The Soul in Nature: With Supplementary Contributions

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H.G. Bohn, 1852 - 465 pages
 

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Page 141 - ... labourer in science chooses knowledge as his highest aim. A love of knowledge, which some are frequently obliged to place secondary to other duties, with the man of science must be the occupation of his life ; he is destined to nourish the holy flame of wisdom, which shall diffuse its rays amidst the rest of mankind ; it is his nightly lamp which shall enlighten the earth.
Page 108 - ... time, fluid. If we are now thoroughly convinced that everything in material existence is produced from similar particles of matter, and by the same forces, and in obedience to the same laws, we must also allow that the planets have been formed according to the same laws as our earth. This we know, however, that they have developed themselves during immeasurable periods of time, in a series of transformations, which has also influenced the vegetable and animal creation of those periods. This development...
Page 280 - ... that in one case at least babyhood has profited by the generalizations of science. In all nature nothing develops without activity,- — movement and life are almost synonymous terms. The visible world on which we gaze is only an expression of the activity of invisible forces, and " everything that is does not exist a single moment by itself, but only through a constant reciprocal action with all that surrounds it.
Page 129 - But what are these dissimilarities of condition when compared to those which exist in all the planets ! amidst those innumerable worlds there is every possible dissimilarity with regard to age, light, radiation, &c. Our tolerably exact knowledge of the dissimilarity of these conditions is limited to an inexpressibly small part of the whole ; its application, therefore, to the results of those intellectual forms of existence which are determined, must be still more limited. The variety in the nature...
Page xvii - He had at this meeting developed to them some of those recondite and remarkable powers which he had been himself the first to discover, and which went almost to the extent of obliging them to alter their views on the most ordinary laws of force and of motion. He elaborated his ideas with slowness and certainty, bringing them forward only after a long lapse of time. How often did he (Sir John Herschel) wish to heaven that he could trample down, and strike for ever to the earth, the hasty...
Page 142 - No, my friends, nothing but the conviction that our love of knowledge is an endeavour after a true reality, and that it is true life, and true harmony, can give you a genuine, enthusiastic love of wisdom. The conviction that when you diffuse knowledge you are instrumental in the consolidation of God's kingdom on earth, can alone give you a true and unalloyed desire to lead those around you towards a higher light and higher knowledge. This, my young friends, is the important vocation for which you...
Page 188 - THE WORLD IN ITS NATURE PERFECT. The world is in its nature perfect; as a divine work it must be so; but since man, in consequence of his limited powers, easily adopts a mistaken view of the world around him, and so much the more the less he strives after the divine light, the world appears to him as something separate and apart from God. Thus the world appears through the guilt of man; but it is not corrupted and destroyed in consequence of its own nature. Neither Christ nor any of the biblical...
Page xviii - The electric telegraph, and other wonders of modern science, were but mere effervescences from the surface of this deep, recondite discovery which Oersted had liberated, and which was yet to burst with all its mighty force upon the world. If we were to characterize by any figure the advantage of Oersted to science, we would regard him as a fertilizing shower descending from heaven, which brought forth a new crop, delightful to the eye, and pleasing to the heart.
Page 55 - In the remote distances between the planets, there is no inactive void. "The space," says Oersted, "is filled by ether and penetrated by the attractive forces by which the whole universe is held together. The ether itself is an ocean, whose waves form light, that great connecting link which conveys messages from globe to globe and from system to system. The wonders unravelled by science prove that we are not isolated beings, but that we are related to the whole universe.

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