"Metaphysical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... compliments, that, if I was not the 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 ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... condensed into one moment. It is all wild and rapturous. It has nothing of a rational cast. A casual glance from an unknown beauty often affords the subject of a poem. The poets whom Dr. Johnson has denominated metaphysical, such as Donne, Jonson, and Cowley, bear a strong resemblance to the Persians on ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... ability. Her fund of reading was extensive. She never allowed a day to pass without devoting two hours to good solid reading. Pope was a constant friend, as was also Wordsworth, and few could give a better exposition of the mental depth of this metaphysical poet, his self-knowledge and his keen realization of the depth ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... on the sidewalk to light a cigarette, shielding it against the wind and drizzle with cupped hands while his mind made one last check on the surroundings. Then he strode quickly up the five steps to the double doors which were marked: The Society For Mystical And Metaphysical Research, Inc. ...
— Psichopath • Gordon Randall Garrett
... substances. The origin of chemistry is intimately bound up with the arts which we have indicated; in this respect it is essentially an experimental science. A unifying principle of chemical and physical changes was provided by metaphysical conceptions of the structure of matter. We find the notion of "elements," or primary qualities, which confer upon all species of matter their distinctive qualities by appropriate combination, and also the doctrine that matter is composed of minute discrete particles, prevailing in the Greek schools. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... to the Stockbridge Indians by the most ponderous of the metaphysical preachers of New England, Samuel Hopkins, is beautifully simple and childlike. It is given in full in Park's "Life ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... here smilingly interposed, though a quickly repressed sigh arose to her lips, "I hope you are not going to involve Miss Minturn in a metaphysical discussion during this first meeting! Dorothy has acquired a habit of philosophizing and asking profound questions that are not always easily answered," she ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... an Epicurean, John, in all but the disbelief in the immortality of the soul. She has evolved a theory of her own about that. It partakes of Buddhism. After I have discussed metaphysical propositions with her over which she will argue clearly, she will suddenly cut the whole knot with a lightning flash, and you see the naked truth, and words become meaningless, and ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... government, dependent for its existence on the local interest, the party spirit of a State, or of a prevailing faction in a State? Every man, of plain, unsophisticated understanding, who hears the question, will give such an answer as will preserve the Union. Metaphysical subtlety, in pursuit of an impracticable theory, could alone have devised one that is ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... civil and metaphysical history of man, another history goes daily forward,—that of the external world,—in which he is not less strictly implicated. He is the compend of time; he is also the correlative of nature. His power consists in the multitude of his affinities, ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the intimacy of friendship, till the propitious moment, when it should be time to declare or avow the secret of the heart. No: this young lady was quite above all double dealing; she had no mental reservation—no metaphysical subtleties—but, with plain, unsophisticated morality, in good faith and simple truth, acted as she professed, thought what she said, and was that which she ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... consider with what understanding the people sighed and cried, when the Minister made for them this metaphysical confession: ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... induce them to adopt your views.' D'Alembert has made one or two just remarks on Saint-Pierre's dream of universal peace, which are as applicable now as they were a hundred years ago: 'The misfortune of those metaphysical projects for the benefit of nations consists in supposing all princes equitable and moderate, in attributing to men whose power is absolute, and who have the perfect consciousness of their power, who are often exceedingly unenlightened, and who live always in an atmosphere of adulation ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... though you may not believe; by the time the story's done you'll have heard more wonderful things than that,—and besides, remember you're a stranger in these parts, and have no notion of the extraordinary things, physical, metaphysical, and magical, which constitute ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... the native influences which, operating as antagonism or as inspiration upon the minds of Coleridge, Carlyle, and others, produced finally these great and memorable results. It is but justice, however, to recognize Coleridge as the pioneer of the new era. His fine metaphysical intellect and grand imagination, nurtured and matured in the German schools of philosophy and theology, reproduced the speculations of their great thinkers in a form and coloring which could not fail to be attractive to all seeking and sincere minds in England. The French Revolution and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... muddled paradox, he leaves a line unfinished and hurts us with a projecting conjunction. We want him to stop capering and grimacing, and then we shall tell him whether he is good-looking or not." I hold that the dissenters are right. People with the necessary metaphysical faculty may understand and passionately enjoy their Browning, but only too many simple souls have inflicted miserable suffering on themselves by trying to unravel the meaning of verses at which they never should ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... as if it followed, and in his poor masculine pride of sequence Hewson wanted to ask if that were why she was so nice; but he obeyed a better instinct in saying, "Yes, there's a whole tragedy in it. I wonder if it's potential or actual." He somehow felt safe in being so metaphysical. ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... and triumphs of the righteous remnant (Isa. liii., Ezek. xxxvi.