"Rationalism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... attempt to rationalize the conception of deity as embodied in the Jehovah of the Old Testament gave rise to the class of opinions described as Gnosis, or Gnosticism. The signification of Gnosis is simply "rationalism,"—the endeavour to harmonize the materialistic statements of an old mythology with the more advanced spiritualistic philosophy of the time. The Gnostics rejected the conception of an anthropomorphic deity ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... France, the religious tenets handed down from father to son are adhered to without wavering, and at the same time without apparent enthusiasm. Catholics and Protestants live amicably side by side; but intermarriages are rare, and conversions from Rome to rationalism infrequent. The Sunday services of the little Protestant church are often attended by Catholics. Strangers passing through Osse, market-folk, peasants and others, never fail to inspect it curiously. The Protestant pastor is looked up ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... the dawn that followed the night which fell upon our Church in this land, when the patriarchal luminaries of her early history had set on earth to rise in heaven. When the General Synod came into being, Rationalism still was in the ascendant in Europe. The names of Gabler and Bretschneider, of Wegscheider and Roehr, were names which had been held high in honor in the Lutheran Church in Germany. That Church had become what such men might have been expected to make her. Where their influence prevailed, ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... the fanatics, he was conscious of a strange sympathy with this lovable ascetic who fasted every day, torturing equally his texts and himself, this hopeless mystic for whom there could be no bridge to modern thought; all the Polish Jew in him revolted irrationally against the new German rationalism. No, no; it must be all or nothing. Jewish Catholicism was not to be replaced by Jewish Protestantism. These pathetic zealots, clinging desperately to the past, had a deeper instinct, a truer prevision of the future, ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... really the tradition of one particular ingredient in this great admixture and stirring up of peoples. This ingredient is the Colonial British, whose seventeenth century Puritanism and eighteenth century mercantile radicalism and rationalism manifestly furnished all the stuff out of which the American tradition is made. It is this stuff planted in virgin soil and inflated to an immense and buoyant optimism by colossal and unanticipated ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... in which many of the professors have been graduated in Germany, having passed through the poison gas factory of the Berlin university, and under the camouflage department of "sacred literature" are sending out the mentally and spiritually asphyxiating poison of German rationalism, inoculating every fresh lot of newly made ministers and would-be missionaries with rank unbelief and Bible repudiation, distributing the poison into the back counties as well as municipal centers until there are scores of men who once stood for a whole Gospel and a certified Word ...
— Why I Preach the Second Coming • Isaac Massey Haldeman
... is not 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, ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... none other than Christianity; the 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. To quote ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... Canon 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. ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... which by this sect is, 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, ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... 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 land. To a modern ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... 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 ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... finds himself indifferent on many points (on the reality of witchcraft, for instance) concerning which Browne's more timid, personally grounded faith might indulge no scepticism, forced himself, nevertheless, to detect a vein of rationalism in a book which on the whole much attracted him, and hastily put forth his "animadversions" upon it. Browne, with all his distaste for controversy, thus found himself committed to a dispute, and his reply came with the ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... suddenly put forth Protestantism, as the tree by the water-side sends forth its shoots in due season. Protestantism, free as air, opens out into the various sects, each taking hold of some human need; Lutheranism, Calvinism, Methodism, Swedenborgianism, or Rationalism. Christianity blossoms out into modern science, literature, art,—children who indeed often forget their mother, and are ignorant of their source, but which are still fed from her breasts and partake of her life. Christianity, the spirit of faith, hope, and love, is the deep fountain ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... himself the irresistible instrument of philosophy and justice, and wrought the reform. But his king was Lewis XV. D'Argenson saw so little that was worthy to be preserved that he did not shrink from sweeping judgments and abstract propositions. By his rationalism, and his indifference to the prejudice of custom and the claim of possession; by his maxim that every man may be presumed to understand the things in which his own interest and responsibility are involved; by his zeal ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... demonstration is on the increase; and probably, quite as much as the proportion of heterodoxes to books of orthodox adherence. So that divinity and medicine may say to geometry, Don't you sneer: if rationalism, homoeopathy, and their congeners are on the rise among us, your enemies are increasing quite as fast. But geometry replies—Dear friends, content yourselves with the rational inference that the rise of heterodoxy within your pales ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... more lecturing, and apparently with much of his former success, on Mont Ste. Genevieve. His old enemies were still on his trail, and most of all Bernard of Clairvaux, to whose fiery adherence to the faith Abelard's rationalism seemed a sheer desecration. The unceasing activities of Bernard and others finally brought Abelard before an ecclesiastical council at Sens in 1140, where he was formally arraigned on charges of heresy. Had Abelard's courage held ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard
... 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 shapely clay. Classic ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... hold my thoughts. He was not picturesque like Dickens, and I was at that time curiously eager for some adequate philosophy of life, and his social satire seemed very small beer indeed. I was really young. I hungered after great truths: "Middle-march," "Adam Bede," "The Rise and Fall of Rationalism," "The History of Civilisation," were momentous events in my life. But I loved life better than books, and I cultivated with care the acquaintance of a neighbour who had taken the Globe Theatre for the purpose of producing Offenbach's operas. Bouquets, stalls, rings, ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... taken from an orphan asylum and brought up in a family of refinement and education. She develops strong traits of character and much intellectual ability. Her long struggles through the mists of rationalism result in clear views of and high faith in revealed religion. Her guardian, and long her teacher, loves her, and after years ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... superstitions have fought 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 ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... have the utmost difficulty in preventing Sergy (by main force at first) from obeying. And the captain tries rationalism, suggesting first that the pretended Ines is a bait for some gang of assassins or at least brigands, then that the whole thing is a trick of Bascara's to "produce" a new cantatrice. But Boutraix, who has been entirely converted ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... In Litchfield Cathedral Library is a copy of Dr. 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 chief part of the exhortations from the pulpit. ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, - Volume I, No. 9. September, 1880 • Various
