"Metaphysic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is based, for it draws its vital breath from a region which—whether above or below—is at least altogether different from that in which science dwells. A critic, however, who cannot disprove the truth of the metaphysic creed, can at least raise his voice in protest against its disguising itself in 'scientific' plumes. I think that all who have had the patience to follow me thus far will agree that the spencerian 'philosophy' of social and intellectual ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... which it is intended to convey. Animals can thus receive and impart ideas on all that most concerns them. As my great namesake said some two hundred years ago, they know "what's what, and that's as high as metaphysic wit can fly." And they not only know what's what themselves, but can impart to one another any new what's-whatness that they may have acquired, for they are notoriously able to instruct and correct ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... they not planning the ruin of the heroic city that had delivered France from her fetters and would one day deliver the universe? Now, as he listened to the sage's voice, he discerned truths of a higher and purer compass; he grasped a revolutionary metaphysic which lifted his mind above coarse, material conditions into a region of absolute, unqualified convictions, untrammelled by the errors of the senses. Things are in their nature involved and full of confusion; the complexity of circumstances is such that we lose our way amongst them. Robespierre ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... special limitation of this materialism lies in its incapacity to represent the universe as a process, as one form of matter assumed in the course of evolutionary development. This limitation corresponded with the natural science of the time and the metaphysic coincident therewith, that is the anti-dialectic methods of the philosophers. Nature, as was known, was in constant motion, but this motion, according to the universally accepted ideas, turned eternally in a circle, and therefore never moved from the spot, and produced the same results over and ...
— Feuerbach: The roots of the socialist philosophy • Frederick Engels
... Merchants most do congregate Mercy and truth are met —is not strained —, temper justice with —, shut the gates of Merit, as if her, lessened yours —, modest men dumb on their own Mermaid, things done at the Merriment, flashes of Merry when I hear sweet music Metal more attractive —, sonorous Metaphysic wit, high as Mettle, grasp it like a man of Mice, like little, stole in and out —, best laid schemes of Midnight dances —oil consumed Mien, vice is a monster of so frightful Might, he that would not ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... conducted reasonably without eclecticism. Of [17] such eclecticism we have a justifying example in one of the first poets of our time. How illustrative of monosyllabic effect, of sonorous Latin, of the phraseology of science, of metaphysic, of colloquialism even, are the writings of Tennyson; yet with what a fine, fastidious ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... instinct rather than of recognised knowledge. So long as a man has these, and of the same kind as the more powerful body of his fellow- countrymen, he is a true man of science, though he can hardly read or write. As my great namesake said so well, "He knows what's what, and that's as high as metaphysic wit can fly." As usual, these true and thorough knowers do not know that they are scientific, and can seldom give a reason for the faith that is in them. They believe themselves to be ignorant, uncultured men, nor ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... the main current of Buddhism had changed from a revolutionary to a reactionary doctrine. The new greater gentry of the eleventh century adopted a number of elements of this reactionary Buddhism and incorporated them in the Confucianist system. This brought into Confucianism a metaphysic which it had lacked in the past, greatly extending its influence on the people and at the same time taking the wind out of the sails of Buddhism. The greater gentry never again placed themselves on the side of the Buddhist Church as they had done in the T'ang period. When ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... conclusions, in such a form as shall eliminate all technical terms and reduce the matter to a plain statement, intelligible as far as such a thing can be made intelligible, to the apprehension of such persons as have not had the luck, or the ill-luck, of a plunge into the ocean of metaphysic. ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... troubled workings of the brain. Ah, now I know I did not well for thee In making thee my wife! I should have gone Alone into eternity. I was Too rough for thee, for any tender woman— Other I had not loved—so full of fancies! Too given to meditation. A deed of love Is stronger than a metaphysic truth; Smiles better teachers are than mightiest words. Thou, who wast life, not thought, how couldst thou help it? How love me on, withdrawn from all thy sight— For life must ever need the shows of life? How fail to love a man so like ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... the question whether 'we' or 'they' won, but very seriously concerned with the question whether the division itself into 'we' or 'they' could not be obliterated by the discovery either of a less clumsy metaphysic or of a way of thinking about humanity which made the continued existence of those who disagreed with one in theology no longer intolerable. May the Germans and ourselves be now marching towards the horrors ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... class), and which (like the letters of the alphabet) are not many, and yet make up and sustain the essences and forms of all substances—this, I say, it is which I am attempting, and which constitutes and defines that part of metaphysic of which we are now inquiring." Physics inquires into the same qualities, but does not push its investigations into ultimate reality or reach the more general causes. We thus at last attain a definite conclusion with regard to forms, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... fundamental and the superficial, the permanent and the transient, the indestructible and the destructible. This is the supreme philosophic method which contains all the others and to which all the others are reduced. Upon this metaphysic and by the aid of this dialectic, Plato constructed an extremely pure system of morality which was simply an Imitation of God (as, later on, came the Imitation of Jesus Christ). The whole duty of man was to be as like God as he could. In God exist the ideas of truth, goodness, beauty, ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... I propose to pass in review various suggested methods of distinguishing mind from matter. I shall then briefly sketch the nature of that fundamental science which I believe to be the true metaphysic, in which mind and matter alike are seen to be constructed out of a neutral stuff, whose causal laws have no such duality as that of psychology, but form the basis upon which both physics and ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... English; as ungrammatical, abrupt, involved, transposed, as the clumsiness, carelessness, or caprice of man can make it. If it be correct to express human thought by writing whole pages of vague and bald abstract metaphysic, and then trying to explain them by concrete concetti, which bear an entirely accidental and mystical likeness to the notion which they are to illustrate, then let the metaphysic be as abstract as possible, the ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... Archaeological Society, at its Hall in the City of New York, on March 30th, 1893. Since that time I have been led into a train of thought, having as its basis a more philosophical treatment of the meaning of the scarabaeus as a symbol, in the religious metaphysic conception of it by the Ancient Egyptians, and have added much new matter. I am convinced that at the period when we first meet with the symbol of the scarabaeus in Egypt, it was already the symbol and tangible expression ...
— Scarabs • Isaac Myer
... air-loom. It rivals the human machine in this, that it can operate either on mind or matter. It was invented, and is worked, by a gang of villains superlatively skillful in pneumatic chemistry, physiology, nervous influence, sympathy, and the higher metaphysic, men far beyond the immature science of the present era, which, indeed, is a favorite subject ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... was the rising strength of the German Protestants. Therefore it was the post of danger; and it gave to a theologian the command of a public of laymen. The restoration of history coincided with the euthanasia of metaphysic; when the foremost philosophic genius of the time led over to the historic treatment both of philosophy and religion, and Hamilton, Cousin, Comte, severally converted the science into its history. Many men better equipped for speculation than for erudition ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... inner consciousness which is the field of fulfilment. It has gone so far in this that the perfection of fulfilment seems to exist for it nowhere. Its science has always talked of the never-ending evolution of the world. Its metaphysic has now begun to talk of the evolution of God himself. They will not admit that he is; they would have it that he also ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... Thoreau held and sometimes uttered. But Whitman, who has a somewhat vulgar inclination for technical talk and the jargon of philosophy, is not content with a few pregnant hints; he must put the dots upon his i's; he must corroborate the songs of Apollo by some of the darkest talk of human metaphysic. He tells his disciples that they must be ready "to confront the growing arrogance of Realism." Each person is, for himself, the keystone and the occasion of this universal edifice. "Nothing, not God," he says, "is greater to one than oneself is;" a statement ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... is divided into physic and metaphysic; wherein I desire it may be conceived that I use the word metaphysic in a differing sense from that that is received. And in like manner, I doubt not but it will easily appear to men of judgment, that in this ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon |
