This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1896 Excerpt: ...to give "To one brief moment caught from fleeting time The appropriate calm of blest eternity." But we no longer take the artist or poet as a prophet; we cannot seriously and permanently worship the objects which he makes us admire. Whenever the evanescent light "that never was on sea or land" fades away from them, we ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1896 Excerpt: ...to give "To one brief moment caught from fleeting time The appropriate calm of blest eternity." But we no longer take the artist or poet as a prophet; we cannot seriously and permanently worship the objects which he makes us admire. Whenever the evanescent light "that never was on sea or land" fades away from them, we are obliged to see that it never was there, and Science and Philosophy. 113 to treat tho things and beings on which it fell as merely individual things and beings, like the things and beings around them. We are unable to believe in a God who is here and not there, in an ideal which is a happy exception. And the poet's vision, therefore, will necessarily become to us a dream, if it is not conceived as pointing to something more universal, of which he does not speak. The scientific sense, which has gradually communicated itself even to many of those who are not scientific, forces us to see in particular things not ideals, but merely examples of general classes, and to regard them all as connected to each other by laws of necessary relation, in such a way that they are ipso facto deprived of any exceptional or independent position. How can we treat anything as deserving of praise or worship for itself, if, to explain it, we have to look, not to itself, but to its conditions and causes 1 And when science bids us treat everything in this manner, how can there be anything left to reverence?" Zeus is dethroned, and Vortex reigns in his place." 1 Nor can we count it a more respectable worship when we are told to adore the unknown, which always lies at the end of every finite series of causes and effects, so long as no reason is given to suppose that what lies beyond our knowledge is other than a continuation of the chain ...
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