... views, or indeed their creeds, to writing, lest they should fall into the hands of spies and be used in evidence against them, much more is this the case with those whose search after truth has led them to forsake the lines of rationalism and enter the land of mysticism and spiritualism. But two of these mystic schisms need we touch upon in this article, in order to show to what lengths the Mujik will go in his efforts to escape from ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... and strong, and he's got an education and all that fine land, but he don't seem to fit in right." Sometimes Ernest thought his friend was unlucky. When that idea occurred to him, he sighed and shook it off. For Ernest believed there was no help for that; it was something rationalism did not explain. ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... this temple is the most important of all the religious observances of the empire, and constitutes a most interesting remnant of the ancient monotheistic cultus which prevailed in China before the rationalism of Confucius and the polytheistic superstition of Buddhism predominated among the people. While the ceremonies of the sacrifices are very complicated, they are kept with the strictest severity. The chief of these is at the winter solstice. On December ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... of thought from the philosopher of the Academe to the Arcadian historian may be best illustrated by a comparison of the method by which each of the three writers, whom I have selected as the highest expressions of the rationalism of his respective age, attained to his ideal state: for the latter conception may be in a measure regarded as representing the most spiritual principle which they could discern ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... up into this last article a valedictory violence about all such things; and then pass to where, beyond these voices, there is peace—or in other words, to the writing of Penny Dreadfuls; a noble and much-needed work. But before I finally desert the illusions of rationalism for the actualities of romance, I should very much like to write one last roaring, raging book telling all the rationalists not to be so utterly irrational. The book would be simply a string of violent vetoes, like the Ten Commandments. I would call ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... has to observe the least of the ordinances of style knows not liberty. He is a slave; his dress betrayeth him and proclaims him base. There may be degrees of baseness. I am abject myself; but whensoever I revisit the haunts of men clad in the few light incommoding clothes that rationalism ordains, I rejoice and gloat over the slavery of those who have failed to catch even glimpses of the loveliness of liberty, who are yet afeared of opinion—"that sour-breathed hag." How can a man with hoop-like collar, ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... 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 ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... 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 ...
— Religion and Theology: A Sermon for the Times • John Tulloch
... themselves on a severe rationalism, will recognise nothing as true but what is demonstrated to them like mathematical theorems, will look upon the sentiments above referred to as delusions of the fancy, because they see them founded but upon feeling; but they who think so are manifestly in error. If faith in God, in His providence, ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio
... bring himself to regret having known her. He strove resolutely to refrain from applying conventional standards of judgment, with which, he assured himself, he had no sympathy, but little uneasinesses and awkward moments would obtrude. It was difficult to maintain the fine idea of rationalism. 'I won't have you bind the strange man you may be to-morrow with oaths,' Aurora had said; yet it was evident the change in him was a source of great ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... 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,' ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... 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 ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... for public opinion, would not have lasted thirty weeks. Their reciprocal disgust was physical, mental, moral. It could not be concealed from their friends; all Polterham smiled over it; yet the Mumbrays were regarded as a centre of moral and religious influence, a power against the encroaches of rationalism and its attendant depravity. Neither of them could point to dignified ancestry; by steady persistence in cant and snobbishness—the genuine expression of their natures—they had pushed to a prominent place, and feared ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... and in Riehm's "Handworterbuch" (1884)—both works with a conservative leaning—are on the same side; and Diestel, [8] in his full discussion of the subject, remorselessly rejects the universality doctrine. Even that staunch opponent of scientific rationalism—may I say rationality?—Zockler [9] flinches from a distinct defence of the thesis, any opposition to which, well within my recollection, was howled down by the orthodox as mere "infidelity." All that, in his sore straits, Dr. Zockler is able ...
— The Lights of the Church and the Light of Science - Essay #6 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... 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 in ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... fact, resting on very 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 others upon ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... spite of this widely heralded liberalism; in spite of the effort to accommodate itself to the rationalism, the unbelief and downright infidelity of the hour; in spite of the determination to cut loose from the primaries of the first century and ally itself with the fast-going advance of the twentieth, this movement in the name of Christianity has not ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman
... initial religious rebel. Kapila was the first to declare the divine a human and invalid conjecture. The announcement, with its prefaces and deductions, is contained in the Sankhya Karika, a system of rationalism, still read in India, where it is known as ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... 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 not give any account of these articles, but I may notice a personal connection which was involved. ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... men who have, in the breaking down of the old Puritanical faith, and the dying out of the later Unitarian rationalism, advanced and established the Anglican church so notably in the New England hill-country, by a wise conformity to the necessities and exactions of the native temperament. On the ecclesiastical ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... and Pietism, life. Both conceptions were one-sided. If orthodoxy had resulted in a lifeless formalism, Pietism soon lost its effectiveness in a sentimental subjectivism. Its neglect of sound doctrine eventually gave birth to Rationalism. But for the moment Pietism appeared to supply what orthodoxy lacked: an urgent call to Christians to live ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg |
