Indications of the Creator: Extracts, Bearing Upon Theology, from the History and the Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences |
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analogies appears asserted assume assumption astronomy attempts authority Axiom believe Bridgewater Treatise catastrophist causation causes and effects conceive conception condition considered consistent contemplation conviction Copernican Copernican system course of nature creation Creator Cuvier cycle developement discovery doctrine of Final earth endeavour evidence existence express facts Final Causes forces Galileo Geoffroy geologists geology habits Idea inquiry intelligible interpretation kind knowledge language laws manner material sciences means minds mode molluscs moral morphological motion narrative Natural Theology nebular hypothesis nebulous objects Octavo opinion organs origin Palætiological Sciences philosophy physical physiology planets portion present principle produced progress providential purpose question reason reference remark researches result Scripture series of causes solar system species speculations structure suppose Supreme Cause TEN THOUSAND GREEKS tenets things thought tion trace transmutation of species truth uniform uniformitarian universe vertebrata vertebrate zoological
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Page 170 - ... towards divine mysteries. But rather, that by our mind thoroughly cleansed and purged from fancy and vanities, and yet subject and perfectly given up to the divine oracles, there may be given unto faith the things that are faith's.
Page 56 - That there is a capacity in all species to accommodate themselves, to a certain extent, to a change of external circumstances, this extent varying greatly according to the species.
Page 170 - This also we humbly and earnestly beg, that human things may not prejudice such as are Divine ; neither that from the unlocking of the gates of sense, and the kindling of a greater natural light, anything of incredulity, or intellectual night, may arise in our minds towards Divine mysteries.
Page 71 - From what has been said, it follows that geology and astronomy are, of themselves, incapable of giving us any distinct and satisfactory account of the origin of the universe, or of its parts. We need not wonder, then, at any particular instance of this incapacity ; as, for example, that of which we have been speaking, the impossibility of accounting by any natural means for the production of all the successive tribes of plants and animals which have peopled the world in the various stages of its...
Page 145 - Mars' he opens with the following passage : " I beseech my reader, that, not unmindful of the Divine goodness bestowed on man, he do with me praise and celebrate the wisdom and greatness of the Creator, which I open to him from a more inward explication of the form of the world, from a searching of causes, from a detection of the errors of vision ; and that thus, not only in the firmness and stability of the earth, he perceive with gratitude the preservation of all living things in Nature as the...
Page 135 - ... probable. And the new interpretation which the new philosophy requires, and which appears to the older school to be a fatal violence done to the authority of religion, is accepted by their successors without the dangerous results which were apprehended.
Page 19 - Let it be supposed that the point to which this hypothesis leads us, is the ultimate point of physical science : that the farthest glimpse we can obtain of the material universe by our natural faculties, shows it to us occupied by a boundless abyss of luminous matter : still we ask, how space came to be thus occupied, how matter came to be thus luminous? If we establish by physical proofs, that the first fact which can be traced in the history of the world, is that "there was light;" we shall still...
Page 52 - ... governed, we find ourselves at last approaching to a Source of order and law, and intellectual beauty : — that, after venturing into the region of life and feeling and will, we are led to believe the Fountain of life and will not to be itself unintelligent and dead, but to be a living Mind, a Power which aims as well as acts. To us this doctrine appears like the natural cadence of the tones to which we have so long been listening; and without such a final strain our ears would have been left...
Page 44 - And this, he says, is a universal and necessary maxim. He adds, "It is well known that the anatomisers of plants and animals, in order to investigate their structure, and to obtain an insight into the grounds why and to what end such parts, why such a situation and connexion of the parts, and exactly such an internal form, come before them, assume, as indispensably necessary, this maxim, that in such a creature nothing is in vain, and proceed upon it in the same way in which in general natural philosophy...