-xxxvii.). By the strong emphasis upon righteousness, the tribal Lord of Israel was revealed as the universal God, of one relationship to all men. This monotheism was not primarily cosmological nor metaphysical, but ethical. The Jews showed little capacity for abstract reasoning and never pursued their inquiries to the discovery of ultimate principles. Thus they did not develop a systematic cosmology, nor formulate a system of metaphysics. Their religion was pre-eminently "theocratic"; God was thought of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... committee on territories, and thus placed in the very midst of the fight touching the annexations. The great Webster was here. He had opposed the annexation of Texas and the Mexican War, and was the spokesman of the Whig party. He had split metaphysical hairs with Calhoun, also here. Calhoun declared that the Constitution was over the territory and by that fact carried slavery into it; no imperialism in America. To this Webster rejoined that the territory was the property ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... indignantly rejected the terms. Leave our women and children at Intombi's Spruit—the bushy spot fixed upon, five miles away—with Boers creeping round them, perhaps using them as a screen for attack! Britons never, never will! The Mayor hesitated, the Archdeacon was eloquent, the Scotch proved the metaphysical impossibility of the scheme. Amid shouts and cheers and waving parasols the people raised the National Anthem, and for once there was some dignity in that inferior tune. Everybody's life was in danger for "The Queen." The proposal to leave the town was flung ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... accepted Newton's way of spelling "aether" as given in his work on Optics, and has given "aetherial" the same suffix as "material," in order to differentiate the word from "ethereal," which is too metaphysical a term for ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... abbey of St. Victor—Hugh (1097-1143), who formulated the sentence "Knowledge is belief, and belief is love," and Richard (died in 1173), who applied to the intuitive perception of spiritual things and to the love of them the same dialectical and metaphysical methods as the Schoolmen ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... in this great harvest of our learning, now ripening before our eyes; thus it is, by slow steps of casual increase, that our knowledge physical, metaphysical, physiological, polemical, nautical, mathematical, aenigmatical, technical, biographical, romantical, chemical, and obstetrical, with fifty other branches of it, (most of 'em ending as these do, in ical) have for these two last centuries and more, gradually been creeping upwards ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... the loving when their love is no longer of any value, when all that has been placed upon the altar of affection has been found to be a vain sacrifice? Philosophy? Give that to dolls to play with. Religion? Seek first the metaphysical-minded. Aileen was no longer the lithe, forceful, dynamic girl of 1865, when Cowperwood first met her. She was still beautiful, it is true, a fair, full-blown, matronly creature not more than thirty-five, looking ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... and alluring forms under the influence of hope—hope based, not upon the experience of the past, but upon an assumed possibility of happiness to come—that such dreams of expected felicity constitute in themselves the true happiness of that period of our life. How I loved those moments in our metaphysical discussions (discussions which formed the major portion of our intercourse) when thoughts came thronging faster and faster, and, succeeding one another at lightning speed, and growing more and more abstract, at length attained such a pitch ...
— Boyhood • Leo Tolstoy
... greater than that which was felt by the men who, under God, are responsible for this Reformation. In the beginning of the present century the missionary spirit among Christians was dead, and their zeal was wasted in disgraceful squabbles over inoperative and metaphysical opinions, or over modes of church government of which ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... it was acted. Mr. Sothern was the only quite sane Hamlet; his madness is all the outer coverings of wisdom; there was nothing fantastic in his grave, subdued, powerful, and piteous representation, in which no symbol, no metaphysical Faust, no figment of a German brain, loomed before us, but a man, more to be pitied and not less to be honoured than any man in Elsinore. I have seen romantic, tragic, exceptional Hamlets, the ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... itself in a variety of shapes. At the present day its doctrines, as cherished among the Jainas of Guzerat and Rajpootana[2], differ widely from its mysteries, as administered by the Lama of Thibet; and both are equally distinct from the metaphysical abstractions propounded by the monks of Nepal. Its observances in Japan have undergone a still more striking alteration from their vicinity to the Syntoos; and in China they have been similarly modified in their contact ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... of the lessons, which becomes absolutely necessary in the schools of to-day, owing to the short school life of the pupil, his immature age, and inability to comprehend pieces of a metaphysical or highly poetical nature. ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... modelled themselves upon those of 1791 and 1792, have been shown by experience to be entirely theoretical and metaphysical, and therefore impracticable. Witness those of France, Spain, and Portugal: they have not, as they ought, produced public happiness; but after a licentious freedom, we see that in some countries there has already taken place, and in others there is on the point of doing so, a despotism of one, ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... vernacular Reddlewell and Riddlewell, and under the Lord Abbot David the monks evidently tried to justify the latter form by the riddles they propounded so well. The solving of puzzles became the favourite recreation, no matter whether they happened to be of a metaphysical, philosophical, mathematical, or mechanical kind. It grew into an absorbing passion with them, and as I have shown above, in the case of the Abbot this passion was strong ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... other with an appearance of 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 set off ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... dear sisters and brethren, let us walk worthy of our vocation; not with the natural legs of the physical corporation, but in the apostolical way, with the metaphysical and figurative legs of the mind—(here Mr. N. caught some one smiling).—Take care, sinner, take care! curl not the scornful nose—I'm willing to be a fool for religion's sake—but turn not up the scornful nose—do its ministers no harm! Sinner, mark me!—in yon deep and tangled grove, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... college, and in the summer of 1856 he graduated, carrying off the highest honor—the metaphysical oration. His class was a brilliant one. Three became general officers during the rebellion—Garfield, Daviess, and Thompson. Rockwell's name is well known in official circles; Gilfillan is Treasurer of the United States. There are others who fill prominent positions. ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... the difference between the materialistic and the metaphysical points of view. The former notes the result, and the latter the cause of existing conditions. The mystical viewpoint takes into account the fact that there is a cosmic law which acts like a tidal-wave. Materialists call the action of this law "Evolution," assuming ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... metaphysical drift of thought and meaning in Goethe's poem, however, can be but faintly indicated in a play. It is more distinctly indicated in Mr. Wills's play, which is used by Mr. Irving, than in any other play ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... value." With Emerson himself Hawthorne was on terms of easy intimacy. "Being happy," as he says, and feeling, therefore, "as if there were no question to be put," he was not in any sense desirous of metaphysical ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... fourth, the most heretical of all, would make us believe that they live in eternal communion with supernatural powers; and whilst they put on a patched and threadbare garment, affect to despise the goods of this world, and keep themselves warm by metaphysical meditations, which neither they nor any one else understand. No distinction of clean or unclean (may they enjoy the eternal grills!) stands in their way; lawful and unlawful is all one to them; they eat and drink whatever they choose, and even ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... favour the company with Mrs. Pringle's communication. To this request that considerate maiden ornament of the Kirkgate deemed it necessary, by way of preface to the letter, to say, "Ye a' ken that Mrs. Pringle's a managing woman, and ye maunna expect any metaphysical philosophy from her." In the meantime, having taken the letter from her pocket, and placed her spectacles on that functionary of the face which was destined to wear spectacles, she began ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... of his own style as a watch-maker might be of the magnifying glass through which he strains his eyes all day. He knew that the heart was left out of his work, and that both mind and soul were growing morbid with dwelling on the faulty, absurd and metaphysical phases of life and character. He often threw down his pen and vowed he would write no more; but he loved ease and the books brought money readily; he was accustomed to the stimulant of praise and missed it as the toper misses his wine, so that which had once been a pleasure to himself and others ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... mind. It has a practical and constructive air, it deals with impressively enormous amounts of tangible property, it rests with a comforting effect of solidity upon assumptions that are at once doubtful and desirable. It seems free from metaphysical considerations, and it has none of those disconcerting personal applications, those penetrations towards intimate qualities, that makes eugenics, for example, faintly but persistently uncomfortable. It is indeed ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... cross-examination, presently made it apparent that we do not always know what we mean by art and what by nature; that the ideas are so mixed in civilized society, and the words so inaccurately used, both in common conversation, and in the writings of philosophers, that no metaphysical prism can separate or reduce them to their primary meaning. Next he touched upon the distinction between art and artifice. The conversation branched out into remarks on grace and affectation, and thence ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... dissemination theory. Leibnitz, in his celebrated monadology, carries the same view a great deal further. He conceives the whole created universe, visible and invisible, to consist of monads, which are not particles of matter, but metaphysical points of power. These monads are all souls. They are produced by what he calls fulgurations of God. The distinction between fulguration and emanation is this: in the latter case the procession is historically defined and complete; ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... and miscellaneous and metaphysical writer, s. of a London merchant, was ed. at Winchester and Oxf., after which he studied medicine at various Continental univs., including Leyden, where he grad. He ultimately settled and practised at Norwich. His first ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... metaphysical in its abstract terms," said I, with a look calculated to reduce her to a respectful condition. "Everything has a subjective and an ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... with 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 two ragged boys who had been marshalled to the spot under the direction of the infant ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... you when 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; ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... Christianity as a pernicious slave-morality was first put forward by Nietzsche. It was familiar to me before I ever heard of Nietzsche. The late Captain Wilson, author of several queer pamphlets, propagandist of a metaphysical system called Comprehensionism, and inventor of the term "Crosstianity" to distinguish the retrograde element in Christendom, was wont thirty years ago, in the discussions of the Dialectical Society, to protest ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... of the frontiers-man, of the gold-seeker or the home-builder transferred to the metaphysical or to the religious realm. There is a far-off home, our long lost spiritual fortune. Experience alone can guide us to the place where these things are, hence indeed you need experience. You can only win your way on the frontier unless you are ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... work their designs, who lately cut out such a tacking job for them, &c." He is mistaken—Everybody was for the bill almost: though not for the tack. The Bishop of Sarum was for it, as appears by his speech against it. But it seems, the tacking is owing to metaphysical speculations. I wonder whether is most perplexed, this author in his style, or the writings of our divines. In the judgment of all people our divines have carried practical preaching and writing to the greatest perfection it ever arrived to; which shews, that we may affirm in general, our clergy ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... In his metaphysical disquisitions it was observed by the late learned Mr. Dyer, that he confounded the idea of SPACE with that of EMPTY SPACE, and did not consider that though space might be without matter, yet matter being extended ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... and a catalogue of ancient paradoxes. I can only urge that if the history of the Mahayana is uncertain, its teaching fanciful and its scriptures tedious, yet it has been a force of the first magnitude in the secular history and art of China, Japan and Tibet and even to-day the most metaphysical of its sacred books, the Diamond Cutter, has probably more readers than ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn; and whether it was the outward substance of things or the inner spirit of nature and the mysterious soul of man that occupied me, still my inquiries were directed to the metaphysical, or in its highest sense, the physical ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... 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, and rants ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... early materialists by maintaining that matter itself possibly does not exist. Dr. Johnson, you will remember, did not like such bottomless fancies as Berkeley's, and kicked a stone with his foot, saying, "I refute him so!" Now (as I pointed out) kicking a stone would not make the metaphysical quarrel quite clear; besides, it would hurt. But how picturesque and perfect it would be if I moved across the ground in the symbolic attitude of kicking Bishop Berkeley! How complete an allegoric group; the great transcendentalist walking with his head among ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... novelty. There was also very commonly a certain confusion of the intelligence, a difficulty in self-recognition. I remember clearly as I sat on my stile that presently I had the clearest doubts of my own identity and fell into the oddest metaphysical questionings. "If this be I," I said, "then how is it I am no longer madly seeking Nettie? Nettie is now the remotest thing—and all my wrongs. Why have I suddenly passed out of all that passion? ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... fame and during the winter had been lecturing brilliantly on Schopenhauer. It was Philip's introduction to philosophy. He had a practical mind and moved uneasily amid the abstract; but he found an unexpected fascination in listening to metaphysical disquisitions; they made him breathless; it was a little like watching a tight-rope dancer doing perilous feats over an abyss; but it was very exciting. The pessimism of the subject attracted his youth; and he believed that the ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... itself explicable by the practical shape of the French life of that time. This life was directed to the immediate present, to worldly enjoyment and worldly interests, to the secular world. It was inevitable that anti-theological, anti-metaphysical, materialistic theories should correspond to its anti-theological, anti-metaphysical, its materialistic practice. In practice metaphysics had lost all credit. Here we have only to indicate briefly the ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... took no pleasure in the devious processes by which the cold intellect has sometimes tried to give fresh interest to familiar words and ideas. They quite prevented him from seeing the passion in the work of Donne, for example, and he considered all metaphysical poets, in so far as they showed the traits of their class, ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... James. But the doctrine of these passages is ultra-pragmatist. The will, which is illegitimately stretched to include feeling,[80] is treated as the creator as well as the discerner of reality. The 'world of appearance' is plastic in its grasp. It is this metaphysical pragmatism which is really serviceable to Modernism. If the categories of the understanding can be so disparaged as to be allowed no independent truth, value, or importance, all collisions between faith and ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... decent. We have great smokes together, and talks. On all subjects he has very decided opinions, and in everything but religion, liberal views. I lure him into philosophic discussions, and overwhelm him with my newest and biggest metaphysical terms, which always reduce his enormous cocksureness to ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... self-righteous David Hume, who goes so far as to doubt the existence of the newspaper in which our adventures are now appearing; but it would neither become my cloth, nor do credit to my great experience, were I to meddle with these dangerous opinions. My alarm for you is not metaphysical, it is moral in its origin: You must be aware, my poor friend, that you are a very bad character—the worst indeed that I have met with in these pages. The author hates you, Count; and difficult as it may be to connect the idea of immortality—or, in plain terms, of a sequel—with the paper and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... spiritual subjects, a proposition held by one as true, which has not been discarded by another as an error; and there is not a paradox or an absurdity that has not found some supporters, who maintained it as a truth. Doubt and error, in abstract and metaphysical questions, are natural and inherent in mankind, so long as reason is their only luminary ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio
... was 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, ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... silence, that, in my eyes, is no discommendation. So much for the different trains of emotions experienced by different persons from the same cause. There is, in truth, my dear sir, no accounting for such metaphysical phenomena. We must just take them as we find them, and be contented to know the effect while we remain in ignorance of the cause. Now, to show that you do not stand alone in such feelings, I shall, with your ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction No. 485 - Vol. 17, No. 485, Saturday, April 16, 1831 • Various
... the easy antagonism of science to religion as from siding with religion against science. In a paper singularly interesting—and in his biography important—on the "Nature and Authority of Miracle," read to the Metaphysical Society (February 11, 1873), he tried to clear up his position and to state a qualified belief in ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... more it is examined, the more extensive does it appear to be incorporated in some shape in the Indian mythology. If interpreted agreeably to the metaphysical symbols of the old world, it would appear to be distilled from the same oriental symbolical crucible, which produced an Osiris and a Typhon—for the American Typhon is represented by the Mishikinabik, or serpent, and the American Osiris by a Hiawatha, Manabozho, ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... upon price, and not upon profits; yet again on price in such a way as to escape the absurdity of two relations of value existing between the very same things. But, Phdrus, this rise will be a mere metaphysical one, and no real rise. The hat, you say, has risen; but still it commands no more of the gloves, because they also have risen. How, then, has either risen? ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... One of the principal metaphysical doctrines of this system is that which it called Karma. This means the law of consequences, by which every act committed in one life entails results in another. This law operates until one reaches Nirvana. Mr. Hardy goes so far as to suppose that Karma causes the merits ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... 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
... mistake much, if the movement would not make a material impression on their contentions and jealousies. They would feel that they were doing a great work, and could not come down. For contention they would find neither time nor inclination. It would be difficult to state, in a foreign tongue, their metaphysical distinctions, so as to make a difference. Higher and nobler objects would engross the soul. Be entreated to try this course. Then the recording angel shall not be compelled, with aching heart and streaming eyes, to ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... a serious chain of thought, often illustrated by complex and various imagery, is held in a casket of melodious verse, elaborately rhymed. Matthew Arnold was a master of this kind of poetry, which takes its form, through Wordsworth, from the solemn and so-called "metaphysical" writers of the seventeenth century. We class this interesting and abundant section of verse with the lyrical, because we know not by what other name to describe it; yet it has obviously as little as possible of the singing ecstasy about it. It neither pours its heart out in ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... I had left this excellent man in a metaphysical bog. But he had not discharged his duty, so he scrambled out and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... resurrection, and just before the ascension of Jesus, after they had been for forty days "instructed in the things pertaining to the kingdom of God," which was the same as that of the Messiah, by Jesus himself, they do not seem to have had the least idea of the metaphysical kingdom of modern Christians, for they ask him, "Lord wilt thou now (or at this time) restore the kingdom to Israel?" And his answer is, not that it should never be restored, but that "it was not for them to know the times, and the seasons," see Acts 1. And even after the day of Pentecost, ...
— Letter to the Reverend Mr. Cary • George English
... family, the society of the future in which men and women will be alike economically free, may involve, and which may be generally adopted therein. Meanwhile we ought to combat by every means within our power the metaphysical dogma of the inherent sanctity of the monogamic principle." ["Outlooks From a New Standpoint," by Ernest Belfort Bax, page 160 of ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... they are oftentimes clairvoyant in a marvellous degree in respect to many collateral things, as Wordsworth has so forcibly illustrated in his sonnet on the Boy of Windermere, and as Hawthorne has developed with such metaphysical accuracy in that chapter of his wondrous story where Hester walks forth to ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... was nothing popular in the idea of a state expelling them from a soil of which it made no use itself; and few among the persons composing the array had ever given themselves much if any trouble, in ascertaining the nice, and with them entirely metaphysical distinction, between the mine and thine of the matter. The proposition, therefore, startled none, and prudence having long since withdrawn from their counsels, not a dissenting voice was heard to the suggestion of a union between the two parties for the purpose of common defence. The ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... perplex a plain matter of science by introducing into its discussion a metaphysical subtilty. The principle here contended for is one of the first dictates of the inductive philosophy, and as such it has been frankly acknowledged and acted upon by all the great improvers of science in modern days. When Newton discovered that ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... perhaps the book in which Coleridge comes nearest to bringing an argument to a conclusion. Though marked by his usual complexities of style, his parentheses and irrelevant allusions and glances at wide metaphysical discussions, he succeeds in laying down a sufficient sketch of his position. The book was originally published in 1830, and refers to the Catholic emancipation of the previous year. Unlike Southey, he approves of the measure, only regretting the absence of certain safeguards; and ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... sense nature is independent of thought. By this statement no metaphysical pronouncement is intended. What I mean is that we can think about nature without thinking about thought. I shall say that then we are thinking ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead
... person acquainted with the history of the violent changes which, during the last century, modern theories, metaphysical systems, and, above all, the working of secret societies, have caused, the reading of the history of England and Ireland, from the Reformation down, offers new sources of interest, by showing how ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... watched her in what seemed something of a triumphal progress through the crowded hall. He saw the looks of the girl students from the newly-organised women's colleges—as she passed—a little askance and chill; he watched a Scotch metaphysical professor, with a fiery face set in a mass of flaming hair and beard, which had won him the nickname from his philosophical pupils of "the devil in a mist," forcing an introduction to her; he saw the Vice-Chancellor graciously unbending, and man after man come up among the ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... an ability to discern the infinite suggestiveness of common things, a brooding meditative spirit, are all that the essayist requires to start business with. Jacques, in "As You Like It," had the makings of a charming essayist. It is not the essayist's duty to inform, to build pathways through metaphysical morasses, to cancel abuses, any more than it is the duty of the poet to do these things. Incidentally he may do something in that way, just as the poet may, but it is not his duty, and should not be expected of him. Skylarks are primarily created to sing, although a whole ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... but "I am only a plain man, and I want to know." Crowl spent a large part of his time in setting "the word against the word." Cock-fighting affords its votaries no acuter pleasure than Crowl derived from setting two texts by the ears. Crowl had a metaphysical genius which sent his Sunday morning disciples frantic with admiration, and struck the enemy dumb with dismay. He had discovered, for instance, that the Deity could not move, owing to already filling all space. He was ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... unanswerable reasons. In the first place, those notes have been taken under circumstances entirely out of the experience of the mass of mankind. Against them, to begin with! In the second place, those notes represent a medical and metaphysical theory. Against them, once more! In the third place, those notes are of my making; there is nothing but my assertion to the contrary, to guarantee that they are not fabrications. Remember what I told you on the moor—and ask yourself what my assertion is worth. No! my ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... I have often thought of him. This tardy esteem will be his sole recompense. The metaphysical paradise would be no place for him. His lively imagination, his high spirits, and his keen sense of enjoyment constituted him for a distinct individualism in his own sphere. My father's character was just the opposite, for he was inclined to be sentimental and melancholy. It was when he was advanced ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... methods are largely subjective. Here and there it may have a clearly ascertained fact to rest upon. Here and there it may have arrived at some tolerably secure results. But in the main its methods are metaphysical, resting on nothing but individual preconceptions, applying tests and private canons of interpretation which are purely arbitrary" ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... Christian Science Mind-healing was started by the author with only one student in xi:27 Lynn, Massachusetts, about the year 1867. In 1881, she opened the Massachusetts Metaphysical College in Boston, under the seal of the Commonwealth, a law xi:30 relative to colleges having been passed, which enabled her to get this institution chartered for medical pur- xii:1 poses. No charters were granted to Christian Scien- tists for such institutions after 1883, and up to ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... 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 humanly and gladly, the "time of their lives"! ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... meet this want must have theory; yet the theory must not be made obtrusive, nor stated too abstractly. The theory must be deeply imbedded in the structure of the work; and must commend itself, not by metaphysical deduction from first principles, but by its ability to comprehend in a rational and intelligible order the concrete facts with ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... indefinable flavour of emphasis and richness, a hint as of infinity of fun. Doubtless, for instance, a million comic writers of that epoch had made game of the dark, romantic young man who pretended to abysses of philosophy and despair. And it is not easy to say exactly why we feel that the few metaphysical remarks of Mr. Horatio Sparkins are in some way really much funnier than any of those old stock jokes. It is in a certain quality of deep enjoyment in the writer as well as the reader; as if the few words written had been dipped in dark nonsense and were, as it were, reeking with ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... page, and by a process partly mechanical, partly intellectual, formed by long habit, he would extract in his synoptical passage all that he required to know. (Macaulay was, and George Lewis is, just as wonderful in this respect.) Some of the books that Mackintosh talks of, philosophical and metaphysical works, could not be so disposed of, and I should like much to know what his system or his secret was. I met Sydney Smith yesterday, and asked him why more of the journals had not been given. He said because the editors had been ill advised, but that in another edition more should be given; that ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... for such a lien in some systems. But this is not true universally, nor in the most important cases. It must be left to the reader to decide whether ground has not been shown for believing that the same metaphysical confusion which naturally arose as to the ship's wrongful acts, affected the way of thinking as to her contracts. The whole manner of dealing with vessels obviously took the form which prevailed in the eases first mentioned. Pardessus, a high authority, says that the lien for freight prevails ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... first-hand knowledge of their intellectual ancestors. But in the history of Mysticism they hold an important place.[224] Speculation being for them restricted within the limits of Church-dogma, they were obliged to be more psychological and less metaphysical than Dionysius or Erigena. The Victorines insist often on self-knowledge as the way to the knowledge of God and on self-purification as more important than philosophy. "The way to ascend to God," says Hugo, "is to descend into oneself.[225]" "The ascent ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... 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, ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... of this little treatise is restricted to the development of the elementary principles of morals. As far as regards that purpose, metaphysical science will be treated merely so far as a source of negative truth; whilst morality will be considered as a science, respecting which we can ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... objects of Shinto veneration; for while it is usual to speak of Shintoism as being a combination of ancestor-worship and nature-worship, it would seem that the latter of these elements was largely due to the contact of Japan with the Taouism of China, and with metaphysical Buddhism. Thus the essential principle of Shintoism, it will be seen, is closely akin to that filial piety, which forms so conspicuous a feature in the religious, political, and social life of China, and which—deserving as it is, in many ways, ...
— Religion in Japan • George A. Cobbold, B.A.
... a principle which must act prior to the gathering in order to provoke it. (The synthesis must be rendered possible and challenged by the a priori unity which otherwise constitutes that unity.) As a metaphysical possibility evil was recognised through its unfathomable nature. But this was because such a nature already presupposed a God's nature, realizing his own ends, stepped in with effect. For the highest form—the ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... own case, that the emperor can banish from Switzerland as well as from France; and when any objections are made to the French agents, on the score of being in a foreign country, whose independence is recognised, they shrug up their shoulders, as if you were wearying them with Metaphysical quibbles. And really it is a perfect quibble to wish to distinguish in Europe anything but prefect-kings, and prefects receiving their orders directly from the emperor of France. If there is any difference between the soi-disant allied countries and the French provinces, it is that the ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... position. And certainly there is much in the book, thus effectively presented to the English reader, to attract those who interest themselves in the study of the finer types of human nature, of literary expression, of metaphysical and practical philosophy; to attract, above all, those interested in such philosophy, at points where it touches upon questions of religion, and especially ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... have a portrayal of Christ which at many points profoundly appeals to the heart, yet which constantly dissipates into a metaphysical mythology; together with the admonition that only a full belief can save the soul and the world from ruin. The ethical and emotional elements of the new religion have thoroughly fused with the elements of ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... originated in the following circumstances. I met Werner at S——, in the midst of a numerous and noisy circle of young people. Towards the end of the evening the conversation took a philosophico-metaphysical turn. We discussed the subject of convictions, and each of us had ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... strain for some time. I was greatly agitated; I closed the great Bible, and leaning on it with folded arms, my heart beating violently against the bright red cover, I gave heed to all she said. My love of novelty, passion for investigation, and the metaphysical turn that had sometimes made my father quite uneasy about me, when he saw me at eight years old poring over abstruse reasonings with the zest of an old philosopher, were all in her favor. I felt as if the foundation of my faith was giving way, and I ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... 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 passed without aiding ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... ambitious than anything attempted since St. Thomas or Descartes. Most thinkers have confined themselves either to generalities or to details, but Spencer addressed himself to everything. He dealt in logical, metaphysical, and ethical first principles, in cosmogony and geology, in physics, and chemistry after a fashion, in biology, psychology, sociology, politics, and aesthetics. Hardly any subject can be named which ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... science, of Machiavelli in state-craft, and of Petrarch in art, taking the fortresses of phrase by storm, and subduing the hardest material of philosophy to the tyranny of his rhymes. Plebeian saws, salient images, dry sentences of metaphysical speculation, logical summaries, and fiery tirades are hurled together— half crude and cindery scoriae, half molten metal and resplendent ore— from the volcano of his passionate mind. Such being the nature of Campanella's style, ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... some who are as spiritual as Fenelon, and these are, perhaps, at this day, the greater number. I speak only of those who, considering this world alone, have been driven, voluntarily or involuntarily, to Atheism in another way. Leaving the eternal and fastidious metaphysical and religions disputes in which the theologians of past centuries wasted the time, the good sense, and the blood of men, to honor their pretended God by immolating to Him the enemies of their faith, ...
