, washed down with an exact distillation of the root of minus one; and the peace of fools, that is the deepest and most balmy of all, be theirs for ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc

... at the mention of Mrs. Maginnis. Since the death of Wilhelmina, two weeks before, her mind had been disturbed as to the substantial value of faith-cures. Dr. Beswick's rationalism on the subject rose to trouble her. Happily she had not been sent for to visit any new cases, the death of Wilhelmina, her first notable example, having a little spoiled the charm of her success, as Dr. Beswick had foreseen. ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston

... ethereal spirit that was ever met with outside a table. De Foe's extraordinary love for supernatural stories of the gossiping variety found vent in 'A History of Apparitions,' and his 'System of Magic.' The position which he takes up is a kind of modified rationalism. He believes that there are genuine apparitions which personate our dead friends, and give us excellent pieces of advice on occasion; but he refuses to believe that the spirits can appear themselves, on account 'of the many strange ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... needed even to make things better. But what do we mean by making things better? Most modern talk on this matter is a mere argument in a circle—that circle which we have already made the symbol of madness and of mere rationalism. Evolution is only good if it produces good; good is only good if it helps evolution. The elephant stands on the tortoise, and ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton

... Connected on the one side with scholarship and the study of texts, it opened the path for modern biblical criticism. Connected on the other side with intolerance of mere authority, it led to what has since been named rationalism—the attempt to reconcile the religious tradition with the reason, and to define the logical ideas that underlie the conceptions of the popular religious conscience. Again, by promulgating the doctrine of personal freedom, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... 60. RATIONALISM.—As the content of a philosophical doctrine must be determined by the initial assumptions which a philosopher makes and by the method which he adopts in his reasonings, it is well to examine with some care certain broad differences ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton

... object is to emphasise the necessity of toleration in the interest of religion itself, and nowhere was the monition more needed than in Frankfort, where the antipathy between those of the Reformed and the Lutheran communions was such as even to debar intermarriage. Rationalism and dogmatism are equally reprobated, and the sum of all true religion is found to consist in the love of God and of our neighbour. The strain of mystical piety which runs through the whole production doubtless proceeds from imaginative sympathy and not from personal experience, ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown



Words linked to "Rationalism" :   rationalist, school of thought, deism, ism, philosophical doctrine, free thought, philosophical system, philosophy, theological doctrine, freethinking, doctrine



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