— Atheism Among the People • Alphonse de Lamartine
... curious metaphysical fact that always in the evening when I am in the great dormitory alone, having no other company than a number of beds with white curtains, I always recur as fanatically as ever to the old ideas, the old faces, and the old scenes ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... formalized by degrees into philosophy: the faith of future ages was settled by compromises, by manipulation, by bribery in Councils of the Church which resembled modern political conventions, and in which pagan Emperors did not hesitate to exert their influence over the metaphysical bishops of the factions. Recriminations, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... without thinking of any metaphysical mythology, thinking indeed of the ambitious people whom we meet everywhere, and thinking only of giving them some good advice: "The best way to get there is to come down." Nothing could be more philosophical, Nietzsche would reply; it is even more true of peoples than of individuals: the best way ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... although, if he should yield to the temptation, and thus forfeit his free agency, the link of cause and effect more physico would then commence. I need not say, that the general idea is all that can be required from the poet,—not a scholastic logical consistency in all the parts so as to meet metaphysical objectors. But O! how truly Shakespearian is the opening of Macbeth's character given in the unpossessedness of Banquo's mind, wholly present to the present object,—an unsullied, unscarified mirror! And how strictly true to nature it is that Banquo, ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... could not forget it; it was still, to use his own words, "an old dweller in the chambers of his brain," and he had not even then recovered enough from it to describe how it was. The high-minded, metaphysical thief, its hero, was so warmly admired, that several raw students, longing to imitate a character they thought so noble, actually abandoned their homes and their colleges, and betook themselves to the forests and the wilds to levy contributions upon travellers. ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... "Egotism! A metaphysical, calcareous, oleraceous amentum of—society! The mental varioloid of this sublunary hemisphere! One of its worst feelings or features is, the craving of sympathy. It even loves sickness, because actual pain engenders signs of ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... second. It is "the helping hand of grace." No organized religion is complete or satisfactory which does not understand that when weak and erring human beings call from the depths, the helping hand of grace is stretched out from the unknown. The origin and nature of grace is a metaphysical and theological problem; its existence is a fact of experience. And that same experience shows that though grace may work apart from institutions it does in fact ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... accept this book with grateful thanks to the accomplished author. In the present transition-stage from metaphysical to physical studies, it will be eagerly accepted, as showing, not openly nor yet covertly, yet suggestively, the true connection of both. Few books give in quiet, modest fashion so much theology as this, and yet few claim to give ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... there appear many hundreds yearly, as may be seen by the French catalogues; but the writer has not so much to do with works political, philosophical, historical, metaphysical, scientifical, theological, as with those for which he has been putting forward a plea—novels, namely; on which he has expended a great deal of time and study. And passing from novels in general to French novels, let us confess, with much humiliation, that we borrow from these ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... several sects, is the juxtaposition of four several chapels, observable on one side of a main street; while nearly adjoining is the church of St. Paul. There are thus every Sunday, in simultaneous local devotion, the ceremonial Catholics, the moral Unitarians, the metaphysical Calvinists, the serious disciples of John Wesley, and the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 403, December 5, 1829 • Various
... in His thoughts of the present and the future, lets us see what He thought that the work of God in the world was. The disciples looked at the blind man sitting by the wayside, and what he suggested to them was a curious, half theological, half metaphysical question, in which Rabbinical subtlety delighted. 'Who did sin, this man or his parents?' They only thought of talking over the theological problem involved in the fact that, before he had done anything in this world to account for the calamity, he was born blind. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... an idea of the extraordinary labours of Lady Hamilton, to whose unfailing devotion to the service of her husband the world of intellect has been so much indebted: "The number of pages in her handwriting," says Mr. Veitch,—"filled with abstruse metaphysical matter, original and quoted, bristling with proportional and syllogistic formulae—that are still preserved, is perfectly marvellous. Everything that was sent to the press, and all the courses of lectures, were written by her, either to dictation, or from a copy. This work she did in the truest ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... late French translator of the Paradise well remarks, his reasoning is physical; that of Dante partly metaphysical and partly theologic. ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... get me into a metaphysical discussion, little one," he answered. "We have something more important on our hands. I want you to note that, when a person is happy, he may look lovable; whereas, things going as he does not like, another, and very unfinished ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... theists, savage and civilised, in some form or other, rely—the traces of an 'eternal power and godhead' in the visible creation. The argument depends on a principle which, whatever may be its metaphysical history or origin, is one which man perpetually recognises, which every act of his own consciousness verifies, which he applies fearlessly to every phenomenon, known or unknown; and it is this,—That ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... by the influence of women. Thus Theodosius II., the successor of Arcadius (408-450), was governed during his whole reign by his sister Pulcheria. In the East, there was an intense interest felt in the abstruse questions of metaphysical theology. The Greek mind was speculative; and eager and often acrimonious debate on such questions as were raised by Nestorius respecting the two natures of the Saviour, was heard even in the shops and markets. The court meddled actively in these heated controversies, and ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... the moment he does this in a haughty way, and thinks himself drawing in the great style, because he leaves high lights white, it is all over with him; and half the degradation of art in modern times has been owing to endeavors, much fostered by the metaphysical Germans, to see things without color, as if color were a vulgar thing, the result being, in most students, that they end by not being able to see anything at all; whereas the true and perfect way of studying any object ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... attachment to the written law. Religion came to be a thing of the understanding, the subject of learned treatment; and its essence was reduced to dogmas or precepts. Thus it ceased to be a spiritual element in which the heart had free scope for its highest aspirations. In addition to all, a foreign metaphysical theology, the Persian doctrine of spirits, was introduced, which seemed to enlarge the sphere of speculation, but really retarded the free exercise of the mind. As the external side of religion had been previously directed to the performance of good works, ...
— The Canon of the Bible • Samuel Davidson
... entity was there, it might conceivably resume the weary round of evolution, with all its train of immeasurable miseries. Gautama got rid of even that [66] shade of a shadow of permanent existence by a metaphysical tour de force of great interest to the student of philosophy, seeing that it supplies the wanting half of Bishop ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... Haldane, yawning with all his Hegelian abysses, who appeared to me as I must have appeared to a neighbour in a local debating club when he dismissed metaphysical depths and pointed at me saying: "There is that Leviathan whom Thou hast made to take his sport therein." ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... For what it betokens of these peoples in particular may suggest much about man generally. It may mark a stride in theory, if a standstill in practice. Possibly it may help us to some understanding of ourselves. Not that it promises much aid to vexed metaphysical questions, but as a study in sociology it may not prove ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... enlarge upon this metaphysical phrase would be out of place in the present work. The curious student can refer to ...
— Hindu Law and Judicature - from the Dharma-Sastra of Yajnavalkya • Yajnavalkya
... William Wiedemann, who had settled and married at Dundee. Wiedemann is said to have been an accomplished draughtsman and musician, and his daughter, without herself sharing these gifts, probably passed them on to her son. Whether she also communicated from her Scottish and German ancestry the "metaphysical" proclivities currently ascribed to him, is a hypothesis absolutely in the air.[1] What is clear is that she was herself intellectually simple and of few ideas, but rich in the temperament, at once nervous and spiritual, which when present in the mother so often becomes ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... Ziegenbalg, had not been long in his field before he learned the mistake which the churches in Europe had made in regard to the religion and philosophy of the Hindus. He laid aside all his old notions when he came to encounter the metaphysical subtleties of Hindu thought, when he learned something of the immense Hindu literature, the voluminous ethics, the mystical and weird mythologies, the tremendous power of tradition and social customs—when, in ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge (its official title) took knowledge for its province; that is, natural knowledge, of Nature, Art, and Works, in preference to, though not necessarily to the exclusion of, moral and metaphysical philosophy, history and language. The experiments, its chief work, were to be productive both of light and fruit: the influence of Bacon is so great and evident that he might in a sense be called the founder of the Royal ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson
... painters also, the only result of any efforts we make to acquaint ourselves with the subjects of metaphysical inquiry has been an increased sense of the prudence of lying placidly and unreflectively in our pools, or at least limiting ourselves to such gentle efforts of imagination as may be consistent with the as yet imperfectly developed powers, ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... united with a scientific conscience and power of destructive analysis balanced by moral enthusiasm. Doubtless Locke might have dug his foundations deeper and integrated his faith better. His system was no metaphysical castle, no theological acropolis: rather a homely ancestral manor house built in several styles of architecture: a Tudor chapel, a Palladian front toward the new geometrical garden, a Jacobean parlour for political consultation and learned disputes, and even—since we are almost in the ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... family which will supply it with a nervous system accustomed to the kind of vibrations required, and an environment favourable to the early development of the physical centres of these faculties; to assist a being whose scientific, mystical, or metaphysical side needs to be developed, other environment and parentage will be chosen, and it is this relative parallelism existing between the moral qualities of the parents and those of the children which has deceived observers insufficiently instructed in the mystery of heredity, and ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... 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 real to you? She was inexpressibly, miraculously real to him. He saw ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... extract to you, gentlemen, not to bore you with metaphysical speculations, but simply to enable you, as educated men who understand the meaning of plain and straightforward English on any subject, to follow the twistings and turnings of an extraordinarily sinuous and disingenuous intellect, and intelligently to decide a question which ...
— A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University - Professor Royce's Libel • Francis Ellingwood Abbot
... specimen of historical romance, links his imaginative work to the third group of Merimee's writings, his historical essays. One resource of the disabused soul of our century, as we saw, would be the empirical study of facts, the empirical science of nature and man, surviving all dead metaphysical philosophies. Merimee, perhaps, may have had in him the making of a master of such science, disinterested, patient, exact: scalpel in hand, we may fancy, he would have penetrated far. But quite certainly ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... man who is discovering how to put people into some sort of metaphysical pickle that will suspend their animations until he gets ready to wake them up, would hurry up with his investigations, so he can catch Sallie before she begins to fade or wilt. Sallie, just as she is, brought to life about five generations from ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... while the philosophers built a new heaven and earth by moonlight; and through all the metaphysical mists and philanthropic pyrotechnics of that period Sister Hope played her own little game of "throwing light," and none but the moths were the worse ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... philosophy according to the teaching of true logic what it might be, before they determined what it was; just so would it have been better to withdraw zealously and industriously into the deepest caverns and darkest recesses of metaphysical speculations and suppositions in order to establish their opinion beyond danger from the weapons of their adversaries.... Indeed that great man so explains and demonstrates this dogma (although ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... came at the wrong time—I never wanted them—though that makes no difference in my gratitude I trust,—but I know myself—surely—and always have done so, for is there not somewhere the little book I first printed when a boy, with John Mill, the metaphysical head, his marginal note that 'the writer possesses a deeper self-consciousness than I ever knew in a sane human being.' So I never deceived myself much, nor called my feelings for people other than they were. And ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... involuntary and unconscious auto-biography; and moreover that the moral (or immoral) purpose in every philosophy has constituted the true vital germ out of which the entire plant has always grown. Indeed, to understand how the abstrusest metaphysical assertions of a philosopher have been arrived at, it is always well (and wise) to first ask oneself: "What morality do they (or does he) aim at?" Accordingly, I do not believe that an "impulse to knowledge" is ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... fancy, and luxuriated in every idea as it rose; in all there is that sense of mystery which formed an essential portion of his perception of life—a clinging to the subtler inner spirit, rather than to the outward form—a curious and metaphysical anatomy of ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley |
